“Get back,” Conrad roared, lifting the sword he had pointed at Lana’s throat. “Get back, or I’ll cut her throat before you can move, I mean it.” Acantha froze where she stood, heart pounding, mind racing. Something was wrong here—beyond the obvious.
“Why?” she heard herself ask.
“Why? Because I want to be King,” Conrad growled, narrowing his eyes at her. His expression was wild, uncontrolled, the blood on his face making him seem even more unhinged. She’d never seen their placid monarch like this. He was almost unrecognizable. Even his voice… it was his voice, that was true, but the way he was using it was all wrong. “I want to rule this stupid kingdom, not this bitch!”
Acantha felt her mind grow cool and still and certain. “Shift, Lana,” she said.
Conrad’s eyes flashed. “Don’t you dare!”
But Lana looked worried. “Acantha, I don’t have decades of training. He’ll demolish me if we’re dragon-shaped—”
“Exactly!” Conrad almost shrieked it, shaking the sword at her. “So stay on two legs—”
“Lana.” Acantha summoned all the authority she could. “Trust me. Shift.”
The Queen looked stricken… and Conrad screamed in frustration, stumbling back as the Queen was replaced with a coiled dragon, her wings folded to her back and her jaws open to release a low, threatening hiss. A second passed. Another.
“Conrad and I have been sparring nearly our whole lives,” Acantha said, taking a step forward towards the Prince, whose expression had changed considerably. “We know each other very well. He’s got more reach than me, but I’m faster. Our strength is equal, my stamina’s a little better… but the one thing nobody’s ever going to do faster than Conrad is shifting.”
The Queen growled, then lashed out with her talons, knocking the Prince to the ground and pinning him between her razor-sharp claws. His sword clattered away across the floor, and Acantha drew closer, narrowing her eyes. Any dragon in Conrad’s position would shift to escape the perilously sharp claws on either side of his fragile human form. But then again, any dragon in Conrad’s position would have shifted the minute he sensed his opponent doing the same.
Unless, for some reason, that wasn’t an option for him.
“Who are you?” Acantha demanded, ignoring how strange it felt to put a boot on the chest of her Prince. “Tell the truth.”
“You’re the one, aren’t you? The guard captain. He talked about you.” Eerie as it was to be looking into Conrad’s face, there was nothing of Conrad in the mage’s voice. “Where is he? Where’s Cato?”
Lana growled, and the mage inhaled sharply as those sharp talons drew in a little closer.
“I asked you a question.”
A flash of annoyance. “My name is Inota. Like it matters.”
“Where’s your boss?”
The mage snorted. “Why don’t you ask that pathetic traitor you’ve been harboring?”
“Traitor?” Acantha flicked a glance towards the Queen, whose draconic face was predictably unreadable. Then she pressed harder with her boot, causing the mage to exhale heavily as something cracked.
“Cato. You should know, you’re the ones who tried to get him to call off the attack—” The mage wheezed, lifting one feeble hand to thump at her boot.
“Tell me where Haspar is and stop wasting my time, or I’ll see how long it takes to break all your ribs,” Acantha growled.
“Gauntlet,” the mage wheezed in Conrad’s voice. “Archives. Bitch,” the mage added, face twisting. The Queen’s sharp claws tightened again… but Acantha was removing her boot already, turning for the doorway.
“Queen Lana, I trust you can handle this hostage?”
The great dragon nodded… and Acantha was gone, breaking into a run again. The Archives. Of course. It made perfect sense—distract the dragons with battles on half a dozen fronts, then sneak in to claim the prize. The confusion with the Prince’s lookalike had been a particularly clever ruse. Inota… she remembered Cato mentioning that name once or twice. She hoped Prince Conrad was alright, wherever he was… and that the confusion was cleared up quickly with the guards who’d believed their own Prince had turned on them…
She could deal with all of that later, Acantha told herself. Right now, she had to get to the Archives… ideally with as many soldiers as possible. But there weren’t many able-bodied guards left, she realized with dismay as she moved through the now-abandoned entrance to the Archives. It wasn’t hard to tell why as she looked around at the evidence of a battleground. Scorch marks littered the floor, and half a dozen of the great bookshelves had been toppled, obstructing the way through.
Hoping that her guards had gotten away safely, Acantha transformed. Her great claws did yet more damage to the bookshelves as she hauled them out of the way, but if furniture repair was their biggest problem in the aftermath of all of this, she’d count them lucky. That done, she shifted back and ran deeper into the Archives. She knew exactly where the gauntlet in question was—it had been returned to exactly the place it had been when Cato had stolen it. She felt a curious sense of déjà vu now as she hastened down flight after flight of stairs, feeling the comforting pressure of the stone enveloping her again like an old friend. It felt strange to think of a time before Cato… before she’d even known mages existed, let alone fought several in hand-to-hand combat.
Traitor, that was the word that kept coming back to her. Inota had called Cato a traitor. What did she mean? Wasn’t everything that was happening exactly what he’d helped them to plan? She didn’t have time to think about this, she thought grimly, tensing her jaw. Had to focus on taking down the intruders. Had to protect the Palace. Die doing it, if she had to.
Her footsteps slowed as her gut told her she was nearing the place she was headed. No fellow soldiers at her side, no backup on its way, but that didn’t matter now. There had been nobody to call. If she was going to stop this mage, she was going to have to do it alone. And if she couldn’t… well, she had to.
The mage was standing in front of the same cabinet Cato had been rummaging through when she’d found him, and despite her determination to set those thoughts aside, she felt a stab of grief go through her like a blade. As if in response, the robed man by the cabinet turned, and her eyes fell first onto the dull silver gauntlet in his hands. The object hadn’t changed since the last she’d seen it. She was no expert, but it seemed curiously inert, even for a magical artifact. Was that really what all of this was about? All of this violence, all of this bloodshed?