Chapter 122: Consequences Be Damned

LYSANDER

"Johann!"

I screamed his name. It tore out of my throat raw and ragged, and I was already moving, my body ahead of my thoughts, my mind reaching for Johann’s throat before my hand could catch up. All of me was supposed to be reminded that this was the way to go. That I was better than this. That I was rational. That I was supposed to be King. But nothing was enough.

Then Bonnie ran past me.

She didn’t slow. She didn’t hesitate. Her bare feet struck the stone courtyard and carried her straight toward the platform where the bodies still twitched and bled, and in that single moment when her eyes found mine, I saw everything I had failed her written across her face. The trust I’d broken. The promise I’d shattered. The blood I’d allowed to spill while I stood there shouting like a fool instead of acting like a man who deserved to wear a crown.

I froze. My hands dropped to my sides, suddenly heavy and useless, and the guilt hit me in waves that made my knees threaten to buckle. I’d told her they would live. I’d sworn it with my hand over my heart and my voice steady, and now two men were dead, and their blood was pooling across the wood while she ran toward them because I hadn’t been fast enough. I hadn’t been strong enough. I hadn’t been anything she needed me to be.

She climbed onto the platform. Her knees hit the wood hard enough that I heard the impact from where I stood, and then her hands were lifting one of the severed heads, pressing it back against the neck with a desperation that made my chest ache. The blue light flickered around her fingers, pulsing weakly against the dead flesh, and I understood with horrible clarity what she was trying to do. What she was begging the goddess to let her accomplish.

She was trying to put them back together. She was trying to undo what Johann had done. She was trying to fix my failure with her own lifeblood, and she was failing because death was final even for those who carried the source in their veins.

I turned away from her because I couldn’t watch anymore. I couldn’t stand there and witness her grief without doing something with my own hands, something violent and permanent that would match the violence burning through my chest.

Johann stood at the edge of the platform, watching her too. A small smile played at the corner of his mouth, barely there but unmistakable, and when he glanced at me, his expression carried no fear. Only amusement. Only the satisfaction of a man who had calculated exactly how much damage he could cause and had chosen to cause it anyway.

"You bastard," I whispered.

He tilted his head, as though he couldn’t quite hear me over the wind and the crowd and the wet sounds of Bonnie’s weeping.

"What’s that, cousin?"

I didn’t answer with words. I charged.

My shoulder caught him square in the chest, and we went down hard, tumbling across the stone until my back struck the platform’s edge and I used the momentum to roll on top of him. My fist connected with his jaw before he could raise his hands to defend himself, and I felt the impact shudder up my arm, the satisfying crunch of bone giving way beneath my knuckles.

Johann’s head snapped to the side. Blood sprayed from his split lip, and he laughed.

He actually laughed.

"Have you lost your mind?" He brought his arms up to block my next punch, deflecting the blow so it glanced off his forearm rather than breaking his nose. "I’m getting justice for my father. Since when does that warrant an assault from the Almighty Regent?"

I grabbed his collar and slammed his head back against the stone. His skull bounced off the courtyard floor with a wet thud, and I leaned in close enough to smell the copper of his own blood.

"Justice?" My voice came out guttural, barely human. "You call this justice?"

"I call it my right." He didn’t struggle beneath me. He lay there with his arms spread wide, as though inviting me to continue, as though my rage were merely a performance he was generous enough to indulge. "Those men failed my father. They let him die. The law is clear on what happens to those who fail their King."

"The law." I laughed, and the sound was ugly even to my own ears. "You want to talk about the law?"

"I want you to get off me before you do something you’ll regret."

I hit him again. My fist drove into his cheekbone, and this time he didn’t deflect it. This time I felt the bone shift beneath my hand, and the pain that flashed across his face was real and immediate and not nearly enough.

"I promised her," I snarled, leaning my weight onto his chest so he could feel how serious I was. "I promised Bonnie those men would live. I gave her my word, and you made me break it. You knew exactly what you were doing when you pulled that lever."

Johann’s eyes narrowed, though his voice remained infuriatingly calm. "Your promises to your pet don’t supersede the rights of the Crown. Or have you forgotten that you’re not actually King yet?"

I wrapped my hand around his throat and squeezed.

His eyes widened then. The amusement finally cracked, and I saw something that looked almost like surprise flicker across his face as he realized I wasn’t stopping. That this wasn’t a show of temper meant to embarrass him in front of the crowd. That I genuinely intended to kill him.

"Let me explain something," I whispered, my thumb pressing against his windpipe. "I don’t care about the law right now. I don’t care about your rights, your prerogatives, or whatever loophole you crawled through to make this happen. You made her cry. You made her beg. You made her suffer. You put her on her knees in front of all these people, and for that, I’m going to end you. Consequences be damned."

Johann’s hands came up to claw at my wrists, but his grip was weak. He’d never been a fighter. He’d always been the ’clever’ one, the one who manipulated and schemed while others did the bleeding for him. He had no idea how to defend himself against someone who had spent years learning exactly where to apply pressure to make a man stop breathing.

"Lysander," he choked out, his voice barely audible above the blood pounding in my ears. "Think... think about what you’re doing. You kill me... you’re finished. The council... the nobles... they’ll never accept you..."

"Let them reject me." I tightened my grip and watched his face turn red, then purple, then something dangerously close to blue. "Let them crown someone else. Let them put my head on a spike next to yours. I don’t care anymore."

I raised my other fist. Johann’s eyes tracked the movement, and for the first time, I saw real fear there. The kind of fear that stripped away all his clever words and political calculations and left only the animal instinct to survive.

"Please," he rasped.

I brought my fist down.