“Your bride? Gods-damn.” The mortal king passes a hand over his face and sighs. “I’ve just about lost count of all the men who want to take my Ilsevel as their own. And what exactly is your claim on her, Thalorkhir?”
“The claim of love.”
At this Larongar tosses back his head and laughs heartily, his growling voice rolling across the gallery. “Love?” he repeats, shaking his shaggy head. “I don’t believe in love. If there’s one thing this life has taught me, it is that love is the only persistent myth. A dead religion to which the masses still cling in the absence of all sound evidence.”
“And yet,” I respond, “I love your daughter.”
Larongar’s face hardens. Taking a step closer, he studies memore closely. “You’re not Thalorkhir. You’re that scrawny boy of his.” His eye runs up and down the breadth of my frame. “All grown up now, aren’t you?”
I offer no answer, and he draws nearer. He’s armed, I note; a great sword hangs from the scabbard at his jeweled belt. Not drawn as of yet, but I am aware of the way his fingers flex close to the hilt.
“Tell me what you’re really doing here, boy,” he demands. “Come to have your vengeance?” He tosses his head back, indicating Artoris. “That one there—he’s nothing more than Morthiel’s puppet. A favorite puppet, perhaps, but a puppet, nonetheless. Your real grievance is with Morthiel. And,” he adds with a wolfish smile, “with me, I suppose.”
“Taar,” Lyria’s voice speaks close to my ear, nearly drowned out by the roar of virulium throbbing in my veins.
“Why don’t you put her down and have a go at me?” Larongar persists. “I’m ready for you. Don’t think you’re going to wrest any confessions or apologies from me tonight. What happened to your world is a shame, but there’s no gains to be made in the pursuit of higher power without suffering and sacrifice.” He shrugs, a large, rolling gesture. “I always prefer if the suffering and sacrifice is handled by someone else, of course.”
Darkness closes in around the edges of my vision. I don’t need to take a fresh dose of virulium to give in to it—it’s simply there, lurking in my blood, waiting for me to give it free rein. And I want to. Oh gods, how I want to! I want to rip his head from hisshoulders and beat his body to a pulp with his own skull.
Larongar sees the fury my eyes reveal. He nods appreciatively. “Yes,” he murmurs, almost as though to himself. “Yes, this would be a good way to die: slaughtered by the son of a king I once wronged. There’s a poetic symmetry to it of which even the gods must approve. Only there’s one small problem.” He lowers his head, looking at me from under his knotted brow. “I did not wrong your father, boy. King Thalorkhir entered into our little arrangement with all eagerness. It was he who insisted I leave behind the Miphates, who threatened me with violence if I refused.”
I draw a sharp breath. For a moment the darkness seems to roll back, leaving me in a space of emptiness, without a ledge to stand on.
“In fact,” Larongar persists, “your father continues to participate in the ongoing corruption of Cruor.”
“What?” The word bursts from my throat like a bolt.
That wolfish smile of Larongar’s grows, revealing sharp canines. “Did you not know? Thalorkhir is at the heart of it all. Morthiel could not do what he has done without both the help and the blessing of the king. Without the power of that unicorn of his. No, no, if it is revenge you want, I am not the king from whom to seek it. I merely set up the introduction. Of course, I stand to gain should the two of them achieve their ultimate aims. And I should think I am owed much, considering the trouble I’ve been put through since from those wretched fae raiders! Your kind, of course, and those damnable Noxaurians.”
His words strike my ears like the hacking strokes of a battleax, but cannot find their way through my skull. There’s nothing in my head but a dull ringing and the urge to let nothing else through, no understanding, no comprehension.
But a memory is there—a vision of long ago. I see myself, hiding behind a gauzy curtain, listening to my parents’ voices rising and falling.
“I’m doing this for you,” my father declared. “For us!”
“No, Thalor,” Mother replied bitterly, tears choking her voice. “I never wanted any of this. I want back the man I married, and Licorna wants the king it once knew.”
“I shall be a better and greater king than any of my forefathers.” There was a manic lilt to his tone, an aggression that frightened my younger self. “Licorna will be great among the courts of Eledria, a true force to be reckoned with, not a laughing stock, hemmed on all sides by Unformed Lands, dependent on the licorneir for existence.”
“The licorneir are the heart of our world,” Mother argued. “Our very dependence upon them is what sets us apart—”
“I will not be set apart any longer.” The king’s voice is final. “I will pursue this, Lora, to whatever end, and damn all your petty fears. The great do not tremble in the face of fearful odds!”
“You sound like that Miphato.”
“I hope I do! He is a great man. And he will make me greater still beforethe end.”
With a ragged gasp, I pull myself back to the present, staggering so heavily, I nearly drop Ilsevel. Lyria lets out a yelp and rushes to catch her sister’s head and shoulders, but I manage to adjust my hold. My mind spins wildly as more intrusive memories seek to assert themselves, battering at all the bastions of repression I’ve so long fortified with my anger, my drive, my one, fixed goal.
Morthiel.So long he has loomed large in my mind, the specter of evil whom I must defeat if I hope to reclaim my world. The monster I am destined to destroy. He and Artoris and all those mages, ensconced behind Evisar’s walls.
But Father . . . he was always the paragon in my memory. Wise, noble, just, and brave. A victim, perhaps, but a heroic victim. A man upon whom I could model my own kingship, fashion my own perspective of virtue and valor.
I close my eyes. For just a moment I am back in those long-ago days, sitting on the round pommel of my father’s saddle, his strong arm wrapped around my waist as he urged Onoril, his great licorneir, to gallop across the open plains. I felt the mighty oneness of their bond, felt the generations of Licornyn kings who were similarly bound to Onoril throughout the ages of our world. And I knew that I too would one day join in that noble legacy.
Licorna is gone now. Destroyed.
Until this moment I believed my father and Onoril were lost along with it.
