“What I see is all kinds of crazy!” Brand glared at Ember. “Do something with your husband!”
Ember screwed her face up as she watched Bastien closely. He had a plan. She didn’t know what, but she trusted him. “It’s okay.”
“Not okay,” Ash said with a note of panic in her tone.
And still Bastien was completely calm.
Even when the door splintered and guards poured into the room to surround them.
“Arrest them!” Barnabas shoved Tasi toward the guard nearest him.
The instant he did, Bastien let fly his axe, faster than anyone could blink.
Faster than a single guard could shoot.
With unerring aim, it embedded straight between Barnabas’s eyes.
Tasi shrieked as his blood splattered all over her.
The guards took aim for Bastien.
“Drop it!” he snarled at them. His regal Cabarro tone was filled with so much inherited command that they obeyed instinctively.
He glared at them. “Now you will bow before your monidar. Long reign His Royal Eminence Bastien, High Monidar Cabarro!”
They hesitated.
Until Ember’s sisters took up the chant and bowed to him. The others followed suit immediately.
Bastien held his hand out to her. “My monidara?”
That title sent a chill down her spine. And she had no idea how to address him in turn.
But she took his hand.
He tucked it into the crook of his elbow, then turned toward the captain of his uncle’s guards. “Get the body out. Call housekeeping and have this room cleaned and fumigated.” He jerked his chin toward the girl. “Call her parents and make sure she’s returned to them safely. I’ll have my attorneys contact them in the morning. Round up the rest of the former tyrant’s family and bring them to the throne room. If Neville so much as sneezes, kill him with impunity. And find the bitch Alura Cabarro.”
With those words, he led Ember and her sisters to the throne room.
Every step of the way, she kept waiting for someone to stop them.
They didn’t. In her heart, she knew that he was their leader. Rightfully so.
Still, this was terrifying.
More so because he was under a League death sentence.
As soon as they entered the throne room, Kindel cast her gaze around the enormous, gilded walls that were decorated with thousands of formal portraits of Bastien’s ancestors. “Uh… is it just me or was this too easy?”
Bastien let out an evil laugh. “Day’s not over, love. League will order me arrested as soon as this is reported, and Neville will report it immediately.”
“Then why are we here?” Cin asked, wide-eyed. “Shouldn’t we be fortifying our positions? Arming ourselves? Running?”
Bastien headed to the computer nearest him. “So that I can sendthisover the official network.…” He played the file he’d videoed of his brother’s outburst that showed Quin was alive and that Barnabas had been the one to orchestrate the murders of their family. “Once the Overseer sees that, she’ll open a formal inquiry. I should be absolved and my Ravin status removed. But only if Neville is dead.”
They heard shots fired.
Ember and her sisters drew their blasters.
