The Decree
1675 Words
We did not escape the palace. We walked out of it.
That was the difference, and the guards felt it. They parted because Kira walked in front with her hand on her sword hilt, because Mara walked behind with her gray robe and her face that said I sign the orders here, and because Damon walked in the middle holding my hand like a child holds a mother's hand in a market.
He did not know my name. He did not know he was king. He kept looking at the banners on the walls, at the wolf under the crown, with a faint frown like he had seen the symbol in a dream and could not place where.
"Where are we going?" he asked me for the third time since the cell.
"Out," I said.
"Why?"
"Because they will kill you if we stay."
He nodded, serious, trusting. "Alright."
That hurt more than if he had fought me. A king should argue. A man who loves you should demand a plan. This man just believed me because I was the only warm thing in his world.
Kira pushed open the side postern near the kitchens, the one the servants used to take slops to the pigs. The smell of old grease and cold ash hit us. The guard there started to challenge us, saw Mara, and stepped aside without a word.
Outside, the air was cold and smelled like rain and turned earth. The dead orchard waited beyond the wall, black trees against a gray dawn, branches like bones reaching.
We had made it twenty steps into the mud when the bell rang. Not the ward bell. The king's bell. Three slow tolls that shook the stone under our feet.
Mara stopped walking. "They know he is gone."
Kira swore under her breath. "Move. Now."
Damon stopped too. He looked up at the bell tower, head tilted like a dog hearing a whistle. Something flickered in his eyes. Not gold. Not ice. Recognition.
"I know that sound," he said quietly.
My heart jumped so hard it hurt. "What does it mean?"
"It means they are coming for her."
He looked right at me. He knew me. For one breath, he knew me.
Then his face blanked again, smooth as water. "Who are you?" he asked the air, polite and lost.
The cost was still being paid in real time. Every time his mind reached for me, something else tore away to make room.
We ran.
The orchard swallowed us whole. Dead branches clawed at our cloaks. The ground was soft with rot. Behind us, dogs barked. War dogs, big as ponies, trained to pull down wolves and men alike.
Kira shoved us behind a fallen trunk slick with moss. "They will track his scent. He smells like the throne room."
Mara pulled a small glass vial from her sleeve and smashed it on the ground. Bitter green smoke billowed up. It burned my nose and eyes.
"That will buy us five minutes," she said. "No more."
Damon coughed and leaned into my side, shivering. "I do not like this place," he whispered, like a boy at a funeral.
"I know," I whispered back. "I will get you out."
"You keep saying that," he said, frowning up at me. "Have you said it before?"
"Every day for ten years," I said before I could stop myself. "In my head."
He stared at me, trying to place the words, trying to find the memory that would make them true. Then he gave up and rested his head on my shoulder, trusting the feeling even if he did not have the reason.
Kira watched us, her face unreadable. "We cannot keep him like this. He is a liability. He will get us killed."
"He is the reason we are alive," I snapped.
"He is a man who does not know his own name," she snapped back. "You want to save him. I want to keep you alive. Those are not the same mission anymore, Elira."
The way she said my name, like a commander, told me how serious she was. For the first time since she pulled me from a fighting pit, Kira and I wanted opposite things.
Mara watched us fight like a woman watching dogs over a bone. "Children. Save it. They are here."
The dogs burst through the trees, three of them, black, muzzles bound in iron. Behind them, six guards in Council white, spears low.
The lead guard raised a hand. "By order of the Council, surrender the king and the girl."
Mara stepped forward. "By whose seal?"
The guard hesitated. "Luna Thorne."
Mara smiled, cold and thin. "Luna Thorne has been dead for two years. Try again."
The guard did not try again. He signaled the dogs.
They lunged.
Kira moved first, low and fast, hamstringing the first dog before it could jump. It yelped and went down. The second hit her shield and knocked her back two steps.
I had no weapon except the silver needle in my palm. I stabbed it into the third dog's nose as it leapt for Damon's throat. It howled, high and almost human, and veered away, smoke pouring from its nostrils.
