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  Helpless

  A Born Assassin Prequel Novella

  Jacqueline Pawl

  Also by Jacqueline Pawl

  Defying Vesuvius

  A BORN ASSASSIN SERIES

  Helpless (Prequel Novella)

  Merciless

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  A note from the author

  Interested in reading more?

  About the Author

  1

  Ghyslain’s crown sits low on his brow, the smooth, overly-polished gold rim digging into his forehead. The metal stinks of the floral oil one of the castle slaves had used to clean it, a cloying perfumey stench which does nothing but magnify the headache pounding behind his eyes. He half believes the pretentious thing will snap his neck if he turns his head too quickly; the ornate work of gold, rubies, sapphires, and onyx is massive compared to his father’s much more practical silver diadem, but Ghyslain hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of seeing it, let alone wearing it. One day soon, he’ll be expected to wear it, just . . . not yet.

  “Your Highness, have you heard a word I’ve said?”

  “Hm? No. What?”

  Pierce LeClair rolls his eyes. He is only a few years older than Ghyslain, having just turned twenty-two, but his narrow face and thinning brown hair make him look nearly a decade older. He’s nothing more than a steward—despite his father’s position as treasurer, his family holds no noble title—but he has been one of Ghyslain’s closest friends since childhood. Pierce pushes away from the long table in the middle of the council chamber and clasps his hands in front of him as he strides to Ghyslain’s side.

  “The king’s funeral begins in less than an hour.” The clicking of his footsteps stops, and he leans forward to peer at the prince. “Although you rather look like the one being sent to your grave.”

  “I know.” Ghyslain rubs his face wearily. Not for the first time, the smoothness of his cheeks surprises; he hadn’t bothered to shave in days, until his queen mother had cornered him earlier that morning, wielding a straight razor the way a warrior would his sword. He had fought her at first—why should he care about something as trivial as facial hair when his entire world is collapsing around him?—but he had finally given in when he had seen the desperation in his mother’s eyes. She had needed to do something, needed to move, needed to be needed, so he had dismissed his servants, sat down at the vanity table in his bedroom, and allowed his mother to shave him. He hadn’t said a word when her shaky hand had slipped and cut his cheek.

  Pierce sighs. “Will you take that ridiculous thing off now? It pains me just to watch you try to hold it up.”

  “With pleasure,” Ghyslain says gratefully. Pierce helps him remove the crown and return it to the velvet pillow sitting on the table. The gemstones inlaid in the gold sparkle in the early morning sunlight streaming through the windows.

  “Thank you.” He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling the dark curls to hide the line that the rim of the crown had imprinted. “Tell me, does anyone care that I don’t actually want the damn thing? We’d be better off melting it down and using the funds to feed the people of Beggars’ End.”

  “Your Highness—my friend—the king’s funeral at the Church begins in an hour, and you are expected to ride in the carriage beside Her Majesty . . . looking slightly more lively than you do right now. Your coronation will take place immediately afterward, in the throne room. You remember all this, don’t you? I’m not wasting my breath?”

  Ghyslain nods, taking a deep breath. “I do. But Pierce . . . how am I supposed to just stand there and watch them put my father into the ground? I’m not ready to say goodbye.” He winces. Simply admitting the words causes him to flush with embarrassment. His father had raised him to be strong, but the gaping void his absence has left in Ghyslain’s life has left him feeling off-kilter.

  Pierce sinks into the chair beside him and grabs Ghyslain’s hands, forcing the prince to meet his gaze. “Your people mourn for your father. He was a great king. You must allow them to say farewell before he is laid to rest—I think it will be good for you, too. Today more than ever, the Myrellis family must appear strong—you must appear strong.” He rises and waves to the guards standing beside the doors, who pull them open for him. He pauses on the threshold and glances back. “Have no fear, Your Highness. I know you will make an excellent king.”

  As his friend’s footsteps fade down the hallway, Ghyslain leans forward in his chair, shooting another disgusted look at the crown. “I suppose I can’t delay this any longer, can I?” he murmurs. He stands and leaves the room, ordering the guards to return the crown to the throne room on his way out.

  The halls of Myrellis Castle are tall and bathed in warm light from torches burning in sconces every few yards. The dancing flames leave smears of dark soot on the gray stone walls. Elven slaves dart from room to room with brooms, feather dusters, platters of food and drink, and various other objects as they struggle to keep the castle from falling to complete disarray; the king’s sudden death has left the country in chaos, and nowhere is it more obvious than his home. Every day, nobles arrive from across Beltharos to pay respect to King Alaric’s legacy, quickly filling the castle’s guest rooms with their family and staff. Courtiers and advisors flit from meeting to meeting to arrange everything for the funeral and coronation, and many of the guards are working double or triple shifts to keep the peace with the massive influx of visitors to the capital.

