Lost Destinies

↳ 02: What Happens When You Screw Things Up

By the time all the commotion had died down and three of the guards had found Prince Everette on his knees in a puddle of blood, the figures in the shadows were gone. Not a trace of the ghosts was left in the palace save for a lone trapdoor connected to the roof, swaying with a soft creaking noise.

The prince was gasping desperately for air, the world spinning around him, when he was wrenched back by the shoulders and spun around to be frantically inspected for harm.

Are you alright, Your Highness? Did you see who did it? Did they hurt you?

The first thing they saw, after him, was the writing on the floor. Across the gleaming marble was a message in dramatic, looping scrawl: ONE DOWN, FIVE TO GO.

Blood.

It was smeared across the floor in blood.

There were murmurs of what does this mean and who did this and the ever unimportant but persistent question of how could anyone be so heartless as to kill the queen? But once you could manage to tear your eyes from the writing you would, if you could bear it, gaze instead at the real message. The body, brutally mutilated and drenched in red, one hand extended at the end of the throne's armrest and cradling the queen's own still-beating heart. It must have been enchanted with some kind of magic to beat like that, still pumping as if nothing at all were wrong, the sound almost tangible in the air. And resting atop it delicate as could be was a single red spider lily. It did nothing but sit there, but it may as well have spat in the guards' faces for the offense they took to it.

"Lycoris Radiata," whispered Daesyn Kalinin, the head of the royal guard. He lowered his weapon and turned to the prince. "Did you see her?"

Everette turned, confused, but the sight of his mother's corpse for a second time was so overwhelming that this time he lurched forward and vomited. Quickly he was supported by someone again. He blinked rapidly, trying to orient himself enough to see who it was. Not a guardsman. A knight. Lange.

He coughed, lifting the collar of his tunic so as to wipe his face clean with it. The world felt like it was crashing down around him. Just how many minutes earlier had he been walking with his mother in the garden? And now—

"Your Highness," said Kalinin more urgently, "I know that it's hard to think right now, and I'm terribly sorry for your loss. But if you saw the Corpse Flower Assassin—"

He was interrupted by the king and another legion of guards bursting into the throne room and promptly skidding to a halt. King Ramiro blinked in disbelief, his hand starting to violently shake and his sword clattering to the floor. The sound echoed through the silence that had fallen the moment he entered. And it was silent for a few moments more.

Then the king screamed.

His knees did not buckle underneath him as Everette's had. He reacted exactly the opposite, shoving men out of the way to reach his wife's body. He snatched the flower off the throne and crushed it in his fist... and then he slid to the floor, sobs wracking his body as he rocked back and forth with the remnants of the spider lily clutched to his chest. Everyone looked away out of respect. Everyone except for Everette, that is. He had never seen his father like this before; so weak, so vulnerable, so broken. If even the mighty king of Snow Kingdom could not stay strong, then what would become of him? Bile rose again in his throat but this time he shoved it back down.

"Summon the royal investigator," Kalinin commanded, his voice authoritative and demanding. Even he could barely contain the raw disgust and anger that reflected what everyone in the room was feeling at the moment. By now there were servants curiously poking their heads in only to gasp and draw back, astonished. A handful rushed to Everette's side to tend to his leg, but he barely registered it. What happened next could have taken hours or seconds, but it seemed to whiz by in a whirlwind of chaos.