A guard's spear caught Damon in the side, shallow but bloody. Damon looked down at the wound, surprised, then angry in a way that did not belong to the lost man I had been holding.
"That is mine," he said, and gold flooded his eyes.
Phase Two was awake.
He grabbed the spear shaft with his bare hand and pulled. The guard stumbled forward. Damon hit him once, open palm to the chest. The guard flew back ten feet and hit a tree hard enough to crack bark.
The other guards froze.
Damon turned, gold eyes finding me. He smiled, and it was not Damon.
"Hello, Lira," it said, using his mouth like a stolen coat.
Kira shouted, "Elira, down!"
I dropped. Kira's sword whistled over my head and took the second dog in the throat.
Damon tilted his head. "He is almost gone, little wolf. Soon there will be only me."
"Get out of him," I said, my voice shaking.
It laughed once. "He invited me."
Damon's hand shot up to his own throat, clawing. Ice fought gold. He choked out one word, raw and clear.
"Run."
It was him. For one second, him.
I grabbed his hand. "Come with me."
He looked at me, desperate. "I cannot. It will follow."
I pulled the silver needle across my palm, deep and fast. Blood welled, bright red and hot. I pressed my bleeding hand to Damon's cheek, smearing it across his skin.
"There," I said to the thing inside him. "Now you smell me, not him."
The gold eyes widened. It inhaled. "Thank you," it said, and sank down, satisfied.
Damon collapsed to his knees, gasping, eyes ice again but dimmer. The wound in his side bled red, not black. Human blood.
Kira finished the last guard with a pommel strike. Silence fell, except for the dogs whining.
Mara knelt, pressed cloth to his side. "You just marked yourself as bait. It will hunt you now instead of him."
"Good," I said. "Let it."
Damon looked up at me, dazed. "Who are you?" he asked again.
I cupped his face with my bloody hand, leaving a print. "I am the girl you traded your life for. And I am going to make you remember."
He leaned into my touch, even though he did not know why.
Kira stood over us, breathing hard. "We need to move. More will come."
"Where?" Mara asked.
"North," Kira said. "To the Ash Pack. If they see him like this, they will know the king is truly fallen. They might rise."
"They might kill him," Mara said.
"They might," Kira agreed. "But they will not hand him to Phase Two."
We helped Damon up. He leaned heavily on me, his blood soaking my dress. Behind us, the palace bell tolled again, three times. The king is taken.
We had just reached the edge of the orchard when hooves pounded behind us. A single rider in Council black, carrying no weapon, only a scroll case.
He reined in ten feet away, drove a short spear into the ground with a scroll tied to it with red cord.
"By unanimous vote of the Council," he called out, "Damon Thorne is declared unfit to rule. The throne is vacant. All loyal subjects are ordered to surrender the former king immediately. Harboring him is treason, punishable by death."
He turned and rode away, leaving the decree fluttering in the wind.
The world had just changed. Damon was no longer a king on the run. He was an outlaw. We were all traitors now, by law and ink.
Mara read the scroll and laughed once, without humor. "They did not even wait for a body."
Damon tugged my sleeve. "Are we going home?"
"No," I said, my voice thick. "We are going to take it back."
He nodded, trusting completely.
We walked north. He stumbled, caught himself, and whispered to no one, "Lira?"
I turned, fast, hope flaring in my chest before I could stop it.
He looked at me, brow furrowed, polite, distant.
"Were you one of the servants?" he asked. "In the palace? You look familiar."
The hope died in one second, clean as a knife.
Mara walked beside me, her voice low. "Every time he remembers, he loses. Every time he forgets, you lose. How long can you pay that price?"
I did not answer, because I was watching the man who had traded his entire life for mine ask me if I had cleaned his floors.
Kira did not look back at the decree. She looked forward, at the dark road, and for the first time since I met her, she looked afraid.
Not of dying.
Of what it would cost me to keep answering that question, over and over, until there was nothing left of either of us to save.
- Writer
