In front of me, the main floor gleamed, like a swirl of bright paint with an occasional burst of glitter. The mage who had conjured the butterflies was gone. The dancers were back, wearing golden dresses that would’ve been skimpy back home and were scandalous here. They danced more slowly this time, framing a man in the middle of the stage like flowers.
The man was shockingly beautiful, tall, lean, dressed in black, his skin the color of deep ochre, his black hair worn in a long braid over his shoulder. He sat in a chair, leaning a strange stringed instrument against himself like a cello player and drawing a bow across the strings, seemingly lost to the music. The melody that spilled out sounded almost like a person singing, beautiful and haunting.
The main floor was about half full. Most of the patrons were men in expensive clothes, although I counted four women in beautiful gowns. Three of them watched the musician, while the fourth flirted with a handsome man at her table. The man wore red and white—one of the Garden’s attendants.
Three men emerged from the entrance tunnel. The first, dark haired, tan, and muscular, had to be a bodyguard of some kind. He wore dark pants, mid-calf boots, and a black doublet with silver embroidery. He walked in, scanned the floor as if he were looking for threats, and stepped to the side.
Another man followed, with a second bodyguard close behind. He was about six foot two or six foot three and solid, with broad shoulders and a wide pale face, made wider by a chin strap beard. His light brown hair, probably naturally wavy, fell on the left side of his face in a fringe cut. He wore black as well, but his outfit must’ve cost about ten times more than his bodyguard’s.
His boots were made of some leather-like material I had never seen before, with large scales forming gold and burgundy patterns. It looked like he’d skinned a couple of small fantasy dragons and wrapped their hides over his feet. His black trousers flared above his boots, and a small decorative belt crossed each of his thighs, with large buckles that were probably gold. He wore a red undertunic with golden embroidery and an elaborate black doublet with more gold embroidery. His black belt was wide and studded with gold. A scarlet cloak edged with black dripped from his shoulders but left his chest exposed, presumably so everyone would note the gold chain around his neck.
His clothes were too loud. I’d read that phrase before, but I’d never seen it so clearly illustrated. Nothing he wore was garish or gaudy, quite the opposite. Everything was exquisitely made and tasteful, but every individual part of his outfit, from boots to cloak, was a statement piece with its own voice. Put together, they screamed in unison.
The woman in the fairy queen dress who had waylaid me earlier approached him, giving him a deep bow probably reserved for Big Spenders.
Lord Fancypants ignored her.
She murmured something and waited. A moment passed. Another. He turned toward her, giving me a view of his back and his family crest embroidered on his cloak—a golden shield edged by a black chain with the black head of a monster in the center. The head was depicted in profile: a huge reptilian mouth gaping to display a forest of sharp teeth, a long thick neck, and needle spikes protruding from the back of the neck. Bright red blood dripped from the monster’s mouth . . .
A kroast.
Ice drenched me.
A black kroast on a field of gold and scarlet.Ulmar Hreban.
I gripped the wooden rail so tight, my fingers hurt.
Before the end of the year, this man would claw his way to unchecked power. He would set Kair Toren on fire. The capital would burn for three days, while the soldiers under his command rampaged through the streets, maiming, raping, and killing as they wanted with nobody to stop them. People would call it the Night of a Thousand Fires. After he was done with the capital, Hreban would lead the King’s Army to suppress a rebellion and settle personal scores. He would demolish villages and murder thousands with inhuman cruelty.
But before he did all that, he would kill Galiene of Sosna.
Very few people knew that Galiene had a daughter. She had given birth to her quietly five years ago. Her father wasn’t in the picture. Galiene chose to raise her child away from the Garden.
Hreban wanted Galiene. Not because he loved her, he wasn’t capable of that, but because other men wanted her and couldn’t have her. He had more money than anyone else in the kingdom except for the royal family, and he liked the symmetry of the richest man and the most desirable woman. I was in the first chapter, which meant he hadn’t approached Galiene yet, but I knew what happened in the books. When Galiene refused to become a trophy, he bribed her daughter’s caretakers and stole the child.
Galiene became his slave. She did everything he asked, while he tortured her with glimpses of her daughter. If she was good, she would get half an hour. If she failed to please him, he would punish the child instead of her. He broke that woman so completely, Hade, who had raised her since Galiene was fifteen, didn’t recognize her when she saw her on the street.
This went on for almost eight months. Even Hade, with all of her connections, could do nothing about it. The Hreban Family was one of the Eight Great Families. He had too much influence, too much money, and too many hired soldiers, while in the eyes of Kair Toren, Galiene was a commoner who worked in the sex trade. They wouldn’t call her a “sex worker.” They called her a whore.
And when Hreban finally got the status he wanted, he decided that Galiene was beneath his new station in life. His bodyguards killed her daughter, stabbed Galiene, and set the house on fire. She died choking on smoke and cradling her child’s corpse.
Hreban turned away from the attendant, his expression flat, his mouth down-turned in an adult man–pout. Something had displeased him. The woman in the fairy dress hovered nearby, waiting for something.
I scrutinized his face. A slab of a jawline, wide mouth, hooded dark eyes. He was forty-two years old and looked his age.
I graduated with a degree in political science, and before I switched to that major, I studied criminal justice. Both of my majors taught me that monsters in human skin didn’t look like monsters. They looked bland and ordinary. I knew this, but some part of me, raised on Disney and anime villains, expected to see the inner brutality of Ulmar Hreban’s soul reflected in his face. I subconsciously wanted him to look like a villain, because evil that violent and cold should have to come with some sort of warning label.
But no. Despite his finery, Hreban himself looked perfectly unremarkable, even mildly attractive in that particular way that resulted from a lifetime of wealth, good food, and expert grooming. If you put him in a suit and trimmed his hair, he would pass for an aging tech bro about to give a TED talk on the power of AI and the miracles of angel investing. By the end of the second book, he had spilled so much blood, it could fill a lake, but if I had run into him in a grocery store, I wouldn’t have given him a second glance.
“A gilded toad,” a male voice said next to me.
I almost jumped.
A man leaned on the column on the other side of the rail, barely a foot away. His pale gray cloak hid him from top to bottom, but he had left his hood down. Tall, around thirty, light skin with a hint of a tan, longish brown hair, defined jaw, strong eyebrows, a regal nose . . .
Handsome. Like should-be-on-a-poster-somewhere handsome. His tired old cloak and his face seemed mismatched. Like bumping into a stranger on a crowded street and catching a glimpse of an elven prince under the hood of a worn-out sweatshirt. His eyes were striking, a rich golden hazel. I had no idea who he was, but he had just called Hreban a toad in public and didn’t seem concerned about it.
The man leaned forward slightly, shortening the distance between us. Suddenly I was uneasy. The ornate wooden rail barely came up to my waist. It didn’t feel like enough of a barrier.
