Malachi gifted her with a glacial smile. It was a clear warning she was testing his patience. She glanced away, uninterested in any such warnings. He should know her better than that by now. When she felt she’d ignored him long enough, she gave the Apollyon king a smile that told him precisely that.
“Leisha is a part of your court. I am sure she updated you before seeking me out.” Malachi grunted.
Kadeesha smiled wider. Then, she casually said, “The Stone Warden’s daughter might’ve had a charm placed on her that restricts her from speaking of what she knows of her mother’s involvement in treasonous actions, but Lord Prime Tareek did not take such wise care with his own ilk.”
Malachi nearly hid the eagerness that flashed across his features before Kadeesha glimpsed it. Yet he hadn’t wiped the expression quite fast enough. “Before Lady Keeya’s death, I made her name the lord primes who conspire against you and tell me of the treasonous actions they’ve taken alongside the Cleric’s Rebellion. I also got the name of the rebellion’s new leader—someone who is a great threat to you and your kingdom, and I can promise you are entirely ignorant of their identity. This is information you want very, very badly.” She practically cooed that last bit, and she could tell by the tick in his jaw that she was right. Now almost purring, she said, “I will tell you all I’ve learned …”
“In exchange for what?” he growled out.
“In exchange, I want your vow that when the battle with Rishaud and the larger Six Kingdoms is over,ifyou emerge victorious and install yourself as high king, you will leave Aether territory alone.”
“If?”
Ignoring that, she continued, “We will exist independently and the only monarch the Aetherfolk will recognize is me as their queen.” She felt the heat of her mother staring a hole into the side of her head once she’d finished, heard Yashira’s disapproving words in her mind that she was witlessly passing up a greater opportunity.Make him swear an oath to take you for a bride, foolish girl, and make you a high queen.But she had already decided to dismiss that alternative course. Like she’d told Yashira, she didn’t want to be high queen of Nimani. She didn’t give a damn about the rest of the cursed continent. She cared about the Aether Kingdom and its folk, and this was the way to securing its freedom if Rishaud fell and Malachi replaced him as another brutal tyrant.
At first, Malachi didn’t respond straightaway. His gaze, which had somehow darkened even more, simply pinned her in place. Then, he said quietly, “If you have knowledge about a new leader of the Cleric’s Rebellion that alone is enough to make me place you in chains, drag you to a dungeon, and torture the information out of you if you refuse to freely give it up.”To stress the threat, shadows locked around her wrists and ankles like manacles, their presence stinging with the intensity of a million slender ice picks digging into her skin. It was the same trick he’d performed when interrogating the Stone Warden’s soldiers. Only she wasn’t a lowly soldier. Purple flames encircled Malachi’s shadow manacles, blazing at her wrists and ankles. She hated that she broke out in a sweat and that it took every bit of willpower she possessed to accomplish it, but she attacked Malachi’s shadows with the full brunt of her power, with every drop she could dredge up, and her flames burned through the shadow manacles until there was nothing chaining her in place.
She sneered Malachi’s way, held up her wrists and rotated them. “I will not and cannot be bullied,” she asserted to the asshole. “I am a monarch too. I may not have been formally crowned yet, but IamtheAether queen.All of the power my father possessed by way of being the Aether land’s recognized monarch, that power and magic passed to me upon his death.
“Further, that information is onlyowedto you if you are my monarch. You are not. I arrived at and remain in this court as an ally against a common foe, remember? I am not your subject, and not subject to Apollyon laws”—she once again showed him her wrists—“or magic.”
Malachi’s face was slack. And she had to have been seeing things, because she swore she’d glimpsed something akin to being impressed before he’d smoothed it into its current stony expression.
“Your court, like the rest of the cursed southern courts, has crimes to pay for,” Malachi said menacingly.
Kadeesha fisted her hands. “Wehavepaid for them, if you recall. Sylas is dead,” she reminded Malachi. “You orchestrated the events that led to Rishaud killing him, his inner council, and theAether nobles closest to him. I’d say any debt my court owes you has been extracted from us withrivers of blood. So you will leave us be. You’ve already hobbled us. Promise me the independence to restabilize things for the innocents within my court. To help those who had nothing to do with your parents’ deaths get on with their lives after you brought a massacre to our doorsteps that ended with Rishaud seizing direct control of my folk.”
“And why would I do such a thing for an enemy court?” Malachi scoffed.
“Trust me, the information I alone have is more than worth it. If you remain ignorant of it, and obviously you haven’t done a very good job of rooting it out, it places your court and the entirety of the Apollyonfolk in considerable peril. You stand to lose not only your crown, but your people may lose their entire way of existing. Life as the Apollyon fae know it will catastrophically shift, I assure you. But if that isn’t enough for you to bend on the remaining vengeance you believe you’re owed, then I will also remind you that I protected one of your striplings during the blast above my own sister. You said you owed me a debt for it. Well, consider this me collecting. My request is that you accept my current bargain: the name of the power that is behind the Cleric’s Rebellion in exchange for leaving my court alone in the future.”
Kadeesha tracked the slow breath Malachi dragged in through his nose. Watched the way his massive bare chest rose and then fell. “If I agree to anything, it will not be an open-ended oath of no harm against you and your kingdom that extends in perpetuity. Ifyourecall, Princess, your court’s monarchdidparticipate in the last attempt of the southern kings to shatter my court. And there were many times before that too where the southern kings have tried to dismantle my court.”
“What do the southern kings have to do with me and my kingdom?” Kadeesha snapped. “Especially when your aim is to kill them all. What they have done or might do is of no consequence.”
