Chapter Fifty Six: I Know You Love a Good Strangling

Aya crouched up in the rafters like a black widow, just seconds away from dropping down to deal death to her prey. She had scurried soundlessly across these shadowed support beams without a single one of the guests or guards ever looking up to spot her. She poised herself right over Carnen’s head with throwing needle raised. Then her eyes darted over to Charlotte. Her expression was not one of fear or resignation. Her welling eyes were shining with yearning as she stared transfixed at her groom, her body shifting its weight right toward him like a magnet, barely able to keep herself from falling right into his arms.

Aya’s hand seized up. This was supposed to be a rescue, now wasn’t it? She had promised herself that she would free Charlotte of her controlling father and do whatever it took to protect her smile and give her a real life, but here Carnen was already giving that to her. He was giving her a future and a throne, the chance to be a bride and then a mother some day. Aya could not steal all that away from her simply because she was jealous and angry, wounded by Carnen’s rejection of her own advances.

So what if Carnen was an enemy of Duke Marseir? Aya herself was an enemy of the duke now, simply because she had defied his design and deserted him.

Clara was Charlotte’s family as well, and she was standing right there in happy support of this marriage. If Charlotte was happy with Carnen… And she looked so truly, very happy right now, just as she had while waving from that carriage…

Aya had no right to ruin her wedding day and murder her groom.

Carnen was not a threat to Charlotte after all. That look in his eyes as he was speaking to her now… It was frightening only because it shone so intensely with craving. Clara would ensure that he was suitably gentle with her though. He needed his wife well to restore peace to this country, so he would protect her as a valuable prize and treat her lovingly as he had never treated Aya, because Aya was a peasant, an assassin and an enemy.

Her hand dropped listless to her side, and she returned her poisoned projectile to its sheath. She should leave this chapel right this minute, slip off back to the castle and search out Yuri, the only true remaining threat to her friend.

It still made her cringe in pain when those awful words, “I take you for my wife.” echoed out through the church.

But then came the shocking response. “I… I cannot take you. Sorry.”

Aya’s eyes widened, and she turned to look back at her friend, needing to see what had prompted this most shocking refusal of a man she was clearly in love with.

Then Carnen dared dig his fingers into her jaw, shake her and frighten her, and declare with outright hate, “If I can force myself to marry you, damn it, then you can most easily wed me!”

Aya was on him in an instant, with the line of her garrote wrapped tight around his windpipe. “She said no, you bastard.” Though why did that development fill Aya with such joy? Why was she so happy to witness that Carnen felt nothing positive for the true Charlotte at all and was only forcing himself to wed her for the sake of politics? “This is what rejections feels like,” she taunted him, because this gorgeous ass, adored by every woman he encountered, had probably never experienced that feeling for the briefest second of his life. “Hurts doesn’t it?”

“Best I’ve felt all day,” he gasped in response. He was grinning just as savagely as she was, even as she sat there with a garrote around his neck in the perfect position to strangle him to death.

He would rather be choked by his assassin than married happily to her noble-blooded twin, and Charlotte could see that just as clearly as Aya. She was staring at the pair of them in such resigned depression. “He loves you,” she mouthed, so quiet and subdued that Aya doubted anyone else would have heard her. “There’s no need to punish him for that.”

Was that really all Aya was doing here? Punishing Carnen for these most complicated feelings, split between the pair of them? That moment of introspection had slackened the line of her garrote and Carnen yanked free the cord.

Aya kept her rigid grip around the handles, but all that did was ensure she was pulled forward with it, teeth smacking into the back of his skull. She groaned and he echoed the sound but still managed to flip her right over his head, clamping hands to her throat. “Hello again, dearest. What say we finish things this time, and I break your neck.”

“Please. You think I couldn’t have put a knife in your spine instead of opting to ride you with a rope around your neck instead?” She dropped her forearms into his elbows to break his hold, rolling around with him in violent struggle even as the respectable lords and priests crammed into the aisles all watched on in judgment. Though, scratch that – few of their audience seemed to have time for any emotion save panic, as the doors of the chapel burst open and a contingent of armed rebels charged in.

