The King's Eye

Chapter 53

Precarious legs carried me across the room to where the king and queen sat with subjects and laughed, shaking my knees threatening to fumble my balance. We are under attack, I said in the depths of my mind. The words shattered through any hope I had retained. Because of me, we are under attack.

Each step I took made the words louder, more real, and as I stood before them they vanished entirely. Waiting patiently for me to speak, their eyes burned into me as my mouth opened and closed without words coming out.

"Sophie?" Her majesty's head tilted, a motherly form of concern creasing in the lines around her mouth.

"Je suis désolé," I croaked. "I am so sorry." My entire body trembled, the clenching of my throat making my ears throb. "We are under attack."

His Majesty's eyes narrowed. "Speak up, child. What is it?"

It was then I realized I had whispered my words and that they were lost to the music and cheerful shouts. "We are–"

The glass doors that led to the garden smashed open behind me, instantly silencing the room.

⚹⚹⚹⚹

It was not what I thought it would be. The way the violence swiftly overturned the deafening stillness of the room and turned it into a hellscape.

Shards of glass flew through the air as an explosion sounded, the pieces clashing everywhere skin was exposed. Driving through the air, I watched the larger pieces make their mark through men's abdomens, blood waterfalling over their fingers as they grabbed at the wounds. They fell to their knees in shock when it stabbed through their neck's pulse, their racing heart making the red liquid stream rapidly until it covered the floor where they crashed face first.

Another explosion made the screams coming from before me distant. The world tilted, the ringing in my ears blinding me as I was thrown back. My head crashed into the ground with a bone cracking thud, the pain so glaring I did not feel when my wig tore from my hair and left my scalp.

Strong arms lifted me up to my feet. "Look at me." Jacques's hands rested on either side of my head. Despite being right in front of me, his words were across the room. "Sophie, look at me!"

They could not focus, though. Lolling back into my head, the world faded in and out of darkness with every blink. Jacques ran his hand through my hair, the pain making the screams around me suddenly louder. Was it my screams I heard? I tried to pull away from him, but his hand was already blurring into my periphery covered in blood.

My blood.

"Oh, God," Jacques swallowed. Fear flecked across his calm face through his eyes. The scratches across his cheeks and neck were the kind that stung when you ran water over them, but it was the blood across his clothes that made me worry.

Around us everything moved in slow motion as every guest began to frantically search for their escape. Every exit they found was already blocked, though. Men armed and ready stood tall in their full length pants, swords out and ready to run through anyone who tried to leave.

The sound of tearing brought me back to Jacques, his shirt becoming ribbons of fabric that he frantically wrapped around my head. I could hear the shakiness in his voice as he told me to keep still, the pressure of the fabric against my scalp making me wince. It was his missing bloodied jacket and revealed torso that made me sag with relief, his shirt pure white despite the chaos around us. "You are not hurt." My throat felt raw, as I said it, fingers skimming his exposed skin and feeling the warmth coming from him.