My king.
My young assassin. What have I made of you? How have I twisted my own flesh? You do not know how young you still are. Chivalry’s son, it is not too late to grow straight again. Lift up your head. See beyond all this.
I had spent my life becoming what he wished me to be. These words now filled me with confusion and questions there was no time to answer. I could feel his strength fading.
Verity, I whispered to remind him.
I felt him reach out, and steadied that reaching for him. I felt the brush of Verity’s presence, and then a sudden dwindling of the King. I groped after him as one would dive after a drowning man in deep water. I seized his consciousness, held it to me, but it was like gripping a shadow. He was a boy in my arms, frightened and struggling against he knew not what.
Then he was gone.
Like a bubble popping.
I had thought I had glimpsed the frailty of life when I held the dead child in my arms. Now I knew it. Here, and then not here. Even a snuffed candle may leave a trailing wisp of smoke. My king was simply gone.
But I was not alone.
I think every child has flipped over the dead bird found in the woods, only to be shocked and terrified by the busy workings of the maggots on the underside. Fleas cluster thickest and ticks grow fattest on a dying dog. Justin and Serene, like sucking leeches forsaking a dying fish, rose and tried to fasten to me. Here, the source of their increased strength and the King’s slow failing. Here the mist that had clouded his mind and filled his days with weariness. Galen, their master, had made Verity his target. But he had missed his kill, and instead met his own death. How long these had been fastened to the King, how long they had sucked Skill strength from him, I would never know. They would have been privy to all he Skilled through me to Verity. Much was suddenly made clear to me, but it was all too late. They closed on me, and I had no concept of how to evade them. I felt them fasten to me, knew they were drawing off my strength now, and that with no reason to refrain from it, they would kill me in moments.