“It isn’t about the kings,” Malachi returned. “It’s about history, and the long-held hostilities between the northern and southern faefolk that I’d be foolish to forget. Let’s say I did swear the expansive oath you want. Even if I demanded in return thatyou, as the Aether monarch, will never conspire to raise arms against my court, harm the common populace of Apollyon fae, or encroach upon Apollyon territory, that would not apply to any ruler who succeeds you. You’d be the first queen among a dynasty of male rulers. No matter how formidable a foe you are, you’ll do battle within your own court to keep that crown, Princess. But I do look forward to watching you try,” he said silkily and then paused to let the taunt fully sink in.
Kadeesha clenched her teeth at his correct description of the challenges she’d ultimately face within her own court. It was, after all, one of the reasons she’d only ever been a placeholder heir for Sylas.
When Malachi continued, he pronounced, “Here’s myonlyoffer: In exchange for the information you claim to possess, I’ll swear an oath to leave the Aether Kingdom out of my current conquest campaign. Your lands will be afforded independence and the Apollyon crown will recognize you as the sole and independent sovereign monarch of the Aether Kingdom. However, beyond that, Iwillstill engage with you—or whatever monarch who wears the Aether crown—as I would with any other adversarial monarch.”
His declaration made the gist of the concessions he was and wasn’t willing to grant crystal clear. He might allow himselfto be barred from outright forcing the Aether Kingdom into complete subjugation, but any skirmishes, machinations, or strikes aimed at destabilizing or hobbling the Aether Kingdom remained fair game as long as the intent was never actually to gain dominion over the Aetherfolk—which also left total annihilation on the table if Malachi ever decided to go there.
She cursed the whole Celestials-damned situation. Malachi’s counter-bargain was so much less than the protections she’d sought to attain. Yet she discerned from the hard, immovable set of his stature that they truly were the only terms Malachi would agree to. And at the end of the day, at least this latest negotiation left her kingdom out of Malachi’s conquest dreams—for now. “I accept those adjusted terms,” Kadeesha said after digesting only achieving a partial victory. She’d just have to make it be enough, because unlike Malachi—or Rishaud—her goal wasn’t domination or warmongering. It was peace and prosperity for her people, which she had a better chance of achieving in the long term if she got Malachi to leave Aether lands out of his current campaign. As far as the threat Malachi would still pose in the future … that just reinforced thatnothinghad changed between them. They were enemies, and Malachi was the one who had to be annihilated eventually.
For the present, all that was left to do was formally swear the oaths. Yet, silence stretched between them, and Kadeesha could see Malachi still having to weigh it all out in his mind, still needing to turn it over and be at peace with the concessions. She waited quietly while he came to the conclusion that his hatred and desire for full vengeance against the Cleric’s Rebellion was greater than collecting power over a court that was entirely insignificant to him. A bit of the weight she’d been bearing since this whole wretched mess started lifted from her chest whenMalachi spoke the vow that barred him from seizing control of the Aether Kingdom.
As soon as she spoke the returned vow to freely hand over the information he wanted, the air crackled with the ancient magic that bound them both to the promises they’d made. When the magic dissipated, Malachi crossed his arms over his chest, dismissed Yashira, and ordered Kadeesha, “Start talking.”
Keeping to her end of the deal, she told him about Rishaud leading the Cleric’s Rebellion and how Lady Keeya said he’d come to do so. She also told him about the Stone Warden’s agreement with Rishaud that would make her a vassal queen of a newly acquired Apollyon dominionifthe bastard kept to his word, although he wouldn’t. She knew Rishaud well enough to know he had not deigned to swear any oaths and had forced Lady Niyarre to enter into the deal on blind desperate faith alone. Finally, Kadeesha told Malachi about Lady Niyarre’s aim to become high queen as well.
Malachi listened silently and by the time Kadeesha finished, the temperature in the room was subzero. Lady Keeya’s body beside her feet had turned a hideous blue, her skin a dried-out and cracked shell that the coldness had sucked all the moisture from. As it was, Kadeesha had to set her aether magic alight in her blood to keep from appearing as a living version of the same wraithlike husk. With arms still crossed, Malachi stood before her entirely unaffected by the brutal, unsurvivable coldness. His eyes no longer held any traces of brown or gold. They were savage pools of onyx black. Shadows writhed along his body and at his back. However, he only coolly stated, “I thank you for the information,Aether queen.” Then, he held out his arm and told her, “Come. We have a challenge and subsequent executions to attend, which now cannot be contested. Lady Niyarre thinksto sit upon my throne, so she is mine. But I will give you the courtesy of offering Lord Tareek’s head to you, if you desire to claim it.”
Kadeesha glanced at the lord prime’s daughter with a gaping hole burned into her chest. The temptation sparked in her veins to take Malachi up on his offer, to make the male who had tried to kill her, and used his own daughter as a throwaway tool, burn too. Burn worse. The more reserved, less bloodthirsty part of her that she usually let hold the reins balked at Kadeesha spiraling further into the bloodlust and the need to let her fire rage freely. The need to scorcheverythingthat induced fury. People had tried to murder her twice now. It couldn’t stand. She had to start shaping how others viewed her, here and now. The possibilities were infinite of what folks could say about how she ruled and who and what she was as the Aether queen. And whatever that overall sentiment was, it would be one that either cast her as vulnerable,as prey, among a species whose ruling class was composed of immortal predators or it would cast her as an apex predator herself. The latter was imperative to rule the Aetherfolk best, to keep them safe from external threats, and to keep those she treasured the most—those who would be her inner circle, including Leisha and Samira and the rest of her Nkita—safe.
With all that firmly in mind, Kadeesha slipped her arm into Malachi’s and told the Apollyon king, “I do not want your lord prime’s head.”
“No?”
