There was no point in hiding the blood all over my hands, all over my nightdress. There was no mistaking how it was the same blood that now drenched the bedding of the king and queen, no way to avoid the gaze of my husband, the prince, standing in the doorway, staring at me.

It didn’t matter. My work was done, my revenge complete. Step one: marry the prince. Step two: murder the king and queen. I had known all along that there would be no step three.

I knelt before my husband, holding out the dagger, silver and red in my sticky hands.

“What are you doing?” he said.

The words I expected. The tone surprised me. He was so calm, too calm, given that I had just killed his parents.

“Finish it, my love,” I said, putting as much venom as I had left into the words. Let him hate me now, as much as I had ever made him love me. Let him hate me, and kill me, and send me to my family.

“It’s already finished.” He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. “We should get you cleaned up, before we report Mother and Father’s mysterious assassination to the people.”

“What…?” The dagger hung limply from my hands. I let it fall to the floor. The adrenaline was fading now.

The prince - the soon-to-be king - my husband stepped lightly around the spreading pool of red. He fetched a clean quilt from the armchair and came over to me, wrapping the warm fabric around my shoulders.

“Can’t have you going into shock now,” he said. “You’ve been waiting for this moment for how many years?”

“Since I was nine,” I said automatically. “Since the raids on the southern…” I looked up at him. He brushed my hair out of my eyes. “You knew?”

“I suspected.” He kissed my forehead. “I hoped. They would have never let their guard down around me. But my blushing bride? They never suspected a thing.”

“You knew I was here to kill them.”

“Why else would a girl from the southern valleys want to marry me? Your people were slaughtered on my parents’ command. And yet you willingly sat with me, spoke with me, held me. The only thing that made sense was if you were only trying to get close to me to kill my parents. And now you’ve done so. So let’s get on with it.”

He helped me to my feet, though I couldn’t fathom why. “Get on with what?”

“With the future.” He walked me towards the bathroom. “With making sure what my parents got away with never happens again. With making this kingdom the haven it ought to be.”

He really ought to have called for a servant. But he took care of everything himself - drawing my bath, disposing of the blood-covered nightdress, hiding the dagger behind a loose stone in the wall.

“As soon as you’re clean and dry, we’ll go back to bed, just in time to be awoken by the maid discovering Mother and Father,” he said, gently rubbing my hands until that awful red was gone down the drain.

My eyelids were heavy. Going back to bed sounded incredible. Impossible and incredible.

“Step one, marry the prince,” I said. “Step two, murder the king and queen.”

“Step three,” said my husband, “live happily ever after.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“Well you took care of the first two steps just fine on your own.” He squeezed my hands between his own. “I’ll take care of the third, my love, my salvation. Don’t you worry.”