“And how would you expect me to do that without being murdered in the street?”
“The execution has been moved up to today. Tonight, we will celebrate in the Great Hall. Tomorrow you will have Echo as your guard and given free reign throughout our cities.”
“I would not know where to begin. It would help if I had a noble to show me around.”
I keep my face flat, but my gut is blaring, telling me he’s leading up to something. “Who do you have in mind?”
“Deirdre,” he says.
I glance at him. “Echo will stop you from killing her,” I warn him. I don’t have to tell him she’ll do it by ending his life before he can blink. He is probably more aware of what she is capable of than even I am. I had her as a teacher after she ‘retired’. He had her as the monster that slaughtered his people and kept him awake at night.
“I wish Deirdre no harm.”
“Then why do you keep seeking her out?” She tried to kill him when we were younger. She nearly succeeded too, having snuck behind enemy lines with my sister, Jace, and Evangeline. But then… then everything went wrong.
I force my thoughts away from that day. Only for my eyes to widen. Evangeline later claimed King Dravr had let them go because Deirdre was his lifemate. We’d all assumed she was lying out of her ass like she usually did for some joke. But…
“Is she your lifemate?” I ask straight out, wanting to know if we might lose the best necromancer on Gaera. Even the bigger races can’t compete with what she can do.
“No,” he says. “But if you want to show us being allies, then what better way than if I spend the day with the very woman who nearly killed me?”
My lips tighten, trying to hear the words he doesn’t say. But he has played this game much longer than I, and I know nothing of his true thoughts. “Very well,” I say as we near the Great Hall.
“Good. I have always wanted to visit Aurelia’s –”
“Not there,” I say harshly, only to mentally curse myself. My sister would’ve been the first to welcome him into her sanctuary. But I cannot bear it. I still blame the Vylians for her death, even though I know if she’d fought on the front lines against the snake-like Alzans, the beetle-like Okahi, or the ant-like Jokeni, the outcome would’ve been the same. “It is under construction,” I lie smoothly.
“A shame,” he says as we reach the double doors of the Great Hall, the guards opening them for us. “I would have liked to pay my respects. Her loss was felt by us all.”
My heart aches. My hand burns. I do not tell him she was not mourned by her own people. Even though they expected Seqora the Mad to take the throne, they still did not grieve. It was better to support a psychopath than a bleeding heart who risked the lives of her women to save the Vylians.
“Maybe another time,” I say, meaning it. If he truly did mourn her, maybe his mere presence won’t feel like he’s desecrated my sister’s space. Aurelia would’ve hated how empty her library sits.
Needing to move past this conversation, I move quickly down the hall. The four prisoners responsible for bombing the market are kneeling in a row, with their hands chained behind their back. Defiance and hatred fill their eyes, but it’ll soon be replaced with fear and pain.
“So these are the ones responsible for the attack?” King Dravr says as he walks up to them. His eyes judge them like a caterpillar at the market. “There’s not a lot of meat on them.”
“Each will have two healers to keep them alive until the last fist of flesh is taken.”
“All nineteen families have come.” Meaning they are as hungry to spill Razian blood as we are theirs. Otherwise, his people wouldn’t have risked coming back to the very place they’d died.
Two of the prisoners lunge for him, but the four guards instantly start beating them with their batons. Blood sprays as bones break and ugly bruises form.
King Dravr doesn’t flinch as he looks at the smaller of the two women who just attacked him. “I do believe we’ve met before,” he says as he squats down in front of her. She lies curled in a ball on the floor. Lifting her head, so much rage still in her blue eyes, she spits a wad of blood at him. But she doesn’t speak;her tongue has already been cut from her. We cannot risk them shouting fanatical bullshit and riling up the crowd.
“If only you hadn’t hesitated to cut my head off,” King Dravr murmurs, “life would’ve been so different for the two of us.”
She tries to lunge for him again, but one of the guards kicks her in the head. Whatever innocence or mercy she had during their first meeting no longer exists. War is a cruel teacher, and I wonder whether he killed her lover or family while she stood frozen. Perhaps both.
Not that it matters.
That was our past, and I’m determined to look to the future. The gods know my hands are dirtier than his.
“You have been found guilty of treason,” I tell the four in front of me. “You are to be executed now.”
The only man in the group sags forwards as he cries. But, really, what did he expect when they were lead out of their cells a few days early? That they’d be miraculously freed? Forgiven?
My wife was traumatised because of them. So I will take the fist of flesh I’m owed. And let it serve as a lesson to anyone who dares to even think about hurting her.
