The holy city of Grendel was impressive—startling, really—with its many high towers. Forsyth could see them from his bedroom window at home on any clear day, but up close, they were even more awe-inspiring. They were very ancient structures—no one knew how to build anything that high nowadays.
The coach rounded the top of the hill, and they began their descent into the city. Forsyth looked out at the buildings between the narrow slats of the window.
“You can see the Great Temple from here,” said his companion. Forsyth obediently moved his eyes to the left.
“The damn thing’s too…” Berkens stopped himself. “I mean, this humble servant of Mauser has always found it too ostentatious.”
All of a sudden, the architecture seemed much less interesting than Berkens himself. Forsyth felt the corners of his mouth turn up involuntarily. “You seem rather open-minded for a priest of Mauser.”
Berkens looked out of the window, speaking casually. “Please feel free to be frank and call me too worldly, Highness.” He turned to the prince and grinned. “I know better than anybody that I’m not cut out for the priesthood.”
He laughed, and it was a clear and healthy sound. Forsyth allowed himself a tiny smile.
As his eyes wandered out the window again, he gasped. “Stop the coach,” he said softly.
Berkens followed his gaze and ordered the coachman to stop.
Two young children and an old man were stopped by the side of the road. They had obviously been walking some distance, carrying their belongings with them. The old man knelt on the ground, clutching his heart, while the children, a girl and a boy, bent over him anxiously.
Forsyth slipped from the coach and hurried to them. “Is something the matter?” he asked anxiously.
“Yes…” said the old man, looking up. “I was walking, and my chest suddenly began to…” He faltered.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Forsyth. The man really looked as if he were in pain. “Is this where it hurts?” he asked, gently touching a spot on the man’s chest with his right hand while his left arm went behind the man’s back for support.
Berkens walked over to them and also knelt. “Here, mister. Drink this. You’ll feel better soon.” He held out a cup. Forsyth hadn’t known Berkens was a physician, but he supposed that priests had to learn something during all that time they spent in training.
“Thank you so much, Father,” said the old man, taking the cup and drinking.
“Are you traveling with these children?” asked Forsyth politely. He felt awkward, seeing them stand there, unacknowledged.
“Yes. My son and his wife died in that huge tidal wave a while ago. We have no other relatives to turn to, so I thought of throwing ourselves upon Lord Mauser’s mercy. So we came to Grendel.”
Forsyth looked at the children, who stared back at him with dull and fearful expressions.
“Huge tidal wave?” he asked. He desperately hoped that the old man wasn’t talking about the one that had just washed over Sauer—the one that he should have stopped… But what other tidal wave could there have possibly been?
It was Berkens who answered. “He must mean the one triggered by Ginungagap. They say that the wave killed over a hundred people.”
Forsyth was shocked. He hadn’t heard any such statistic. The Cardinal had made the death count out to be very low. The prince kept his arm around the old man, comfortingly, and blinked hard to keep from crying with frustration.
“Prince Forsyth?” Berkens looked concerned.
Forsyth noticed the improper use of his name, but it seemed irrelevant. There were far more important things to be upset about—like injustice and his helplessness to prevent it. He could feel himself shaking with rage at his impotence. “It is always the helpless commoners who suffer,” he said in a very low voice.
It was too much. He bowed his head, sobbing in earnest now. “I’m sorry… Please forgive me…”
The old man looked at Berkens, confused. Forsyth supposed that he had no idea of what his prince looked like, and hadn’t recognized him. (Well, no wonder, considering that he wasn’t allowed to go anywhere.) He probably seemed like the spoiled little kid of some nobleman, sent to safety because his parents coddled him. He sighed—it was basically the truth. He really ought to be in Sauer, doing what he could to help.
He rubbed the tears out of his eyes. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
Berkens helped the old man to his feet.
“We can give you a lift to the city,” said Forsyth. There wasn’t really room for all five of them, but Forsyth could ride—his horse was tethered to the coach already; all he’d have to do was saddle her.
“No… That’s all right,” said the old man. “We’ve imposed upon you enough already.”
“Are you sure?” asked Forsyth, ignoring the warning look from Berkens. Such an old man could hardly be a threat.
“Yes, thank you,” the man answered. “We don’t mind walking.”
Berkens fussed around the carriage and the horses for a while, until they could see the old man and the children well on their way, and Forsyth was grateful for the attention to his unspoken wishes. The old man was having an easier time walking and seemed to feel much better.
“What was it that you gave him?” asked the prince.