  Today is no different. Men and women in suits of armor rush past Ghyslain with a murmured “Your Highness” and a quick bow. Elves in black linen shifts scrub the floors and walls, their white slave sashes stark against their dark mourning clothes. The courtiers Ghyslain passes are the worst: they pause in their conversations and watch him until he is out of earshot, offering him the same wordless sympathies they had since the day his father had collapsed from a heart attack outside his study, dead before he had hit the floor. Ghyslain gives them a curt nod as he marches past, his eyes trained steadfastly on the dark red wood door at the end of the hall. With so many pitying gazes on him, it feels as if a million years pass before his hand closes around the iron doorknob to his bedchambers.

  “G-Good morning, Your Highness,” Jett, the taller of the two, blurts when Ghyslain enters. “Her Majesty has sent a special shipment from the tailors. You are to dress and meet her downstairs immediately, she said.” He gestures to the clothes laid out on the bed: a cloth-of-gold doublet with black embroidery and tiny rubies inlaid on the buttons, black fitted pants, and a crimson cloak with a gold brooch embossed with his family’s crest. Ghyslain pales at the sight. These aren’t the lightweight silks and crepes and linens of summertime. These aren’t the clothes of a prince; they’re the clothes of a king.

  Dear Creator, please let me be as great a ruler as my father was.

  “And, um, if you wouldn’t mind . . .” the other—Orson—begins hesitantly, waving to the vanity. Several silvers containers of creams and powders are lined up meticulously in front of the polished metal mirror. My mother sent me makeup, Ghyslain thinks sullenly, but he nods anyway. His people will never respect him as their leader if they can read the pain on his face.

  Ghyslain sighs. “Let’s get this over with, then.”

  2

  As he sits ramrod straight in the uncomfortable pew of the Church an hour later, Ghyslain doesn’t hear a single word of his father’s funeral service. He had done as his mother asked and dressed, smeared on the various creams and powders Orson had given him, and climbed into the large carriage awaiting him a
nd Queen Guinevere at the front of the funeral procession. They had ridden through the city at a snail’s pace, the black horse drawn-carriage which contained King Alaric’s body making slow progress through the hundreds of thousands of people who had swarmed the streets. A few people had hung out of the open second-story windows of their houses or shops and thrown brightly-colored flowers, small toys and trinkets, and coins bearing the king’s profile onto the carriage.

  During their procession through the ancient city’s winding streets, Ghyslain had scanned his people’s faces in the crowd, searching for . . . something. He hadn’t been quite sure what. Perhaps something more than the bottomless void he feels inside, the numbness which has plagued him since the moment he found his father lying lifeless outside his study. With the shouts of the crowd and the intermittent plink plink plink of coins against the top of the carriage carrying the king’s body filling the air, it had taken longer than Ghyslain cares to admit for him to realize his mother had been silently sobbing on the carriage bench beside him. It was the first time he had seen her cry since they had learned of the king’s death. That terrible day, she had simply shut down. She had locked herself in their bedchambers and refused food, water, even the company of her only son. The next morning, she had joined him in the dining hall for their daily breakfast together, back to her usual self except for the missing spark of life in her eyes.

  As their carriage had clacked and rocked along the cobbled streets to the Church, Ghyslain had taken his mother’s hand in his, and she had squeezed it so tightly her knuckles had turned white. Her lace-trimmed handkerchief had been soaked through with tears. When someone on the street had shouted, “Creator’s peace be with King Alaric!” Queen Guinevere had let out a choked sob and thrown her arms around Ghyslain’s neck, burying her face in his shoulder.

  Eventually, they had arrived at the Church of the Creator, where the coffin was carried in by several high-ranking soldiers. The High Priestess had opened the coffin, anointed the king’s body with the holy oils, and said some words to which Ghyslain hadn’t pretended to listen. He’d been too busy staring at his father. Before that day, he had had the luxury of never having seen a dead body, and he had been assured by the embalmers that it would simply look as if his father were sleeping.

  King Alaric doesn’t look like he is sleeping. He looks . . . dead.

  He looks like a corpse.

  Where is the man who had taken Ghyslain on his knee when he was young to read stories together beside the massive, roaring fireplace in the royal library? Ghyslain still remembers his father’s beard tickling his head when he spoke, the way the firelight reflected in his dark eyes which crinkled in the corners when he smiled. He had grown up listening to the deep rumble of his father’s voice, breathing in the spicy herbal scent which clung to the king’s clothes after smoking Rivosan pipes with his ambassadors.

  Where is the man whose eyes had lit up every time his wife had entered the room? King Alaric had married for love as much as for strategy, and not one person in Sandori had ever had reason to doubt it. Ghyslain had seen the way his mother’s smile had shifted into something more special—something infinitely more intimate—for his father. He’d noticed the way the king always sat closer to the queen than many of the noblemen sit to their wives. Alaric always found little excuses to touch her or make her laugh. After more than thirty years, they had still loved each other as much as they had the day they married.

  Where is that man now?

  He had left them, left Ghyslain empty and his mother so full of sorrow it never seems to leak out of her—not always in tears, but in the way her eyes sometimes go distant in the middle of a conversation or her fingers absently twirl her wedding band until she rubs little blisters into her skin from the friction.

