As she straightened, Sylas nodded, granting absolution. Then, he turned to his guard captain who stood on the dais to the right of the king’s throne. “Go help Leisha in the dungeons,” her father instructed Ramuriel, a man who’d served him for the three hundred–odd years he’d been the Aether king.
“Leisha has all of the assistance she needs from her Nkita sisters,” Kadeesha informed her father, sure to sound properly deferential.
He scowled. “So you may think.”
“My sister is extraordinary at what she does,” Kadeesha asserted.
Her father only grunted. But that was his way—he was a traditional man with outdated thinking who didn’t truly believe women belonged, or could excel, in places customarily dominated by males. “At least you were careful not to get bloodon your gown,” her father said. “Though your chosen color is off-putting.” He gave her and the gown a pointed look. “Really, Kadeesha, gold would’ve suited the occasion better and pleased your husband-to-be.”
And now they’d arrived at the important topic: She didn’t give a fuck about pleasing any future husband. She knew better than to phrase it like that, though. She dug her nails into her palms, using the small pain to keep cool. “About that …” she began slowly, taking her time to measure the best words. This was her last chance, the final moment she’d be able to steal alone with her father before her betrothed arrived and the whirlwind wedding festivities started. If she didn’t convince Sylas to call the whole thing off now, she never would. Kadeesha calmed her racing heart; she locked her emotions down tight because Sylas would automatically dismiss her plea as the ravings of an irrational woman if she spoke too passionately.
“I do not wish to be married,” Kadeesha expressed calmly. “And I’d hoped that me bringing your attention to this threat against the court—and what I surmise is part of a plot against your life, a plot that I might add escaped your own spymaster’s notice—will prove my value to you and this court. I am worth more than some daughter whose only benefit lies in being sold off for political advantage. If you void my betrothal contract, you will not regret it, for you will eternally have a capable general loyal to you—and only you—and who wholly serves your interests while protecting your welfare and this kingdom’s welfare with my Nkita squadron.”
Her father’s face gave nothing away when she finished. He studied her stoically, settling back against his throne. “We have had this discussion before, daughter,” said Sylas.
“We have, Your Majesty,” Kadeesha replied deferentially. “However—”
He sliced a hand through the air. “No. We will not rehash things. Nor will I change your course. I’ve given you freedoms beyond what most noblewomen would have prior to marriage. I’ve let you bond with a kongamato and build and lead a squadron in hopes that it might tame your strong spirit. And I’ve allowed you to delay this union for a significant amount of time; when you turned of age on your twentieth birthday, you should have married then. Those concessions, I believe, are a more than fair share of doting in exchange for the duty you must now fulfill.”
He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the amethyst arms of his throne and bringing his hands together in a tent right below his goatee.
“Do you know what those kill trophies you brought here tell me? Our enemy is growing bolder, brasher. They are moving toward inciting true war, not these little skirmishes that have been fought between the Apollyon Court and the Six Kingdoms for centuries. That means youmustmarry Rishaud to ensure that our ties to the greater Hyperion crown remain sturdy and we remain his most favored dominion. When war breaks out, we need to be in as strong a position as possible. We willnotinsult His Excellency by breaking a betrothal contract that any woman among the Six Kingdoms would covet. What the Aetherfolk and I need from our archprincess is for you to fulfill the prophecy foretold at your birth. Becoming the Hyperion king’s bride and ultimately high queen ofeverydominion on this continent will fortify us against all enemies, those operating in clear viewandthose lurking in the shadows. You will see this wedding through, Kadeesha.” Her father delivered this decreewith a finality that made it clear that any further argument would stoke the Aether king’s ire.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she replied, bowing low once more, acid burning her throat.
ASHORT WHILE LATER, Kadeesha sat upon a throne beside her father’s. It was identical to the king’s, only slimmer. There was also a third throne on the dais, one that was the same size as her father’s and fashioned from the same bronze koppa wood with golden slabs for arms and legs. It occupied the empty space on Kadeesha’s right. The Hyperion king would fill it as he and her father hashed out the final terms of her marriage contract. She, of course, would get no say in the negotiations—another custom that added to her bitterness over the entire affair. Her only role was to sit prettily between the two kings, letting the esteemed archnobles of both courts fawn over the Hyperion king’s newest prized bride while the finer points of the contract were discussed.
Adding to Kadeesha’s fury, all of her Nkita, Samira included, had been ordered away. The throne room was now occupied entirely by Aether Court archnobles, dressed in violet gowns and brocade doublets, and select members of Sylas’s personal guard, wearing formal male scale armor whose bulk would be entirely impractical on a battlefield. Among the courtiers were Kadeesha and Sylas’s kinsfolk from House Mercier. A court herald, a short man with sleek silver hair who wore a black doublet and black pants with violet stripes along the legs, stepped through the throne room’s doors. He announced, “Ladies, gents, and magnificent folkof the Aether Kingdom, I present to you His Royal Excellency, Rishaud the Conqueror—Son of House Timmu, Lord of Sunfire, Sovereign of the Hyperion Fae, High King of Nimani, and the betrothed of the daughter of His Royal Majesty, King Sylas, Lord of Aether Flames, King of the Aether Fae.”
