Dragon's Dusk (To Kill a King Book 2) by Sam Burns & W.M. Fawkes

Author:Sam Burns & W.M. Fawkes [Burns, Sam & Fawkes, W.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flickerfox Books, LLC
Published: 2023-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

Kostya

When Dima had killed our father, I had been heartbroken, but I’d understood. Our father had conspired to kill the king, and so his fate had been of his own choosing.

Kirian?

Kirian was a complete innocent. He had hurt Dasha, it was true, by hurting Adorjan, but it had been nothing more than a tragic accident. There had been no malicious intent, no murder plot, and if he’d felt safe, it never would have happened. It wasn’t Dasha’s fault, or Adorjan’s, or Kirian’s.

I shoved myself between the king’s knife and Kirian, hand on the hilt of my own, but I couldn’t bring myself to draw it. I couldn’t stab my own king. My own cousin. However mad he might be, it was through no fault of his own.

Like Kirian when he’d blinded Adorjan, he was frightened and mad with it. It was just that Kirian’s madness had only lasted until he’d heard Adorjan’s pained screech, and Dima’s . . . had lasted a decade.

Still, I could not kill him for it.

I could and would put myself between Kirian and danger, though.

Except that Kirian was trying to do the same, squirm his way between me and the knife, putting his soft abused flesh between me and the king. Between me and danger.

Just like he always did, Kirian wanted to protect me in any way he could.

I pulled him back as Dima came at us, but the throne room was finite, and eventually our backs would find the wall, and someone would have to do . . . something. Something other than retreat.

Dima’s teeth were bared in a feral snarl, and he didn’t even seem to see his bodyguard, Arkadii, as he tried to step between us.

“My king, I don’t think this is what you actually want to—”

“Get out of my way. I’ll gut the monster who tried to kill my sister.”

“My king, he didn’t—”

Without even glancing at him, Dima gave Arkadii a shove, almost putting him off-balance. Well of course it put him off balance, because Arkadii wasn’t supposed to protect people from the king, but the opposite.

“Do you have a defense for yourself, monster? For trying to kill my sister?” Dima demanded, glaring past me like he no longer saw me.

I couldn’t even answer him with a denial, so insistent was Kirian to put himself between us. All my attention was taken up by trying to stop him from squirming in front of me, and not hurt his injuries at the same time. Kirian, for his part, seemed to have forgotten that he was hurt in his quest to protect me.

“Not Kostya,” Kirian insisted, almost breathless at the exertion of trying to protect me. “Not hurt Kostya.”

Dima snarled and lunged forward, knife flashing, when something blue smothered my whole field of vision.

A dress.

Dasha.

Oh no.

I leapt forward, trying to snatch her out of the way of Dima’s knife, at the same time as Kirian broke free and stepped in front of the king, and Dima leapt back, astonishment and horror on his face.

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