“Just something to ease the pain. It’ll start hurting again soon. But by then, they should have reached the city—it’s not too far from here. Although it’s getting dark now; we’ll be lucky to arrive before nightfall.”
“I’m glad they won’t have to go much farther. When they reach the temple, the priests will be able to help them.”
Berkens did not answer, just raised a skeptical eyebrow. “We’d better be going now, Your Highness.”
“It’s okay if you call me Forsyth.” Berkens seemed like a decent enough person.
The prince had one foot on the steps of the coach when they heard the sound. Whirling around, they looked back toward Sauer, where the explosion had come from.
Dust and debris filled the sky, making the city indistinct, but high above, in the sky, floated the lone figure of a giant. From his eye or maybe his mouth came a beam of light; when the light fell on a building, it burst into bits.
It was unlike anything Forsyth had even imagined. How could something so powerful exist?
“The capital!” cried Forsyth, immediately thinking of the books, the buildings, and the people that were precious to him. His mother and sister were there. Chris was there.
Crashes boomed across the valleys to echo in the city streets. He knew that by morning, the winds would have carried to Grendel the dust cloud, as well.
Forsyth threw the saddle on his mare before Berkens realized what he was doing. But as he tightened the stirrups, the priest grabbed his shoulders and tried to pull him away. “Prince Forsyth!”
“Let me go!” shouted the prince angrily. “If I don’t go back, the people of the capital will—“
“What will you do there?!” roared Berkens, just as stubbornly. “If you die, who’s going to rebuild the capital?!”
Forsyth froze, staring at his horse. Berkens’s firm hands on his shoulders felt heavy and calming, but still… The thought of the terror that must have been felt at that moment in Sauer struck him deep. It was almost as if the thought itself were causing real pain.
“Who knows what’s going on there right now?” Berkens continued. “If we were there, it’s as likely we’d be dead as not.”
“You expect me to be happy that I’ve escaped, when everyone else is running for his life?” asked Forsyth bitterly. “I don’t think that—“
“I expect you to wait until you’re able to do something about it. Do you honestly think you can take on that… that… that thing in the sky?”
“What is it?” the prince asked.
“I don’t know,” said Berkens. “But I’ll bet anything you like that it’s related to this fiasco with the Scrapped Princess.”
“But…” Forsyth was at a loss. “It’s not supposed to happen yet. She’s not supposed to be dangerous yet. It’s not our birthday for another three days.”
“Oh, that’s not the little lady,” said Berkens. “She’s tinier than that.”
Forsyth jerked his head up, surprised. Was he the only person in the world that hadn’t made her acquaintance?
“I just meant,” said Berkens, “that there are some pretty powerful forces that want to get a hold of her—and they’re getting more desperate, the more time goes by.”
“Ah…” Forsyth was too frustrated for anything more than noncommittal responses. “I see.”
“Let’s get going,” said Berkens. “At least for now, Grendel seems safe.”
I’m not a child, Forsyth wanted to say. I don’t need to be kept safe.
Instead, he tried halfheartedly to smile. All the way down into the city, they sat in weary silence. Where had the world gone wrong? People were going to suffer, and there was nothing to be done about it. The day after tomorrow, thousands of people might die. Hundreds were dying now. And the only way to stop it was for an innocent person to die. No, it was worse, because it wasn’t just any innocent person—it was his twin sister. Even if they’d never met, he felt a certain responsibility toward her.
Was it more wrong to deliberately kill one innocent person, or do allow thousands of innocents to suffer—to do a small bit of evil intentionally, or to stand back and permit a great amount of evil to occur?
Why were both choices wrong? There had to be a right choice. There had to be.
The next day’s sun was bright, but the smoke and the lights in the heavens gave the sky an odd color. He stood wide-eyed on the balcony, watching the battle in the air. Another fighter had joined the first. They were large—larger than most of the buildings he'd seen—and they were suspended in the air, blocking out the sunlight as it streamed down over the city of Grendel.
“What in the world are those things?” he wondered aloud.
“Surely a wise man like Your Highness already knows the answer,” said a voice from behind him.
The prince half-turned, keeping his hands on the railing. He wasn't inexperienced enough not to recognize the blatant flattery—he didn’t consider himself particularly wise, and he was too young for most people to think of him as a man, per se. However, as usual, he let it go by without comment. “Cardinal Hogue...”
“Within those lights,” said the Cardinal, “are the absolute beings whom the Church of Mauser calls angels, the messengers of God.”
