Chapter Five
MALACHI STEPPED INTO THE ROOM HE’D RENTEDfor the night at Oleander House after the Aether Kingdom’s archprincess dismissed him from hers. That moment hadn’t occurred until dawn was approaching, and it’d seemed a difficult task for Kadeesha Mercier.
Yes, he had known who she was from the moment he had seen her sauntering over to him. Malachi had loyal eyes inside each of the Six Kingdoms, and when he first set his plan in motion, one of those spies had informed him that the princess often indulged in a pleasure club, which she secretly owned, no less. Malachi could admit it was a detail that stoked his curiosity about the Aether princess. It was one that made her infinitely more interesting than most of the prissy nobles of the Six Kingdoms who might patronize such an establishment but dared not venture to own one. Malachi had gambled and gambled correctly that the princess would seek sanctuary in her club on the eve before a marriage she didn’t desire. It was a motivation Malachi could understand entirely, given his own impending nuptials. He’d bet his crown on the fact that the headstrong princess hadn’t intended for their tryst to go on as long as it did, however. Hewas enough of a cocky bastard to be infinitely smug about it. A grin might’ve tugged at his lips.
“You had that good a time, huh?” Jakobi, one of his Cadre, was in the room’s parlor along with the other four fae who comprised Malachi’s inner circle. Jakobi was lying on his back on a chaise with his legs kicked up over the armrest. The book he’d been reading—some ancient volume of recorded folktales Trystin had found and passed along—lay open against Jakobi’s hulking chest. The male was nearly as tall as Malachi, and his feet were only a few inches shy of brushing the plush carpet beneath them.
Malachi shrugged while crossing the room to sit in an oversized leather armchair across from Jakobi. “A gentleman never fucks and tells.”
Jakobi roared in laughter. It placed the dimple in his right cheek on display, a thing his brother often wielded to the effect of maximum charm. “Great—so you can tell us. Because I know you’re not referring to yourself as a gentleman, right?”
“Fuck off,” he told Jakobi. It only made the asshole chortle harder. His silver-filigreed locs shook and the gray of his eyes shined with wetness from the force of his antics.
“I’ve got an inquiry as well,” Kiyun said from a sofa, his legs crossed at the ankle and resting on a foot table. As usual, he twirled a knife back and forth between his fingers, giving his perpetually restless mind something to focus on.
“What?” Malachi asked, already seeing their bullshit was going to keep up.
Kiyun raised a thick eyebrow, his hazel gaze twinkling with mirth. He stopped twirling the knife long enough to brush his long red locs out of his face. “Is she still dying in a few hours with the rest of her court? Or does that little grin you swaggered insporting mean the archprincess has bought herself a reprieve?” There was no judgment in Kiyun’s question; the absence didn’t make him less of a prick for asking it.
Malachi gave Kiyun a look and let his murderous gaze speak for itself.
Kiyun scoffed. He irreverently pointed the blade end of his knife at Malachi. “It’s a valid question that I’d like to know the answer to. Are we proceeding with our plan of murdering the woman whose scent is all over you, my man?”
Malachi pinched the bridge of his nose. His brother was wearing on his patience. He moved to snapyes, and be done with this absurd line of questioning. But gratingly, the word wouldn’t form.However much you enjoyed yourself, however enticing she is, and regardless of how much you’d like to sink inside her again, it changes nothing, he impressed upon his damn cock that was thinking with a mind of its own. Straying from carefully arranged plans invited screwups.
Before he could respond, another voice chimed in. “The info passed to us regarding the princess did reveal she despises her upcoming marriage and the Hyperion king. She may have come to despise her father also for forcing the union upon her. Technically, we only need to kill the Hyperion king in order to put an end to the belief that the Celestials have ordained him to rule a united Nimani that includes our court,” Zayvier stated smoothly and without Kiyun’s heckling tone. He leaned against a bust of Ishan, the Celestial god of ecstasy and passion, that rested on a wall shelf near the door. Among his Cadre and Malachi himself, Zayvier was arguably the most staid and the one with the most scruples. The hard set of Zayvier’s square jaw and the disapproval in his ice-blue stare madehis opinion on the matter plain. Zayvier hadn’t been entirely on board from the start with him using the princess on the eve of her wedding to sow a chaos that would help them strike down her husband-to-be and father the subsequent day. But loyal to Malachi to a fault, like the rest of his Cadre, his brother had agreed to the plan. Malachi rolled his eyes, because it was just like Zayvier to try to subtly prod Malachi down a different route so he remained loyalandgot what he wanted in the end.
I’m not budging.
