Kings Rising (Captive Prince 3)

‘This is what Govart used to blackmail his way to power all these years. This is why my brother fled, and why he lost his life. My brother was the archer who killed the King, for which the Regent promised him gold and delivered him death.

‘This is the proof that King Aleron was killed by his own brother.’

There was no outcry this time, no clash of sound, just a silence, in which the creased papers were delivered from Paschal to the Council. As Herode took them, Damen recalled that Herode had been a friend to King Aleron. Herode’s hand was shaking.

And then Damen looked at Laurent.

Laurent’s face was completely devoid of colour. It was not an idea that Laurent had entertained before, that much was clear. Laurent had his own blind spot when it came to his uncle. I didn’t think he’d really try to kill me. After everything . . . even after everything.

It had never really made sense that the Veretian army had attacked in the open when their strategic dominance had always been their forts. The day that Vere had fought Akielos at Marlas there had b

een three men between the Regent and the throne, but what might not be accomplished in the chaotic mess of battle?

Damen thought of Govart in the palace, doing what he pleased to one of the Regent’s Akielon slaves. Holding a threat over the Regent would be a dangerous cocktail, heady and terrifying. Six years of looking over your shoulder, of waiting for the sword to fall, not knowing when or how it would happen, but knowing that it would. He wondered if there had been a time in Govart’s life before the power and the fear had wrecked him.

Damen thought of his father struggling to breathe in his sickbed, of Orlant, of Aimeric.

He thought of Nicaise in oversized bedclothes in the hallway, caught up in something too big for him. And dead now, of course.

‘You can’t believe this? The lies of a physician and a boy whore?’

Guion’s voice was jarring in the silence. Damen looked to the Council, where the oldest of the Councillors, Herode, was looking up from the papers.

‘Nicaise had more nobility in him than you,’ said Herode. ‘He was more loyal to the Crown than the Council, in the end.’

Herode stepped forward. He used the gold sceptre like a staff as he walked. With the eyes of every person assembled on him, Herode crossed the hall, stopping only when he stood in front of Laurent, who was still held in the tight grip of one of his uncle’s soldiers.

‘We were here to hold the throne in trust, and we failed you,’ said Herode, ‘my King.’

And he knelt, with the slow, painstaking care of an elderly man, on the marble stones of the Akielon hall.

Seeing Laurent’s shocked face, Damen realised that something had happened that Laurent had not imagined.No one had ever told him before that he deserved to be King. Like a boy who has been given praise for the first time, Laurent didn’t know what to do. He looked suddenly very young, his lips parted wordlessly, his cheeks flushed.

Jeurre rose. As the onlookers watched, Jeurre left his place with the Council and crossed the hall to drop to one knee alongside Herode. A moment later, Chelaut followed. Then Audin. And finally, like a rat deserting a ship, Mathe moved away from the Regent and hurriedly fell to one knee in front of Laurent.

‘The Council has been deceived into treason,’ said the Regent, calmly. ‘Take them.’

There was a pause, in which his order ought to have been followed, but wasn’t. The Regent turned. The hall was thick with his soldiers, the Regent’s Guard, trained to his orders, and brought here to do his bidding. None of them moved.

In the strange silence, a soldier stepped forward. ‘You’re not my King,’ he said. Pulling the Regent’s insignia from his shoulder, he dropped it at the Regent’s feet.

Then he crossed the hall as the Council had done, to stand beside Laurent.

His movement was the first drop that became a trickle, then a flow, as another soldier pulled his insignia from his shoulder and crossed, and another, and another, until the hall was loud with the sound of armoured feet, the hail of badges hitting the ground. Like the tide drawing away from a rock, the Veretians crossed the hall, until the Regent stood alone.

And Laurent stood facing him, with an army at his back.

‘Herode,’ said the Regent. ‘This is the boy who has shirked his duties, who has never worked for anything in his life, who is in every way unfit to rule the country.’

Herode said, ‘He is our King.’

‘He’s not a king. He’s no more than a—’

‘You’ve lost.’ Laurent’s calm words cut across his uncle’s.

He stood free. His uncle’s soldiers had released him, striking the irons from his wrists. Across from him, the Regent stood exposed, a middle-aged man used to commanding public spectacle, now with it turned against him.

Herode lifted the sceptre. ‘The Council will now make its ruling.’