Forsyth turned back toward the battle in awe. He hadn't imagined angels as being so... well... destructive. They were beautiful, yes—like big butterflies with fascinating, glowing eyes—but they were frightening, too.
“There is no longer any point in hiding it from you,” continued the man behind him, “for they have appeared openly before humanity.”
For a moment, Forsyth was irritated. Did the Cardinal think he was a child? A child who had to be protected by hiding information?
He blocked the feeling from gaining hold and renewed his customary expression of concerned ingenuousness.
“Those are the messengers of God?” he asked, staring at the lights. He watched as buildings blew into pieces and imagined the screams that accompanied the explosions. It was terrifying. Forsyth knew that fear could be read in his stance and his expressions, but it wasn’t worth trying to hide it—something so deeply engrained in his character was impossible to conceal.
“If only we ourselves had killed the Scrapped Princess sooner...” The Cardinal let his voice trail off.
Forsyth turned back to face him. He kept his voice steady, although he wanted to snap at the man. Or maybe start to cry. He didn’t know which. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean,” said the Cardinal, “that if it were not for Your Highness's sister, the Scrapped Princess, this tragedy would not have happened.”
“Oh,” said Forsyth blankly.
It suddenly occurred to him that maybe the reason everyone treated him as if he were a child was that he so often pretended to be oblivious. He couldn’t think of a better way to avoid conflict; acting as though he didn’t realize he was being offended or taken advantage generally worked best… but…
He really was sick of being thought stupid and naïve.
“I’m tired,” he said softly. “Please… I’d like to be left alone.”
The Cardinal bowed and left, and Forsyth remained on the balcony. It was the best part of this place, since there wasn't much furniture, and the room he had been given was dark and vaguely forbidding. He had been told that wasn't allowed out, because it was so dangerous, and everyone was so busy—he didn't want to ask anyone to stop and bring him updates, although he was constantly wondering. The balcony was a window to what was going on. He could see the destruction for himself.
The wind was blowing, ruffling his hair, which suddenly, inexplicably, pleased him—and then of course he felt guilty about enjoying anything. The breeze here was cool and playful, unlike the air that he knew must be in the valley, stifling and heavy. He could see for a long way from the tower, but the land beneath him, especially that which sloped downward to the coast, was covered by a haze of smoke and debris. It was hard to see the capital city, and the prince found himself hungry for news.
“Prince Forsyth, I've brought your meal.” It was Berkens.
He turned, keeping one hand on the balcony rail, intending to return his gaze to the scene of devastation. “Oh,” he said, uninterested in the food. “Thank you. How are things in the capital?”
Berkens, still inside the prince’s room, set the tray down on the small desk that stood beneath the mirror. The glow of a single candle flickered over it, and Forsyth himself bizarrely intrigued by the play of light.
“I've heard that reconstruction work has started,” said Berkens, and the prince sighed with relief. No one would be rebuilding unless the worst of the fighting was over. “They're repairing the castle, too,” continued the priest, “but... well... His Majesty is still missing.”
Forsyth looked away and down, a little sadly. “Is that so.” He supposed that Berkens meant that his father was dead.
He wondered if there’d be a power struggle regarding the rights of succession. He hoped not—he felt much too exhausted and distracted to concentrate on something like that. It was surreal, but he didn't feel angry or upset as much as sad and empty. How could it be that it was so easy to cry when strangers suffered, and then, when he felt his own pain, he just went hollow and lonely and blank? It was an aching loneliness, when what he wanted was screaming and raging and sobbing, out of control.
“And my sister?” he asked, closing his eyes. “The Scrapped Princess?”
Berkens sounded regretful. “Apparently, they're pursuing her.”
“I see...” The prince opened his eyes, the ache shining out of them, despite his efforts. “So, she's still alive.”
Which meant that there would be even more destruction.
“How did she get out of the palace?” he asked, thinking. “Even if she’d gotten out of the dungeon, the entire armed forces should have been…”
Berkens shrugged. “According to the Cardinal’s intelligence report, she and her guardian, Shannon Casull, escaped through the waterways that run under the palace. Those are supposed to be secure, so she must have had inside help. There weren’t any details other than that.”
Forsyth was surprised. “The waterways? But nobody has access to those except the Special Forces, and… Oh. Hmm…” He paused, an idea forming. “And my mother?”
Berkens shook his head. “I haven’t heard anything.”
The prince turned to face the ruined city. “Black butterflies of disaster extinguished the glory of the sun,” he recited softly. “And the horizon seems a black book smeared with ink every evening.”
The poem came to him now without his expecting it, summoned by the dark shapes that hovered in the sky and brought death.
