Page 77 of The Concubine King
“Really, Lyrian, I would have thought you’d learned from your father’s mistakes.If nothing else, I had assumed you were at least smarter than your father to so severely underestimate me.”
Ethyr looked between them, waiting for Lyrian to say something, anything, but he remained tight-lipped.The man was always quick and forceful with his responses, his silence now made no sense—if anything, it only further proved his guilt.
“What proof do you have?”Ethyr demanded.
Yorith’s ire became almost amusement as he raised his eyebrows at him.“Proof?”he chuckled dryly.“I have no obligation to share it with you.But perhaps you’ll be mollified with the testimonies of three council members, a dozen soldiers, and, of course, the King’s Guard herself.”
Ethyr whipped around to where Poyut stood, head bowed and hands clasped behind her back.
“How could you?”he cried.“You promised you didn’t tell!You promised you weren’t working with him!”She didn’t lift her head.
“You don’t deny it then.”
He turned back to Yorith’s smug satisfaction.
“Good.Now that we have dispelled all question of fabrication, this can be dealt with.Poyut, take Lyrian’s badge of office, then fetch the front guards to arrest him.”Yorith smiled at Lyrian.“Unless you’d like to put up a fight and make a scene in the middle of everyone’s festivities?”
Lyrian gave no expression, not one of anger nor guilt.He met Yorith’s gaze with a steady coolness of his own.When Poyut stepped forward, he unpinned the bronze emblem of a hawk, the symbol of Catocus, from his tunic and dropped it into her palm.
She hesitated, looking from Lyrian to Ethyr.He met her gaze with a smoldering fury that made the concern in her eyes almost laughably illogical.
“I gave you an order,” Yorith said sharply.She straightened and gave a stiff nod before walking out of the room.
“You’re not going to do anything?”Ethyr asked Lyrian desperately.“You’re not going to argue?”
“I don’t see a point,” Lyrian said, eyes still locked on Yorith.“He’s made up his mind.”
Ethyr huffed in disbelief, struggling to comprehend that he was losing his one and only ally, and rejecting the possibility.He couldn’t let it happen, but he knew if Lyrian was helpless, he had no hope of successfully fending off Yorith either.But he had to try.
“What supposed offenses do you accuse him of?”he asked.“You can’t make these ridiculous, overarching claims and expect him to roll over and admit to everything.”
Yorith turned fed-up irritation to Ethyr.“I see your education and obstinance have found a middle ground.It’s a pity one could not have overcome the other; you’d be far less of a precarious liability if they had.”Yorith stepped forward, hand out as though ready to yank Ethyr from Lyrian’s side.
Lyrian’s movement drew both Yorith and Ethyr’s gaze.In one sweeping action he snatched a pen off the desk and closed in on Yorith.For a long, disorienting few seconds, Ethyr didn’t understand what was happening.He saw Lyrian’s fist in front of Yorith’s throat, and the priest’s hands grasping weakly at it.It could have been a painting frozen in time, Yorith’s gaping mouth and wide eyes locked onto Lyrian’s calm, solemn expression.
Then Lyrian yanked his fist down and blood bubbled from Yorith’s neck like one of the garden fountains outside, spilling over his still grasping hands and down the front of his plain blue robe.He staggered backwards, gurgling a horrible moan that pushed out blood between his lips and down his chin.He stumbled into a chair and sank against it, dropping to the floor.
“What did you do?”Ethyr cried.
“Didn’t you hear him?”Lyrian asked.“He was going to kill you.You know he was going to kill me.I had no choice.”
Ethyr’s mouth opened and closed, unable to respond, unable to think, unable to tear his gaze from Yorith, blood-soaked and slack-jawed, slouched on the floor.The old man’s gnarled hands left his neck and slowly dropped.
A sticky warmth was pushed into his fingers.He looked down at the slim metal coated in blood and recoiled on instinct, dropping it to the floor.Black ink spattered out onto the white marble, mixing with the rivulets of red.
Lyrian lifted the pen and forced it back into Ethyr’s hand, squeezing it between his own.Ethyr stared at the man’s hands, thinking how strange it looked for one to be dripping with blood while the other was clean and white.
“Listen to me, Ethyr,” Lyrian said forcefully, the tone of his voice pulling Ethyr’s eyes up to his.The fire that was absent before was in them now.“Youkilled Yorith, understand?”
“What?No, I—”
“If it’s found out I did this, I’ll be executed.But you’re king, they can’t touch you.It was self-defense, Ethyr; they won’t side with a dead man who assaulted the king.”
“But he didn’t.”Ethyr didn’t know who was talking, because it didn’t feel like his words.But they were coming out of his mouth, in his voice, small and uncertain and scared.“I wouldn’t.”
“You would.You’re strong and fierce and you wouldn’t let him hurt you, would you?You wouldn’t let him hurt your village or your friends.”
His gaze tilted from the intensity of Lyrian’s brown eyes over to where Yorith lay.He was motionless, head hanging limply from his neck like a rag doll.