The herald stepped aside after the tediously long-winded introduction and Kadeesha’s husband-to-be marched inside. Kadeesha’s father was a middle-aged male in fae terms; at five centuries old, he was considered an Elder. Rishaud the Conqueror had seen the sun that shone down on the continent of Nimani rise and set for over a thousand years and thus bore the label of an Ancient among faekind. Yet he looked no more an old man than Kadeesha’s father. Both could be mistaken for wickedly handsome males who’d long left adolescence behind at twenty and zero, but had not yet crossed their first century of life. Rishaud’s reddish-brown coils that hung loose around his shoulders were streaked with nary a gray hair. Kadeesha’s father’s stature was the towering, crane-like build of a man who avoided the sparring yards himself, but Rishaud owned the oxen mien of a warrior, of the titan in battle he was renowned for being. And true to his reputation, their liege lord stood in Sylas’s throne room draped in kingly golden robes, power cloaking him, radiating the fact that he was the most supreme authority in the space.
Kadeesha barely held back an unimpressed eye roll. Did her betrothed look good enough to eat, with his chiseled, imposing frame, rugged jawline, and face that rivaled the beauty of a Celestial? Yes. However, it was a fact that only inflamed her rage over marrying the prick. It was a cruel trick of the gods for an arrogant pig like Rishaud to possess a powerful, muscled body so clearly built for warmongeringandfucking a woman senseless. Not that Rishaud seemed like the sort to devote himself topleasing a lover, anyhow. She’d bet all the riches in the royal coffers that he was a selfish lover. Likely a quick finisher too. The image of Rishaud coming anywhere near her made Kadeesha ill, and she had no idea how she’d navigatethaton their wedding night.
The whole room—Sylas, his courtiers, and the few dozen male kinsfolk and guards Rishaud had brought with him—fell to their knees at once before the Hyperion king to acknowledge his superiority. Like their liege, every male in Rishaud’s retinue wore slim gold bars piercing the pointed tips of their ears—a marker of the Hyperion Kingdom’s warrior class, which sat at the apex of its caste system. Rishaud’s kinsmen wore white jackets and capes with gold stitching, and his royal guards wore pearlescent scale male armor with gold spikes adorning their shoulder, arm, and shin guards. As Rishaud’s kinsmen knelt, their capes fanned out across the throne room in a sea of untouchable white behind their liege.Everythinga fae king did was intended to make a statement. It was ludicrous posturing, but her tutors had ground the intricacies of royal politics into her throughout her youth and she’d become adept at recognizing and interpreting power plays. As Kadeesha knelt also, it felt like a kick in the teeth to bow.
This wasn’t the first time she’d been in the presence of the Hyperion king; their paths had either indirectly or directly crossed at many points while she grew up as an archprincess of the Aetherfolk. All those other times, even knowing she’d been betrothed to this man without her consent, she hadn’t felt the level of visceral repugnance that she did now, with her wedding ceremony to take place in less than twenty-four hours. Her impending nuptials were certainly why it took all of her will to drop to her knees and show proper deference before Rishaud.
Amplifying the bad taste he left in her mouth was the reason that the long-lived king needed a new wife in the first place. Each of Kadeesha’s four predecessors—all women who had been archprincesses of one of the Six Kingdoms that had been bound in matrimony to Rishaud over the past centuries—had ended up dead at some point during the course of their marriage. The rumors were it happened whenever Rishaud grew tired of a current wife and sought to treat himself to a new queen. Oh, he didn’t murder them in any capacity where their ancestral courts could lay blame at his feet—that would result in the vassal kingdoms they hailed from growing enraged and possibly becoming a thorn in his side. Rather, Rishaud’s first wife had suffered an untimely hunting accident; his second wife was an adventurer who’d stumbled upon a nasty magical curse while chasing a mythical fae relic; Rishaud’s third wife had died in childbirth, the breech baby dying and taking the life of the mother too; and his fourth wife, supposedly stricken withwomen’s afflictions, had jumped to her own death during an episode of melancholy. As Kadeesha bitterly wondered at the way Rishaud would try to kill her when he grew bored with his new toy, Rishaud let his kneeling supplicants linger in place for a ridiculous enough time to punctuate that he was an ass. “You all shall rise,” he finally spoke, his baritone voice booming out across the throne room.
