“I’d have been slaughtered.”
Yes, she would have. Brutally. They would have sent her back to her father in pieces. And no one would have been punished for it.
“Now, after more than a decade of peace, someone is killing my people and yours while they sleep. I want to know who.”
Tanis paused as she remembered his questions when they’d met. “Is that why you asked me why I didn’t burn down the village?”
He nodded. “You wanted justice against a single person for your brother’s murder. My job is to make sure you get it.”
For a monster, he seemed remarkably reasonable. But one thing concerned her. “Had I wanted to burn down the village?”
“I think you know what I would have done to you.”
Kill her. Without any hesitation or reservation whatsoever.
She swallowed hard as her fear returned. He had no remorse for all the lives he’d taken. “How do you sleep at night?”
“With my head on a pillow.”
That was not comforting at all. Nor was the cold look in his eyes. His beauty made that brutality all the more obscene and shocking.
Kill him.
For the sake of all the kingdoms, she needed to. No one had ever been able to get this close to him. Over and over, she’d heard her father and uncles talking about it.
Someone needs to stop that psycho. He has spies everywhere and an assassin at his side. Always demanding lives when they breach the laws he passes. If only we could get our own assassin inside his castle and end his reign.
But every time someone had tried, they’d failed and died for their attempt.
His laws were brutal, and he made no exceptions. If found guilty, he made an example of the guilty party as a warning to others.
Obey me or die begging for a mercy I will not give.
Granted it was something she planned to do to the man who’d killed her brother, but that was different. Hers was personal.
His wasn’t.
She’d heard the tales. He’d gutted people for doing nothing more than stealing bread to feed their starving family. That was unforgivable. Heartless.
“Why aren’t you killing me?” she asked him.
“I believe in justice, Dragon.” He paused in the street and jerked his chin toward a group of children who were playing nearby. “You see them?”
“Yes.”
“When I first inherited my father’s crown, mothers kept their children hidden in their homes. They were too afraid to let them outside for fear of what would happen to them if they dared leave their homes for even a few minutes. Men hid their daughters and wives for the same reasons. Innocents were kidnapped and sold for brutal games, slavery and brothels. I fought constantly with my sister, because I knew what someone could do to her, and she hated me for it.”
Tanis swallowed as she remembered having those fights with her own father.
Worse was the fact that she’d been one of the innocents who’d been taken.
“I did what I had to, to make sure my kingdom was safe for her and all the other children who deserved to grow up without fear. And once Licordia was secure, I did whatever it took for the innocents in the other kingdoms to sleep in peace and security. I am the monster they all fear, and I will remain so until the day I die. Because as long as I’m here, those children will play in the streets and know no harm. I will never apologize for that. If the world wants to hate me for it, so be it. Better they fear onemonster in a distant palace far away from them, than thousands of monsters lurking in every dark corner and alley they pass, seeking to do them harm. Or worse, monsters who break into their homes to hurt them whenever they lay their weary heads down to sleep.”
The sincerity in his voice sent a chill down her spine.
What had made him like this? Had he been harmed, too? He spoke with the same determined fury inside him that she held. That inconsolable rage that burned so deep and hot that it often frightened her because it never dulled. Nothing quenched it. While she might be able to set it to simmer at times, it was always there, waiting to bubble up at the worst moments.
If he had suffered as she had, it would make sense and explain his need to control the world. She’d felt the same way once she returned home.
