“What is this ungodly madness?” Bart actually stabbed at the buckling floor with his sword. Never let it be said that man ever allowed his common sense get in the way of his violence.
Sick to his stomach, Kalder knew what caused the commotion, but he was praying with everything he had that he was wrong. Whatever doubts he might have had that he could be mistaken onlylasted until he met Muerig’s gaze across the crowded room, where half their people were fleeing for shelter.
Nay, he wasn’t mistaken. At all.
Muerig was doing this. And he was gloating over it.
In fact, his brother sat at the banquet table with an unfounded serenity. The kind only two beings held.
Those relegated to death.
And those who’d orchestrated the requiem.
Kalder swallowed hard. “What have you done, Muery?”
Muerig took a slow, steady drink from his cup before he stood and smiled with a coldness that only added to the chill Kalder felt. “You would be proud of me, brother. I learned from you.”
Confused and angry, Kalder couldn’t fathom what he meant by that. “Learned what?”
“How to protect me own arse. First and foremost. Damn all the others, as they don’t matter, isn’t that right?”
Kalder was aghast. He’d never been the kind to throw others to the wolves. That crime was his family’s specialty. Not his. “What have you done?” he repeated in a harsher tone.
“Made the decision I knew you wouldn’t. Or rather one I wasn’t about to risk leaving in your miserable hands. Not after what happened the last time my life was at your disposal, and that was for a bitch whose name you hadn’t bothered to learn before you shagged her. You think I don’t know what you’d do to me now for a piece of arse you actually favor? As far as I’m concerned, that slag-bitch can have your whore, brother. Be damned if I’ll stand idly by and let Vine takemeagain! Whatever blood sacrifice Vine wants from you, shecan have with my blessing!” After those words were spoken, Muerig rose up like a tidal wave, changing forms from his Myrcian body into something that resembled Chthamalus’s Barnakian race. Only he was much larger, much deadlier.
“Holy mother of God,” Rosie breathed as Simon said something a little more colorful while Kat, Valynda, Sancha, and Belle took up positions to attack.
But that wasn’t what really concerned Kalder. He saw what they were all missing.
The wall behind them that was buckling to the Malachai’s army…
The one that was about to trap them squarely between the two opposing forces and end all their lives, once and for all.
11
“Kalderan!”
Kalder jerked awake at the sound of his father’s furious tone that carried plainly down the length of their entire massive hall. His heart raced frantically for no apparent reason, and his body was covered with a clammy sweat. The fringes of a peculiar dream hung on in his mind, but he couldn’t quite remember it.
“Kal! Damn it, boy, where are you!”
Still not fully alert, he staggered from the bedand scrambled for his clothes. He had no idea what had his father in such a pique so early, but years of experience had taught him the best course of action was not to keep the beast waiting whenever he was in such a foul temper.
“Kalder?”
He stumbled at the sweet, lilting, melodic timbre of a woman’s voice.…
A voice so familiar and at the same time foreign. He hesitated in the hallway and turned around to look for her, yet all he saw were the reflections of his own youthful image in the shiny marbled walls.
The instant he became aware of himself, he cringed at the features that were far too similar to his father’s for his tastes.
’Course it could be worse. He could take after his hated mother.
Aye, I shouldn’t be complaining for the mercy of taking after me father. If I favored the harpy-bitch, I’d be cutting me own throat instead of shaving it each morn.
Renewing his run, Kalder finally skidded to a halt when he reached his father’s study. He opened the doors there to find the old barnacle sitting beside a huge beast of a demon lord. Well, perhaps not arealdemon. Though Kalder wouldn’t have been surprised to find horns sprouting out of the dark man’s forehead. He had the look of an infernal beast, what with his black, braided hair and fierce demeanor. Not to mention his ruthless aura that said he’d gut anyone who so much as looked askance at him.
Aye, this was one who’d taken many lives in his day and wouldn’t shirk at taking more. And for no other reason than he felt like it. Best to stay to the corners of the room, and as far from striking range as he could while this warlord was in their lands. Even the soldiers withhim were giving their master a wide berth, and casting nervous glances at their lord every time he so much as moved to scratch his nose.