“I’m sorry—I didn’t hear what you said.” Berkens apparently hadn’t left.
Forsyth sighed, running his left hand absently over the cold stone of the railing. “It’s a poem. I read it somewhere, and the imagery was so wonderfully frightening that I memorized it. It’s nothing—you may leave, if you like.”
“Call me if you need anything.”
The door clicked shut, and then there were only city sounds and deep, distant reverberations.
“It leaves from occult censers—a perfume that disturbs memory,” the prince whispered. “Black butterflies of disaster extinguished the glory of the sun. The monsters with sticky suckers seek blood to drink, and from the sky, in black dust, descend on our despair.”
How did the poet know? How had he foreseen, so long ago, what would happen? The scent of death, the choking dust, the terror, the winged avengers… Perhaps it was foreordained. Now he could only wait until they descended and entered his heart.
“Black butterflies of disaster…”
It was night, finally, and nothing could be seen from the balcony. He sat alone at his desk, propping up his head with his left hand, right arm lying motionless on the desk. He'd been writing letters: even during a time like this—especially during a time like this—there was work to be done. He wrote to his mother, too; she hadn't replied to his last letter, but perhaps she didn't have access to paper wherever she was being held.
It had been a very long time since he’d seen her.
When he was young, he was allowed to see her on holidays and on other rare occasions at the whim of his father. They'd corresponded; there was a code that they'd developed in order to express the affection that they were embarrassed to include in letters that they knew would be read and heavily edited by the military. When Forsyth was about ten, he'd figured out that the code was simple enough to be understood by the least-talented code breaker: his mother had been humoring him—but he continued to use it.
He might never see her again—the day after tomorrow was supposed to be the end of the world. He wrote quickly, hoping his message could be taken to her the very next day. It had been a long time since he’d told her that he loved her.
After he finished writing, he stared at his face in the mirror, watching the light from the little lamp play over his pale, delicate features. He was almost as beautiful as his mother was, but his mother would have liked a daughter to take after her instead. Tilting his head thoughtfully, he imagined himself as a girl—not much difference. What could his twin sister be like? They were supposed to look similar, but perhaps the resemblance was not as great as it was in his imagination.
He didn't know why he suddenly looked up. Perhaps, unconsciously, he had heard a sound. Starting, he gasped. “Chris?”
How long had he been there? Forsyth was going to have to learn to be more observant if he didn’t want to become the target of an assassin. He thought he might be blushing.
Chris was standing in the doorway that led to the balcony, watching him. He hovered on the edge of the lamplight, the darkness surrounding him as irrelevant as the background of a portrait. When the prince spoke, he looked away quickly. “Forgive me for startling you, Prince Forsyth.”
“That's all right,” said Forsyth happily. Coming to himself, he glanced down, feeling shy.
You shouldn’t be here, he wanted to say. The penalty for treason was death, and the prince ought, by all accounts, to be summoning the guards. But…
Anyway, Chris mustn’t be caught here. Therefore, as much as Forsyth enjoyed the comfort of pleasantries, empty words were a dangerous waste of time. “How is my sister?” he asked abruptly.
He was staring at the desk, but he saw out of the corner of his eye when Chris looked up, surprised. Forsyth had guessed correctly, but that wasn't a surprise. Not many people had access to the waterway system; besides, Baroness Bairach and her supporters had always been suspected of secretly sympathizing with the queen's desire to protect the princess.
“It was your team, wasn't it?” A little nervous about looking at his friend, Forsyth lifted his eyes to his own reflection instead. “The ones they say smuggled the Scrapped Princess out of the castle.”
“I can't bring myself to believe that she will destroy the world,” said Chris somewhat uncomfortably. It wasn't an answer to the question that had been asked, but to the question that hadn't.
“I see...” said the prince. The words were few, but carefully chosen, and Forsyth knew that they spoke the truth as Chris saw it.
Chris was wrong, though. Preventing widespread suffering was the most important thing at this point, and if Chris chose to support the Scrapped Princess, then he and Forsyth were enemies. By the day after tomorrow, either the Scrapped Princess would be dead—and Peters-Stahl would have had Chris executed—or the world would have ended.
Chris could be wrong.
The realization hit Forsyth like a physical blow to the chest. Was there no one in the world who could be depended upon? For the first time he understood what it meant when people said nobody’s perfect, and it scared him. If everybody makes mistakes, then… whom should he strive to emulate?
Gathering his courage, he turned his face toward Chris. “So you've come all this way to say goodbye.”
