“I’m gonna cleave you like I did your aunt!” Edrick spat at Finn, wiping the sweat from his brow as he got back up.
Finn cried out in fury before launching at the man with his sword. But Edrick was awaiting such a move, having grabbed a sword in his free hand. He dropped the flail before parrying the attack with the sword in his other hand.
Finn lost his footing from the parry and tripped into the mess of wood and weapons. He knocked his temple against the edge of the table so hard that he thought he had passed out for a moment. A sword hilt struck him in the back as he landed, winding him severely.
Edrick did not waste a second before he was standing over the prince.
He stabbed straight down towards Finn’s face, but Finn, on his back, managed to see the sword coming and rolled his head to the side just in the nick of time. The blade sliced his cheek open but had narrowly missed going through his head, instead embedding itself into the floor.
Edrick jumped on top of Finn, his knees on his forearms, forcing Finn to stay down.
Finn gasped for air, his face bloodied and head pounding. Edrick sneered down at his prey, carefully lining up the tip of his sword with the prince’s eye.
“Be seeing you, my prince,” Edrick cackled, driving the sword downwards. Finn, in a panic and defenceless, grabbed the blade with his bare hands, slicing his palms clean open to try and stop it.
Edrick stabbed the tip of the sword into Finn’s eye socket.
Finn let out an agonising shriek as the blade simply sliced through the skin, muscle and tendons of his bare fingers and pierced into his eye.
But before Edrick could drive the sword further into Finn’s head, another blade came out of nowhere and was plunged into the back of Edrick’s neck with a sickening crunch.
Edrick’s eyes went wide, and his grip loosened on the sword still stuck several inches deep in Finn’s face.
Edrick staggered off the prince, clasping at the back of his head where he could feel a curved blade lodged deep into the base of his neck.
Edrick turned around in shock, spitting up mouthfuls of thick blood. Behind him, still wounded yet with an expression of sheer determination, was Katryna. She had managed to get to Edrick just in time to save Finn’s life, it seemed, and had stabbed Trish’s unique dual-bladed dagger into Edrick’s back.
Edrick was unable to even mutter a word but stood back up, staggering all over the place before falling against the floor-to-ceiling windows that adorned the outer wall of the war room, as blood copiously squirted out from his deep puncture wound.
Katryna did not hesitate for a single moment.
The princess rushed towards Edrick, ignoring the agonising throbbing in her wounded shoulder, and rammed into the servant with all the might she could muster.
Edrick was thrown backwards by the charge, straight into the stained-glass windows and out the other side.
The enormous window simply gave way from the force of the impact, shattering into a million spectacular rainbow pieces.
Edrick was there one moment and gone the next, the floor disappearing from beneath his trembling legs as he went through the window.
That high up in the castle, Katryna knew that he would be dead as soon as he hit the ground.
“Edrick! No!” Trish shrieked from the other side of the room. Before the crazed woman could even begin racing over to the shattered window, Ser Arthus drove his sword into Trish’s foot.
The sword pierced through her shoe and into the floorboards below, causing her to fall forwards with a raged scream, her foot stuck in position.
Arthus looked over to Katryna and Finn, removing his helmet to get a clearer view of what had happened. Upon realising that Finn had been severely injured in the conflict, he ran over, leaving Trish impaled to the floor.
Finn lay screaming on the floor with blood spurting out of his broken eye socket. Katryna ripped off some fabric from her dress, pressing it down onto her brother’s broken face.
“You’re alright, Finn, you’re alright,” Katryna repeated in a panic, unsure whether she was trying to console him or herself.
Upon seeing her younger brother’s injury, her own pain from the shoulder wound had all but disappeared.
“Guards! Guards!” Arthus shouted, hoping his men outside would hear him. “Get some healers in here, now! And bring Jerrem Denar, immediately!”
As the guards and healers raced in to help save the prince’s life, Katryna could hear wails and cackles from behind. Trish, stuck impaled to the floor with armed Infinity Guardsmen surrounding her, hysterically wept for her lover, and yet was in hysterics over the prince’s horrific injury.
Katryna did not let Trish win. She would not.
Katryna silenced each venomous word Trish spat out from across the war room as she toiled with the healers to save her brother’s life.
The consequences of her actions over all these years culminated in what lay before her in that very moment.
Chapter 39 - Fires of War
Ser Yelin Mortimer had not had to fight in many years. His body had grown old and fat, and his mind slower than it once was. He even had to commission a new set of royal guard armour for himself only the previous year, as his previous set no longer fit over his protruding gut.
Yet the events surrounding the knight stunned every muscle into activity. His reflexes seemed to come back all at once; his focused mind and ability to multitask returned in a flash, all as the world around him descended into utter chaos.
Ser Yelin had been seated with Queen Sirillia in her tent, sharing a flask of wine and having a quaint discussion