It was another thing Malachi should’ve explicitly stated, and yet it too didn’t get uttered. Instead, his mind went to the way the princess’s body—a maddening blend of ample curves and softness—had felt like bliss beneath him. And riding on top of him. And with her pressed up against the wall and him behind her …
Sinking into her, driving into her, had been heaven. It’d left him entirely twisted each time she moaned, screamed his name, came on his cock. Jakobi was right about one thing: Her scent did cling to him. It reminded him of the sweet, honeyed notes of violets of paradise—an interesting comparison since the wild blooms that grew on cliffsides in the Yunna Mountains, which sealed his people off from the Six Kingdoms, were alluringly beautiful on the outside but deadly when taken in even the smallest of doses. This observation rang infinite alarms as it should—and it made Kadeesha Mercier more enchanting.
What the hell was wrong with him? Whatever draw he had to her, whatever explosive thing had been between them during the multiple orgasms he gave her, none of it should’ve mattered. He had an objective, a cause, and he’d never been a man who thought with any head except the one attached to hisshoulders outside of the bedroom. Especially not where politics, the safety and freedom of his people, and the beginning of a vengeance he’d long awaited were concerned. Then there was the matter that it wasn’t only his vengeance that was coming to fruition; it was all of the Cadre’s vengeance. The six of them were in this room now because while they might’ve been mere acquaintances in the first part of their youth, they’d come together and bonded fiercely after his parents’ assassinations. For Malachi’s father and mother hadn’t been the only Apollyons to die that day. His father’s old high cleric had sent assassins after each cardinal bloodline noble that comprised his father’s inner court. Those assassins had been successful, and Malachi’s Cadre consisted of their children. Like him, his Cadre were survivors, orphans, and the very hellish creatures the remaining Cleric’s Rebellion and the Six Kingdoms would have to reckon with.
He surveyed the whole of his Cadre, reflecting on the shared bloody past that had forged unbreakable bonds between them. Kiyun and Jakobi continued to wear smirks that said they didn’t give a true fuck what the princess’s fate would be—their only stock in the matter was jacking with Malachi about it. Assholes.
The others …
“You all have been quiet,” Malachi said to Dedrick and Shionne.
The slate-eyed, golden-haired Dedrick scrubbed a hand along the top of his short, wavy hair. He’d made an end table beside Jakobi’s chaise into his seat. “Because I don’t have a different opinion to express than what we decided before we departed the Apollyon Court.” His bluish-silver gaze darkened with the barely leashed violence that always underscored Dedrick’s mien. “My vote, if we’re taking a formal one, is that she dies as we’dalready intended—and all the folks present belonging to the sodding Aether and Hyperion courts do too.”
“I’m not even sure why this discussion is needed,” Shionne said from where she leaned against a windowsill along the north-facing wall. She had her hands shoved in pockets sewn into her black tunic. Behind her was a large oval window made of purple glass. It wasn’t a security risk; one of the main exports of the Aether Kingdom was purple glass that was charmed to allow a clear view from one side and impede viewing via the other. The raven-haired fae woman with honey-colored eyes turned to peer out the window that allowed a sweeping view of Cinta, the Aether Dominion’s central city and seat of power. “I want every last monarch and noble of all the Six Kingdoms dead.” She pressed a finger to the glass, pointing to the glittering palace with conical turrets topped with spires in the distance. “My only contribution to this useless chat is to express that I despise the custom among the Six Kingdoms where only the bride’s and groom’s bloodlines and courtiers attend weddings. If they truly played nicer together and the Six Kingdoms came together as one to attend their liege lord’s wedding, we could just be done with this now.” The temperature inside the room had dropped to the bitter, unsurvivable temps found among the peaks of the Yunnas.
“Damn it, woman!” Jakobi shrieked. “Reel it in. I’m freezing my balls off.”
“Get over it,” Shionne told Jakobi without turning away from the palace she had in her crosshairs.
Jakobi growled something under his breath that he was wise enough not to state louder with Shionne descending into such a mood.
“The princess dies.”
Malachi finally forced it out. It was part of their plan, part of their collective vengeance, and they’d stick with it.
KADEESHA HAD INTENDEDto sneak back into the palace well before the sun rose. However, it had been an arduous battle to pry herself away from Malachi’s side—or, rather, off his cock. When she approached the palace gates, the sky was a dusky rose gold from the sun peeking over the horizon. With Leisha and Samira in tow, Kadeesha beamed charmingly at the pair of guards on duty. Leisha swaggered up to one of them and passed him a pouch that had a sum of runi coins inside that doubled his wages for the year. Leisha gifted the same to his partner.
“You never saw us this morning,” Kadeesha ordered the guards. She held each of their stares in turn, letting them know the penalty for deciding anything otherwise. Her father might not place much stock in Kadeesha and her Nkita, but they had proven themselves a superior unit of well-trained, vicious warriors, and other folks in the dominion were smart enough to recognize it. Case in point, the guards visibly blanched.
