Free Dark Haven by Gail Z. Martin Page A

head had been slammed against the rock wall of the castle. The guards bowed low in greeting to Tris.
    “My prince…your majesty,” Ifan corrected himself. “It’s good to see you again.”
    “I’m sorry to disturb you,” Tris said. “But at long last, it’s time for justice to be served. Are the men who killed you and who killed Queen Serae and Kait in this room?”
    Each of the ghosts in turn scanned the crowd, which had grown silent. The ghosts pointed to Cerys and Meurig. “These are the men,” Ifan said. “They betrayed us and used our trust in them to get close enough to kill us. When we were gone and too freshly dead to intervene as spirits, they entered the Queen’s chambers.”
    “That man,” Nye said, pointing to Cerys, “drew his sword on the queen. We heard her scream, and she fell. Princess Kait ran into the room when she heard the queen cry out. She fought like a 63

    wild thing, but Cerys grabbed the princess and pinned her while Meurig stabbed her. We saw, my king, but we could do noththing”
    Tris swallowed hard. The ghosts’ testimony matched the scene he, Carroway, and Soterius found on the night of the coup. Hearing it described brought him back to that moment, and the grief he thought had been set aside washed over him once more, fresh and raw.
    “There was a third man with you that night,”
    Tris said. “Kait managed to kill him with her dagger. He also would testify.”
    Tris’s head pounded as he called for the last ghost. Sister Taru had warned him that even with a lifetime of training, strong magic carried a physical price. It was, she said, what kept mages from believing themselves to be gods. His head hurt so much that he could barely see. Another spirit in the uniform of the king’s guard materialized. This spirit’s death wound showed the dagger in his chest Kait had thrown. “We found your body on the night of the coup in the room with mother and Kait,” Tris said. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded exhausted. “That night, Kait’s ghost told me that she had killed you in self defense. Identify for the court the men who were with you that night.”
    The ghost looked at Tris in fear, and quickly turned toward Cerys and Meurig. “Those are the men,” he said, pointing at the two disgraced guards. “Cerys received his orders from Prince Jared to go to the family quarters. We were to kill everyone—even you,” he said with a nervous glance in Tris’s direction. “Their guards fell before they knew what hit them. We entered the room, and it’s just like the ghosts told you, only the princess had a knife in her skirts, and she pegged me in the chest when she heard the queen scream.”
    “We was just following orders,” Cerys said sullenly. “Not for us to judge what to follow and what not to follow. Hang us if we did that, and hang us if we don’t.”
    64

    Tris felt all of the raw emotions of the day wash over him. Exhaustion, grief, and anger swept through him. On the Plains of Spirit, he could see the thin blue life threads of the two defiant guards. Sweet Mother and Childe, I want revenge! Tris thought. It would be so easy to focus his power on those life threads, to snuff out their glow. Even now, neither man showed remorse.
    Goddess help me. It would be so easy. Mother and Kait would be avenged. It’s what I wanted more than life itself that night, to kill the men responsible with my own hands.
    In his memory, he saw a tall green‐eyed man. Lemuel, his grandfather, the Summoner whose body was taken hostage by the Obsidian King. I foolishly thought I could control power that I should never have sought, Tris remembered Lemuel saying. Taking that power opened Lemuel’s soul to be possessed by the Obsidian King.
    No one would fault me for killing them, Tris argued with himself. I have the right. But what of the Scirranish? What of their vengeance? Sweet Chenne, how much blood will there be if everyone who lost family to Jared’s men takes their own