The guard dropped, but then the other two sprang into motion. Both lunged for Vasili.
With a desperate burst of speed, Niko launched off his back foot, swung the sword, and managed to block the first deadly swing. That one had intended on taking Vasili’s head.
Momentum drove him into the second guard, and they both tumbled to the ground. Niko scrambled on top, wrapped the fingers of his left hand around his neck, and drove his thumb up under his chin. The old, familiar, blood-chilling need to kill tore out all reasonable thought until there was just one driving desire left. His enemy would die.
Vasili’s cry shattered Niko’s blind rage. He tore his fingers free of the gasping guard’s throat and scanned the grass for Vasili.
He lay on his back, the guard looming over him. Vasili could have brought a leg up, could have kneed the guard or kicked his weight-bearing leg out, or scrabbled backward, but he did none of those things. He lay still, frozen. Rapid, shallow breaths sawed out of him. The guard leered, savoring his moment.
Niko rose unnoticed. He pressed the tip of his sword up under the man’s palace armor, against his lower back, over the right kidney.
The guard tensed.
“Toss your sword.”
He tossed the sword aside.
One guard was dead. Another lay gasping in the grass. And now the third was disarmed. Their chances of escape weren’t going to get any better.
Niko slowly circled around to face the guard. He kept his blade aimed at the man’s middle and offered his left hand to Vasili.
The prince didn’t move. Didn’t look. Didn’t see. Wherever he was in his head, it wasn’t here.
“Vasili,” Niko snapped.
He blinked, startled out of his fear, saw Niko’s hand, and grabbed it. Niko hauled him to his feet and backed through the grass, away from the guard, keeping his sword up. “Run.”
Vasili ran, the guard lunged for his sword, and Niko whirled, sprinting after Vasili’s rippling cloak.
Nowhere in the palace was safe. Once again, they had to flee, and fast.
“The stables,” Vasili called back.
Niko chased after him. The stables were a terrible idea. “The first place… they’ll look,” he panted, but Vasili was too damned fast and already strides ahead. Niko dashed into the cobbled stable yard behind Vasili to find the stalls empty. The horses had been set free, saving them from the flames.
Vasili turned on his heel and stalked by Niko, boots striking the cobbles. He flicked his hood back up. “He’ll be in the fields.” He coughed and staggered but righted himself and marched on as though nothing had happened, as though his home wasn’t burning and the ash of his life wasn’t slipping through his fingers.
It took a moment for Niko to realize who “he” was. “Wait.” He grabbed the prince’s arm without thinking and received a scathing glare that scorched as hot as the fire. Niko let go, but the prince’s glare only darkened.
“This is madness,” Niko wheezed, throat as dry as sand. “We could spend hours looking for Adamo. Find another damn horse.”
Vasili’s glare turned murderous.
“The guards want you dead. You have to get off the palace grounds. Take to the road. In the chaos, you’ll go unnoticed.”
“Amir has poisoned everyone against me.” Vasili threw the words at him, as though this were his fault. “Adamo is all I have left.” His voice cracked.
That sudden, lonely confession had Niko choking on words he dared not speak. Words of comfort that did not belong with Vasili. Words of safety and protection that Niko had no right thinking. Whatever the prince was or had been or might have been, that had all ended before anything had begun. Niko owed him nothing. His service to Vasili Caville was over. But the prince clearly needed help, and as much as Niko’s head told him to abandon the bastard, some other part of him couldn’t do it.
He could help him escape Loreen. He could do that. But no more. Vasili’s troubles were not Niko’s fight.
“I have a horse,” Niko said. “I rode him here. He’ll return to the forge. You can take him and leave Loreen.” There wasn’t anywhere in Loreen where Vasili wouldn’t be recognized. His only choice was to flee the city. If it cost Niko a horse to get Vasili out of his life, so be it. “The guards won’t look for you at my forge, not for a few days.”
Bitterness twisted Vasili’s thin smile. “Very well, Nikolas. Take me to your home.”
Chapter 3
Vasili’s hooded cloak hid him among the stream of people fleeing the palace. A passing farmer took pity on them, probably due to Niko’s hacking cough, and offered a ride on his hay cart. The rattling cart made Niko cough harder, earning him another furious scowl from Vasili.
Thankfully, the ride was short. Niko’s cottage and forge took up a corner position along Trenlake’s dirt street, among other recently rebuilt houses. The farmer dropped them outside and headed toward his fields to collect his cows for milking. Red skies behind the forge cottage spoke of dawn approaching. Unlike the red skies behind them, which signaled what would surely be the end of Vasili’s home.
Embers still throbbed in Niko’s cottage fireplace grate. Inside was warm and dark and safe, and he’d never been more grateful to be home than he was in that moment. Assuming Vasili loomed behind him, he grabbed a few pieces of kindling and stoked the fire back to life.
Once the fire was roaring again, Niko glanced to confirm Vasili was still present. He’d been so damned quiet, he might have disappeared. If only he were that simple to be rid of.
Vasili had removed his scorched cloak, draped it over the back of the chair at the table, and reclined in Niko’s favorite armchair. He almost looked to be sleeping. His eye was closed, his chest rising, hands resting on the chair’s arms. The whitening fingertips gave him away. He held onto that chair like it was his lifeline. Vasili didn’t sleep.
In the soft, shifting firelight, all Vasili’s sharp angles had lost their edges. Soot blackened his cheek and chin. He looked like that chair was his last sanctuary. Vasili Caville looked disarmingly vulnerable.
A tickle in Niko’s throat erupted his coughing all over again. He hacked and wheezed and dropped to his ass in front of the fire, leveling each breath until his lungs settled.
Vasili opened his eye and watched him from the armchair. Deep lines set into the corners of his mouth. He stared at the fire like he despised it.
Vasili Caville was furious.
Niko might have cared if his jaw and gut didn’t throb from the guard’s beating and his heart didn’t ache from the fact he’d escaped the bastard seated opposite him for a year, but it hadn’t been long enough. He’d need a whole lifetime to get over Vasili and what that palace had done to him. Now, Vasili was sitting in his favorite chair, in his cottage, in his life all over again, and he’d hardly changed at all.
He’d tell him to leave.
Tomorrow.
Until then, he wasn’t sure he could stand to make it up the stairs to his bed. He shuffled backward and rested against a second armchair—this one far less comfortable than the one Vasili had taken—and rested his head back against the seat cushion. He was warm, alive, and safe. And sometimes that was all a man needed to get through the night.