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Prince Jaron was killed by pirates when he was ten. They killed the look-out first, then both guards by the prince’s cabin, then the boy himself. Dagger between his third and fourth ribs, and they tossed the corpse unceremoniously over the side of the ship.
The ocean churned, waves crashing against the side of the ship, blood tinting the white foam pink. Far below the surface, Jaron woke up. Kicking desperately, through clouds of running bubbles and buffeting currents, he dragged himself to the air and heaved seawater from his lungs. His throat hurt; his chest did not. He drowned two more times before reaching shore.
This was the secret of the Carthyan royal line, its mythic gift, ancient, fickle and bloody. Few were born with it—maybe none, Darius used to say in a low voice, maybe it’s only a ghost story, the king that can take up the lives laid down for him—and would be hard to rely on if it were real. How do you keep a tally of the people who have died for you? How do you know you have the gift until you are killed?
Darius, it turned out, did not have the gift. Jaron had the gift, and far too many ghosts. The next time he died was in Farthenwood, strangled by Cregan and stashed in a closet until nightfall. Jaron did not bother picking the lock to let himself out sooner. The look—pure, ash-white terror—on the manservant’s face was worth the wasted hours, and the pain of strangulation too.
“Tell Conner,” Jaron dared him, with a skull’s-grin smile. “Go ahead, tell him you killed me.” Unarmed, he took a step toward the massive manservant, and Cregan fled. Cregan did not tell Conner, or raise his hand against Jaron again, or even look at him.
He tried not to be reckless, he really did. His many lives were not infinite, not even close, and it felt like mockery to throw away a life given to him at such a steep price. Whose life was he living now? One of the sailors that was supposed to take him to Bymar? The priest in Dichell? His father, his mother, Darius? I’ll make it worth it, he prayed, I’ll make it worth it somehow. But it was so easy to die, and so much better to hurt than let someone else be hurt; every time he rose again he thought, It could have been real that time, and a thrill of fear would go down his spine, but he bought such precious victories with each death: a secret, an escape, the life of a friend, the life of a stranger.
Imogen knew, of course; she was the one that found him dead in the garden the night of his family’s funeral, and she screamed when he gasped back to life. To Roden’s credit, he did not scream when the king he had killed appeared, alive, among the Avenian pirates, and he learned from his mistake too, breaking Jaron’s leg instead of running him through a second time. Jaron felt a rush of admiration amidst his indignation and the enormous pain in his leg. That was the kind of cleverness he needed in a captain and adored in a friend. There was no way Jaron could climb the cliff out of the pirates’ prison with his broken leg, but Roden had overlooked the fact that Jaron could reach the bottom of the cliff very quickly.
“Sage, don’t!” Fink begged as Jaron balanced on the windowsill, looking at the long drop down. It could be real this time.
“It’s alright,” Jaron said. “The devils won’t let me go this easy.” He jumped.
Death and death and death. One day, he told himself, the war will be over. One day I will live my own life, and one day I will die my own death, but not while I am still needed, please, not while they still need me. He was in the thick of every battle, throwing himself in front of soldiers twice his age, thrice his age.
“They love you,” Roden told him, something strange in his eyes, one night after a skirmish with Avenian and Gelynian soldiers. “They think you’re some kind of savior, they are ready to die for you.”
“Don’t let them,” Jaron begged. “I don’t want them to die for me—I don’t want them to die for anyone, if I can stop it. Roden, I’m doing everything I can.” They would have him live forever on their graves. He couldn’t do it. He could hardly imagine living to adulthood. He was so tired.
“I tell them you don’t need it,” he said. “I tell them to fight for their families, for Carthya, and let the devils try in vain to take you.”
“Oh, they’ll catch me in the end,” Jaron said.
“But not yet.”
“Not yet,” Jaron agreed.
“Here is a game, Jaron,” said Vargan, hands clasped arrogantly behind his back, between a victorious Avenian general and a traitorous Carthyan ex-regent. Three triumphant men facing three injured, shackled boys. It had never been a fair fight. “I have three necks, all worthy of hanging, but only two nooses. You can walk free, at the expense of your friends. Or you can spare one of them. What do you think, little king? Who do I kill?”
Jaron gave a smile that showed every one of his teeth. “Too easy. Hang me twice.”