Free Fire and Thorns 00.7: King's Guard by Rae Carson Page A

she cries. “I did everything you asked. Your ambition made me this way. You did this.” She gestures emphatically with the dagger; its blade winks in the torchlight. “And you dare call me a whore?”
    “Isadora, let’s go,” I plead. “Your father has committed treason. He’ll pay for what he has done. But we need to get away.”
    “You were supposed to become queen,” Solvaño says. Spittle edges his mouth now as he steps forward, seemingly unaware of Isadora’s dagger. “How you failed so utterly, I’ll never—”
    “He picked her because of you! He couldn’t bear the idea of you as a father-in-law.” The hand holding the dagger wavers, then drops to her side. “I couldn’t blame him, even when he broke my heart.”
    His grin is smug. “You’re a whore and a liar. And now no one will want you. I’ve made sure of that.”
    A cry of anguish bubbles up from somewhere deep inside her as she raises the knife and plunges it into her father’s belly.
    “Isadora!” Oh, God, what has she done?
    She yanks out the knife. Blood bubbles up from the wound as she raises it again, but I grab her elbow. “Let’s go, my lady. Before the alarm goes up.”
    She drops the dagger. It clatters to the stone floor, and droplets of blood sprinkle around it.
    Solvaño makes a gurgling noise as he raises his head. He’s trying to say something. His face shows no surprise, no fear of dying. There is only hate.
    “How could he,” Isadora whispers. “His own daughter.”
    “He was a monster,” I agree, staring at the body twitching on the floor.
    “I guess I’ve had my revenge,” she whispers, but she doesn’t sound convinced.
    “Yes. Now let’s go. No, wait.”
    I crouch beside Solvaño’s body, thinking. Then I grab the dagger, and bile rises in my throat as I place the tip against the still-seeping wound and send the dagger home.
    “What—what are you doing?” Isadora says.
    I wrap Solvaño’s right hand around the knife grip, then with a grunt and heave, I roll him over onto his stomach. “I’m trying to make it look like an accident,” I explain. I stand and look down at my handiwork, feeling sick. “The king’s advisers can manufacture whatever story they want of this, but it will help if your father’s people find the body this way.”
    Isadora laughs again, her laugh dissolving into tears. She stumbles as another spasm takes her, and I rush to her side. We are both sticky with blood as I prop her up to pant through the contraction. I breathe along with her, trying to still my own heart. I’m in deep waters, way over my head. I have no idea what to do next, except to keep moving, so that’s what we do—out the front door, through the gardens and the rusty gate, and down the road toward the docks.
    We have just reached the closed-up market stalls when Isadora’s knees buckle. “This is it,” she gasps between breaths. “I can’t go on.”
    I panic, turning in a circle, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Why did I send Miria away for help?
    Isadora grips my hand, her tiny fingers squeezing so hard, I think she will break my bones. They are slick with her father’s blood. “Just get me to someplace where I can lie down,” she gasps again.
    I use the handle of my dagger to break the latch on one of the stall doors, and I help her inside.
    The ground is hard-packed, with pebbles here and there. At least it’s out of the wind and ocean spray. I pull the queen’s quilt from my pack. I fold it in half once, then spread it out and support Isadora as she lowers herself gingerly on top of it.
    Her labored breaths suck at the linen wrapping her face. “Here, let me help you,” I say, reaching for her face.
    But she screams at me. “No!”
    The contractions are coming fast and hard now, and I have no idea what to tell her, but she seems to know what to do, so I sit and hold her hand and say over and over that things will be all right.
    She continues to have trouble breathing