Kadeesha hastily got to her feet. She remained standing instead of dropping back onto her throne while Rishaud strode up the violet runner along the center of the room and to the dais. His eyes locked with hers as he neared, never once straying. Kadeesha mused if it was some warped intimidation tactic, and decided she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking away. She knew males like Rishaud. Her own father was one. If they thought they could intimidate someone they consideredlesser, they would—if only as an amusing test of willpower. So Kadeesha locked her spine and gazed back at His Excellency, unimpressed. If her father caught it, he’d be livid. But it was too late to back down now. And though it was a small rebellion, it felt damn good.
Rishaud smirked as he ascended the dais and stopped right in front of her. “It’s lovely to see you again, Archprincess.” Rishaud spoke low, almost intimately. His emerald gaze roved down the length of her, unashamedly lascivious, lingering on all the places along her body that sported lush curves. “I look forward to our forthcoming union and all the fruitfulness that will follow,” he said, full of barely concealed innuendo that made Kadeesha’s skin crawl. He bowed to her, as polite as ever, and then turned to her father. Rishaud straightened to his full staggering height and slipped back into proper court etiquette, waiting silently while the lesser king addressed him first.
Sylas bowed at the waist. “Your Excellency, welcome back to the Aether demesne that is eternally loyal to the longevity of your reign.” After her father spoke the customary words, he added, “You honor me with your presence and with this union with my daughter.” Sylas finished by touching three fingers to his brow and then his heart to signal his eternal fealty to the exalted king.
Rishaud dipped his head, acknowledging the gesture. Then he kissed Sylas’s brow, indicating for the courtiers looking on that Sylas held the liege lord’s favor. “You honor me and the Celestials above with giving over your daughter’s hand to a union that is the will of the gods.” Rishaud spoke loudly so his voice carried for all inside the throne room to hear. When he grabbed Kadeesha’s hand, her palm violently burned where their fleshwas joined as if she’d just gripped a wasp nest, knowing she couldn’t dare struggle or let go.
Rishaud turned to the gathered nobles and reminded them of a fact that Kadeesha ceaselessly worked to forget. “Twenty and five years ago, the high clerics of the Six Kingdoms came together to bless the Aetherfolk’s new archprincess. During that ceremony, the great Celestials saw fit to impart a prophecy to their holy servants. Kadeesha Mercier was foretold to become high queen of a united Nimani and her future firstborn was foretold to be a strong son of dual royal blood who inherits an unfractured Nimani! With our wedding tomorrow, the will of the Celestials will start to be fulfilled and the Six Kingdoms will declare formal war on the Apollyon Court. With Kadeesha as my bride—and us vigorously working to sire a child”—Kadeesha almost became sick at that proclamation—“we will have the strength and favor of the Celestials behind us in our campaign to finally reclaim the territory from those faefolk who have refused to bow before me! It has been five centuries since the Celestials first anointed me as high king by allowing me to ascend as liege lord over all southern fae, but it will not be five more before the prophecy is fulfilled!”
The burning sensation in Kadeesha’s hand had turned into a blaze. But this time it was born of her own temper, of her aether magic begging to be let loose on this zealot who sought to use her and sire a child upon her—whether she desired one or not—to seize greater autocratic power. As devoted cheers erupted around the room, Kadeesha’s stomach soured.
Sylas motioned to the empty throne on Kadeesha’s right. “Please, Your Excellency, have a seat,” he told the male he was selling her off to.
And that’s exactly what this was: a sale. Kadeesha had to sit demurely by as Rishaud and Sylas ironed out the final and binding terms of the marriage contract, the two men’s courtiers bearing witness. The basic pillars of the contract were previously negotiated points lifted from her betrothal agreement. However, with the wedding finally upon them, Sylas had accrued a bit more power to bargain for additional advantageous terms, and Rishaud clearly expected the Aether king to exercise it. It was a dance among sovereigns who sold their daughters away that was as old as time. In the end, Sylas came away with more favorable trade terms for the Aether Kingdom, placing its status above what the other vassal dominions had in place with the Hyperion Kingdom. Sylas was also afforded a reduction in the tribute that he paid yearly, and he was promised that a sizable number of the Hyperion king’s army would be devoted to guarding Aether lands when war erupted between the Six Kingdoms and the Apollyon Court, or should civil war ever rend the Six Kingdoms apart. Rishaud further agreed to quadruple Kadeesha’s dowry in compensation for beholding what a lovely specimen she had turned into as an adult.
An adult they talked about as if she were cattle.
An urge hit Kadeesha to gut both males. To eviscerate them like the pigs they were right there on the thrones they perched upon. She relished the idea of attempting it—with the element of surprise on her side she might take out one of them at least—but even as she debated which of these so-called kings was most deserving, she knew she had little choice but to let her father barter her away like a pedigreed mare. Although …