Chris lowered his head and closed his eyes. “Take care, Prince Forsyth.”
Forsyth looked directly at him and gave him a bittersweet smile. Then he was gone.
The prince’s shoulders rose and fell as he breathed, biting his lip sharply to keep himself from crying. He felt oddly happy and sad at the same time. He was glad that Chris had been strong enough to choose his own way of doing things.
If only he could be as strong.
Forsyth lifted his face, looking at his tear-filled eyes in the mirror. He would be as strong. If the world were really ending, then he could do whatever he chose, and there wasn’t a thing that Cardinal Hogue, or Peters-Stahl, or his father could do about it.
There was snow. It was knee-deep, and he was having a hard time pushing his legs through it.
He had been walking for as long as he could remember. His footprints stretched back past the horizon, and before him was nothing but gray and white, swirling aimlessly. It wasn’t snowing now; the flakes that leapt into his eyes were thrown there by the same bitter wind that bit his nose and fingertips.
His hands were cold, and he looked down at them. He wasn’t wearing mittens, and the skin on his knuckles had cracked and turned white. It itched, and he scratched at it, watching passively as little bits of skin started to flake off.
It was difficult to see at all in the invariable twilight. No matter how long he stood, no matter how far he walked, the light never changed. He stood still when the feeling of pointlessness became overpowering. He walked again when it hurt his feet too much to stand numbly in the snow. He thought he might be lost, but then he realized that he didn’t have a goal in mind, anyway.
He was very tired. He knew that he had been wishing for a long time—for at least since he had begun walking, whenever that was—to rest. Only, there was nowhere to rest; there was just snow, and his legs wouldn’t bend, so he couldn’t sit down where he was. No matter how he tried to make his body do what it was supposed to do, it wouldn’t, and he realized that he was dreaming. That made much more sense, anyway; there wasn’t supposed to be snow in summer.
After what seemed like weeks and weeks, although it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, considering that this was a dream, he saw a small light very far away. He wanted to hurry toward it, but found that expending more energy just made him more tired and didn’t get him there any faster.
When he finally got close enough to see the building properly, he realized that it was an inn. Warm gold glowed out of the frost-covered windows, and the walls stood up straight and strong against the powerful bursts of wind that were driving bits of ice into his cheekbones.
Its wide yard was surrounded by a low wooden fence, barely distinguishable beneath the heavy, white snow that buried it. Mysterious objects stuck up from the ground, creating oddly shaped bumps in the snow. Nothing moved among them; even in the windows, no movement could be seen.
It wasn’t until he passed through the gate that he discovered the true nature of those odd shapes.
They were all grave markers.
It wasn’t frightening as much as it was peaceful. More than anything, he wanted to go into the inn, into the warmth and the rest and the quiet stillness. Raising his half-frozen fist, he knocked on the door.
After a pause, the door opened. Light poured out into the yard. Someone was there, standing silently. He couldn’t see the face, probably because it was a dream, but the person seemed intrinsically familiar.
“May I come in?” he asked politely.
“Why?” The voice belonged to a woman, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he ought to know her.
“It’s cold,” he said.
He knew somehow that she raised an eyebrow at him. He could see her hair now; it was the same color as his own, and it fell in ringlets over her shoulders.
“Why didn’t you wear mittens?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “May I come in?”
“Why do you want to come in?”
He blinked. Dreams were certainly strange.
“This is the only place around here. There’s nowhere else to go.”
“But why do you think that you’re supposed to go somewhere?”
“Because… It’s very unpleasant to wander around purposelessly.” He paused. “I can pay.”
She smiled cynically. “What will you pay me with?”
He looked down at himself and realized that he carried nothing. He didn’t feel naked, but he didn’t seem to be wearing any clothing, either. There was nothing to give.
“I can work for you, if you like,” he said doubtfully.
“What makes you think I need you?” she asked, not exactly unkindly.
Suddenly he realized why she looked so familiar. “Are you my mother?” he asked.
The woman smiled. “No. Guess again.”
He stood and looked at her for a moment, feeling the biting bits of ice whip into his back.
“I’m very tired,” he said. “I want to rest. Please let me in.”
“It isn’t nighttime yet,” she answered. “Come back when it’s night.”
“But it’s always twilight here! It’ll never be night!” he protested, losing his patience. He felt cold tears running over his frozen cheeks.
She smiled mysteriously and pulled the door shut.
“Wait!” he said, thrusting an arm between the door and its frame, hoping desperately that she’d have the heart not to slam the door shut anyway.
