Three Kings

He’d left his hat and jacket behind. She stared at the closed door with fear. It was just as she’d expected. She’d lost him. Staggering to a chair, she sat down, doubled over, and hugged her chest.

It hurt worse than anything she could have imagined, but she knew with sudden clarity it wasn’t a heart attack at all. This was what it felt like when your heart was broken.

And then she started crying.

The man sat nervously with his face to the wall, exactly as he’d been instructed. She watched him from a crow, but stood around a corner. Other crows were waiting to peck him to death if he attempted to run around and look her in the face. But she doubted it. The goddess had used hundreds like him over the years.

‘You are a war criminal,’ she told him, modifying her voice so that it sounded disapproving.

‘I am changed man.’

The bodyguard did not look so fierce without his bullet-proof jacket and his shades. He trembled, as was proper in the presence of divinity. ‘And you think I don’t know this is blackmail? You think I betray my employer? No! Do what you want. I not traitor.’

Badb knew better.

‘I am here to help the King,’ she told him. ‘I will give you the Green Man.’

The bodyguard twitched. ‘Do not look around.’ He froze again. He was still trembling, but with excitement now. The new monarch hated jokers and probably Muslims too. He might overlook the fact that this man had forgotten to feed a few hundred of the latter in a long-ago war.

‘Here is the address,’ she told him. ‘They have booby-trapped the alley to the north, but the main street … well, they wouldn’t get away with that, would they?’

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