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Dagmara
Deep underground, Dagmara stood face to face with the man who murdered the Azuremi Guardians.
Captain Sabien Renaud.
She could hear the pouring rain pounding against the door at the end of the corridor. Sabien said the door they had passed through didn’t open from this side. That meant she couldn’t turn around and make a run for it, and the door at the end of the hall was the only exit. She had to make it to Queen Bernadette.
“I must admit,” Sabien spoke, his voice rumbling deep in his chest, “I thought you were on to me much sooner. I guess you were preoccupied with the idea that I knew who you were from the moment I laid eyes on you.”
“The day I met you…the night before the coronation—”
“The night you drove a dagger through my chest and shoved me off the bridge,” Sabien added.
“You were there to kill the royal family.”
“Correct. I wasn’t there to speak with them about my magic, I knew exactly where my magic came from. The First Prince.”
“And you framed Claude for the assassinations?”
“It wasn’t hard seeing as he was already known as the Mad King.”
“But he was the one who signed off on the assassins’ false identities,” said Dagmara.
“You mean his royal seal? The one sitting inside his desk? Sorry to say, but he doesn’t sign every document. I have access to it, and I made those aliases with no problem.”
“But one assassin escaped.”
“That was me.”
Horror came crashing down. Dagmara stumbled away from him. He was the one in the aisle the day of the coronation. He was the one she stood up against. He was the one who killed Aleksy.
“I was the third assassin, Samuel Arsenault, who entered Azurem under a false name and then escaped. I still paid the border well to alter my description for the records. However, the mask you found wasn’t mine. That at least was Claude’s,” Sabien said. “The assassin who came for his parents left it behind as she fled for her life.”
“And the poison…” Dagmara’s brain raced with thoughts, “you found the false bottom of the drawer when I was searching elsewhere. You planted it in the drawer for me to find.”
“I love how intelligent you are.”
“Why did you poison us on the terrace anyway?”
“The servant was only supposed to poison you, but I guess I can’t trust anyone these days to do one simple task. I had already made arrangements with the servant before I arrived on the terrace and met you,” Sabien explained. “I thought the real Magdalena would be arriving, and I didn’t have time to call off the assassination attempt on your life.”
“But the letters to Flaustra on Claude’s desk—”
“You think I can read Flaustran?” He let out a bark of laughter. “I made all of that up. Nearly everything I’ve ever told you has been a lie.”
“Why?” Dagmara asked. “Why kill the guardians?”
Sabien inclined his head. “For the First Prince.”
Dagmara swallowed her fear. “The First Prince from the legends? The one who is dead?”
A crooked smile appeared on Sabien’s face. “Yes. He’s locked in a tomb by four branches of magic. Mind, Life, Soul, and Spirit. He needs the branch to be severed for each lock to break, and in order for the branch to be severed, the guardians must be killed,” Sabien explained. “The Mind lock was broken when Claude’s parents died. I’m responsible for the Life lock. With Magdalena still alive, I haven’t killed all the Life Guardians. I need to kill her to break the Life seal.”
“Aren’t you a Life Guardian now? Don’t you have to die for the seal to be broken?”
“No.” Sabien laughed. “I was made a guardian, I have no blood connection to the founding guardians, so my blood doesn’t bind the lock that holds the First Prince.”
“How can you be made a guardian?”