Aya ignored them completely, keeping her eyes locked with the burning, ice-blue gaze of her most captivating opponent. “It seems I wasn’t looking to kill you after all. I just know you love a good strangling. Gets the blood pumping to all the right areas.” She flickered the cord in a loop around back of his head again, but he stole the dagger from her belt and cut right through it, hurling her away from him.

She went rolling down the center aisle, and Carnen finally had the distance to draw his sword. Aya flicked out a pair of long knives in happy anticipation of his charge, crouching at the ready.

A gunshot clipped Carnen’s shoulder, before he could make another move, sending a spatter of blood right onto the dress of the bride at his back. Banen’s aim had been expert though, so Charlotte was not wounded, but Carnen certainly would be, the very next second the captain found a window of aim through the swarm of armored northmen charging his troops.

“That is enough!” Queen Clara thundered, yanking Charlotte out in front of her with pistol pressed to the side of her skull. “Northmen hold! Our enemies will drop their rifles right this instant, or else she will die!”

“Aunt Clara, what are you--?”

“Be silent!” The queen cocked back the hammer of her flint-lock, and Banen shouted for his men to stand down, raising his hands. The northern knights instantly seized hold of the battered Stalis troops, pinning their arms to their sides.

“You know, I never liked you, Clara,” Aya called, and the queen’s eyes darted to her in outrage. “Your husband is a monster, but even without that, I just think you will be an absolutely terrible mother to your son.”

“You insolent--!” The gun had already snapped from the side of Charlotte’s head to pointing right at Aya’s face, exactly as she’d predicted.

The needle flickered out from her sleeve the second Clara moved, and that flicker of projectile struck its mark with perfect precision. The gun still went off, chipping a chunk of wood from one of the benches as Aya darted left to evade it, but Clara’s hold on Charlotte had already slackened. She tumbled backward with her eyes fluttering shut, and Charlotte caught her.

“You’ll pay for that.” That most savage growl of a threat drew Aya’s gaze back to Carnen, as he closed the space between them and swung right for her head.

She parried and ducked, assuring him glibly, “I hit Clara with a sedative, not a poison.”

“What a merciful little viper. Now I am still going to rip you in two!”

Damn, but he was remarkably fast for someone of his size. She could not get in close enough to catch him in a grapple or prick him with a needle, so she looked for a window to throw another of her projectiles instead.

Her perfect series of dodges met a serious stumble that next instant though, as she smacked right into the obstacle of another man’s chest. She whirled to face this new enemy with dagger raised, and he chided her pretentiously, “Do not bare your teeth at me like that. It is not at all womanly.”

“Get the hell out of my way!” Aya snapped, ripping back her hand and spinning away from Carnen’s already descending swing set to lay open her back.

Kareem was the one to parry that strike, stepping out in front of her protectively. “Leave him to me, my love, and I will unman him soundly to prove all I earlier promised.”

“Your love?” Carnen repeated in disgust, but beneath all that outrage and hate, Aya could see most clearly his jealousy at the notion. From the ferocity of his swings toward Aya’s head, Charlotte had most certainly been mistaken. There was no way Carnen was in love with his assassin. He still wanted her dead by his hand, but that was just as passionate a claim to her as craving her for his bride.

“Are the two of you seriously about to duel to the death for my hand?” she prompted them dryly.

“If that is your wish, I most happily oblige,” Kareem beamed, even as Carnen drowned out his reply with the harsh words:

“Of course not. Who even are you--?”

Kareem moved his scimitar in lightning fast flickers around Carnen’s face and chest. Carnen battered aside some of the blows, but the other quick strikes left fresh lines of red all over his forearms and leg. “I am demi-marquis Kareem, fifth son of the great Razier, and I am going to cut off your head for laying hands on my woman.”