She paused. “What do you want?”
“I want to come in. I want to sleep.”
“I told you. Come back when it’s the proper time for sleeping.”
“No!” He threw himself forward, and he was back in his room at the palace; glass shattered around him as he fell through the window. The air was cold and fresh, and he was falling. He flung his limbs about, trying to grab hold of something, but there was nothing except the freezing wind and the rapidly approaching ground.
And then he was sitting up in the darkness, still in the temple, the sheets in a haphazard puddle around his body. From far away, he could hear the rolling, rumbling sounds of destruction. He knew that every sound meant the deaths of tens or maybe even hundreds of his people… people like the old man he’d helped on the road.
He closed his eyes and found that it didn’t make a difference: he could still hear.
The prince's steps echoed through the temple as he walked down the great hall.
Hogue was waiting for him. He greeted Forsyth with a deep bow. “Did you sleep well last night, Prince Forsyth?”
The prince was surprised by the question and stopped a good distance away from the Cardinal. The man was a flatterer, and not one with whom Forsyth particularly wished to be close—even physically. “Yes,” he said, shortly but politely. It wasn’t the truth, but Forsyth didn’t think his sleeping habits were an appropriate subject to discuss with people he did not consider intimate friends.
“That is good,” said Cardinal Hogue. “I was worried that the cries of the injured might have kept you awake.”
“The injured?” Forsyth gasped. He hadn't thought that there had been any fighting in the immediate area.
Wait… The Cardinal was trying to manipulate him.
Hogue shaped his features into a grim expression. “There has been a steady stream of people who were injured in the calamity at the capital, so we have been using part of the temple as a makeshift hospital.”
The prince's heart ached. Just because the Cardinal was a toady didn’t mean his words were false.
“If it is not too much trouble,” continued Hogue, “perhaps Your Highness might go visit them.”
It was a device to gain Forsyth's sympathy and turn him against the Scrapped Princess. Nonetheless, he could not—and did not wish to—refuse to visit the suffering. He set his jaw and assented.
Cardinal Hogue led the way through the temple, grinning smugly. Forsyth did not speak to him: he was trying to memorize the layout of the building, just in case. The Cardinal could not be trusted.
The door was heavy, but Forsyth pushed it open confidently, expecting and getting no help from his companion. It swung open to reveal hundreds of sticky, ugly bodies, massed up on the stone floor in rotting, sweet-smelling heaps. The prince started and recoiled.
The Cardinal spoke from behind him. “They come here because they have no money for medical treatment. Those who have survived this long will heal eventually. However...”
Forsyth finished the statement with trembling lips. “There are a great many who have lost their lives.”
He ran his eyes over the crowd, looking for the old man he had met on the road. It was impossible to find anyone in particular, however—the room was packed with messy, ugly, smelly bodies that moved among each other with sticky, sliding motions, like an ocean of skinless serpents with superfluous limbs.
Hogue was speaking in his ear now, saying words that the prince had already spoken to himself in his heart. “As long as the Scrapped Princess remains in this world, there will be more and more who will be injured by God's wrath.”
Tears threatened to pour from his eyes, and he was agonizingly aware of the pain written on his brow. His people were lying close to death at his feet.
“Prince Forsyth...” The Cardinal’s voice seemed to be farther behind him now. “Please act as an emissary. Act as God's messenger in order to save your people.”
Forsyth, still standing in the doorway, turned around to face him. So that was the plan—he would beg the Scrapped Princess for an audience and lure her to an appointed place. There, the military would be waiting to destroy her—and probably him at the same time.
Which would leave Peters-Stahl and Cardinal Hogue to choose one of their puppets for the throne.
The prince gasped as he saw just how deceitful this man truly was. His eyes trembled and glistened with the tears he held back: how dare the Cardinal use these suffering people in his plot?
The prince didn’t want to be a pawn, but the only thing that he could do to help his people was to throw in his lot with sycophants and traitors. He lifted his chin, determined now to make the best of it. Just because his plans happened to go along with the Cardinal’s didn’t mean that he was a puppet—he was strong, too strong to allow little things like personal dislike to get in the way of justice.
“I’ll talk to her,” he said quietly. “Please send someone to my quarters while I prepare a message to send to her camp. I’ll ask to meet with her this evening.”
There was something he could do. After all, no matter how the army attacked, it was possible that the Scrapped Princess—especially if she had Chris and the Obstinate Arrows on her side—could escape the long-range weapons. Forsyth wouldn’t allow that to happen.