Only time would tell which sat before him now.
Issuing a breathless howl of mad defiance, Sinadim clawed at Giaus’ wrist and left deep gouges in the king’s forearm. Lacerations Giaus ignored in favor of careful inspection.
Where the prince had been beaten and bruised, he was now nearly without blemish. Any injuries he’d earned were no longer obvious points of weakness to be exploited, his damaged shoulder working in sync with the other. The quiet crunch of cracked ribs no longer audible with Sinadim’s every breath.
But there was no recognition on the other’s face.
Only a disappointing madness Giaus had seen too many times before.
“Do I have to put you down, sweet prince?” he hummed, musing aloud as he adjusted his grip and pinned Sinadim to the loose shale by his throat. Content to watch a vein bulge at the other male’s temple, enjoying the sight of his claws where they left shadowed dimples. Lusting after the thought of extinguishing his rival, aching to spill Sinadim’s blood, he traced that bulging vein with his thumb and let his claw drag at tender skin.
Blinking, Sinadim’s eyes cracked open. “Didn’t”—he choked—“didn’t take you for suicidal, miner,” he spat.
Droll amusement bubbled from between Giaus’ lips, and with a careful touch, he pried Sinadim’s left eyelid all the way open to see what gleamed beneath. “I was a smith,” he reminded, absentmindedly.
It was there. Bright tendrils laced through an eye that had once been a vibrant green, and now held something…more.
Gold.
The same shade Giaus had seen in his own reflection now glared back at him from the prince’s working eye.
Evidence of one undeniable truth.
Sinadim had survived the killing fever—a fever that still held Renegade in deadly, merciless claws.
He couldn’t help but to send a forlorn glance back. Down. To look upon the delicate features of the female he’d risked everything to claim. A female he couldn’t bear to lose, but one he may have killed all the same.
Lashing out, Sinadim took advantage of the lapse in attention and kicked, trying to catch Giaus high between his legs. Straining to free himself, his eyes rolled and he too found where Renegade lay in the dark. Limp, helpless, and yet, the heady scent of battle-ready pheromones rose up between them as the prince reached for the female theybothcalled mate. Sinadim’s mane a full, shivering flare of uncontrolled, sweat-damp fur that warned of his willingness to fight for the right to rut their queen.
To die for breeding rights.
And so Giaus asked again, “Are you with me, general?” His tone mocking and cruel, his smile one that was only half as cutting as the claws that dimpled the prince’s throat.
“Give her to me!” Sinadim bellowed, spittle spraying over his lips. “She isdeath,” he spat, and coughed until his face purpled and Giaus was made to loosen his grip or watch him strangle. “Let me taste my doom,” he gasped, and clawed at his scars. Opening old wounds, even as the Trax worked to close them.
And then, without so much as blinking, Sinadim’s head tipped back. His chin jutting out, toward Renegade, and Giaus watched the prince draw a breath through parted lips. Watched him paint her scent along the roof of his mouth—and knew.
He no longer stood alone asother.
“What do you see?” Giaus asked, tone a hypnotic lure meant to entice.
“Gold,” Sinadim breathed without missing a beat. “Liquid, honeyed gold spilling from her cunt. It’smine,” he howled, thrashing anew. “My birthright! My punishment! Give her to me! She dances forme”—he retched but didn’t slow—“begs for my knot. Ineedit,” he rasped, ranting but more lucid with every passing moment. “Let me quench my thirst and drown in a river of slick before she runs dry… before… before the spears fall…”
Giaus’ head tipped to the side, and a simple, placid, “No,” was his only response.
Kicking again, Sinadim’s back arched and thumped hard against the wall. Easily restrained, he was forced to pause when Giaus’ forearm found his throat. A shudder rippled through Sinadim’s muscle, chattering between his molars, but still, he snarled, “She’smine!”
Surging into action with an ease that should have warned Sinadim of the danger, but didn’t, Giaus flipped the fallen prince around. Broke his eye contact with Renegade’s limp almost-corpse, and made him face the wall. “You think to take her from me, boy? That you can?”
“I will have your bones torn from your shins!” Sinadim howled. “Stripped free of muscle if only so I might stuff your loose meat with hot coals and the coveted Karahmet blend of mirr andenmote. Spiced to perfection,” he spat. “The nerves will be left intact so you can feel it”—a barking cough that was both dry and bubbling—“so you can feel your final meal as it cooks past medium rare. So it kills the parasites writhing in your filthy commoner blood—”
The air shivered with warning an instant too late.
Pausing only to mash his royal cheek into the cutting edge of loose shale, Giaus hauled one arm behind Sinadim’s back and wrenched that wrist high between his shoulder blades. Not stopping until bone ground against cartilage and he was rewarded by an involuntary hiss of pain—only then did Giaus kick Sinadim’s ankles wide as they might go. Grinding the other into the stone with the press of his hips, his weight leveraged against Sinadim’s hamstrings. His lower back.
All of it done in one slick, merciless motion.
Grotesque and hideous, it was poetry. An art performed by a master of carnage, a symphony sung in the whine of ligaments stretching too far, in the knuckle of a joint made to rollalmostout of place.