  The second the soldiers lift the king’s coffin to carry it outside, everyone in the Church pews stands to watch the slow procession. Ghyslain stares at his mother. She’s trembling, biting her lower lip to keep it from quivering, her eyes locked on the box containing the body of her love. Her handmaids are clustered around her. They whisper their sympathies and praise her for being so courageous. When his gaze wanders back to his father’s coffin, the impact of his father’s death—the permanence of it—strikes him anew. The wave of accompanying grief is so strong it makes his stomach roil and his knees weak.

  No one in the Church notices when the soon-to-be king slips out of the pew and darts from the room.

  Ghyslain chokes back tears as he races down a long hallway. He passes several small prayer rooms and priestesses’ bedchambers before he turns into an empty kitchen and falls to his knees on the cold stone floor. His fingers find an iron pot on a nearby shelf and he pulls it to his chest just as he retches into it, sobbing. He wants to scrub his clothes of the scents of the holy oils, flush the image of his father’s waxy skin from his mind, throw that Creator-damned heavy crown from the top of the castle’s tallest tower. He doesn’t want any of it. He wants his father back.

  Footsteps tap down the hallway and he freezes, gasping in surprise. He clutches the pot closer and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. The footsteps stop a few feet behind him.

  “Do not be alarmed, Your Highness,” the High Priestess murmurs, “and do not feel ashamed of your grief. Today is a dark day for our nation, but I see a ray of sunshine in our midst.” She kneels beside Ghyslain and gently tugs the pot from him, her face showing no hint of disgust at the contents as she pushes it aside. Her skin is a dark ebony, almost as black as her mourning gown. She smiles sadly at him. When he glances away, unable to meet her kind, dark eyes, she places her fingertips under his chin and tilts his head up.

  “Are you going to tell me to be strong, as well?” he whispers. “Because that’s all the advisors have been saying to me for days.”

  She shakes her head. “Listen to me, child. Shutting one’s eyes against love for fear of losing it is not strength. Your father was a great man and a wise king, and the country will mourn him for a long time. I cannot promise that it will be easy to live without him, but I can promise it will become easier.” She pauses and studies him for a moment. “May I ask, Your Highness, how old you are?”

  “S-Seventeen. Almost eighteen.” He feels like a fool immediately upon admitting it, like an adult caught playing with a child’s toy. He should be better than this—he should be stronger than this. When she opens her mouth to respond, he continues, “Let me guess—you’re going to tell me that there is no reason to be sad because the Creator willed this to happen? That the Creator has a plan for all of us, and it would be best if we blindly submit to his wishes, knowing it will all work out in the end?”

  “I could, but I have no desire to waste your time on pretty words. The truth is, child, that even I don’t know what the Creator has in store for us. My Sight only offers me a tiny glimpse of his plan, but it’s enough for me to know that you have a special path in this world, one you must walk alone. Let the memories of those you have loved and lost fill you with strength, with courage, with love. Allow yourself to become a better person because of them. From this day onward, your actions affect not only yourself, but the people of this whole country. Let your love for them guide everything you do. Rule with a firm but compassionate hand, and you will have nothing to fear from death.”

  “But—”

  “No buts,” she says softly. “You are a king today.” She stands, then offers him a hand up, which he accepts. “Remember this day not as an end, Your Highness, but the beginning of a new chapter.”

  “Thank you, High Priestess.”

  “Please, call me Ilissia.” She sweeps into a graceful bow. When she stands, she smiles. “Go now, Your Highness. Your mother—and your country—await.”

  “Ghyslain? Darling?” Queen Guinevere’s voice echoes down the stone hallway just as Ghyslain steps out of the kitchen, Ilissia trailing behind him. “Where are you?”

  “I’m here, Mother.”

  One second later, she rounds the co
rner, her handmaids close on her heels. When she sees him, her face crumples and she pulls him into another bone-crushing embrace.

  “Oh, my sweet boy,” she whispers so only he can hear. “My sweet, sweet son.” Her voice is raw, her fingers digging into his back as she clutches him close. The familiar scent of her floral perfume fills his nose. As she buries her face in his chest—he’s half a head taller than she and still growing—he notices for the first time how thin she has become since the king’s death; he can feel each of her ribs through her silk mourning gown.

  “Mother—” he begins. She must hear the alarm in his voice, for she quickly backs out of his hug and runs her hands over imaginary wrinkles in her dress. For once, she’s not crying. Her face is freshly powdered, but it doesn’t quite cover the pink tracks her tears had left in her makeup that morning after they had left the castle. Even so, the effort she had made to hide her pain touches him. He steels himself. For her, he can be strong. For her, he’ll do anything.

  “How long until the coronation?” he asks.

  “Two hours,” one of the queen’s handmaids answers. “Oliver Cain and his guards have secured a carriage for you and have done what they can to keep the route to the castle clear. It’s waiting out front, Your Highness.”

  “Well,” he sighs, “let’s go, then.” He reaches for his mother’s hand. She grips it like a lifeline. He smiles at her. “We’ll see Father buried, then you’ll watch your son become king.”

  3