Not sure how to respond to the awkward Fogoyan, I smiled and turned to leave. Perhaps I’d finally found someone more socially inept than myself.
For the first time that day, my spirits lifted.
The King
She was finally here.
Harper had made me wait weeks for her spoiled seed to fulfil that Elder-appointed obligation. I was on the verge of hauling the matter to the Committee. It was a bloody power play from them, and my hands itched for the sort of revenge only blood could settle.
My dreams had been filled with visions of the Ortensian Queen's sorrow when she learned I'd destroyed her youngest. The thought of her weeping brought me a satisfaction I'd not felt in a long time. My hands itched to wring her daughter's neck and make the witch pay for everything she had done to us.
But the girl was not what I expected. I had met her elder sister, Lilian. They might be kin, but they could not be more different.
Lilian exuded power and regality; this one radiated anxiety and weakness. Her treacherous heart had been entertaining to listen to, the way it raced every time I drew closer... She had enough sense to fear me. I wanted to crawl into her nightmares, make her start at her own shadow, and finish her in a way that pleased me. It would be glorious, and by the time I was done, she would beg for death.
But how was I supposed to get excited about killing that?
It would be like squashing a bug; there would be no resistance.
Any little fight she managed would not quench my thirst for vengeance, not after what their people had done to mine.
Still, I had planned to kill her. My power was ready the moment the floorboard squeaked outside my office. Only, when the witch stepped in, I was too late. She had bewitched me with a set of intentions I hadn’t expected.
How stupid was she? The princess must have heard the stories. I delighted in eradicating their kind. And she dared try to bewitch me?
My blood boiled. Using every scrap of control I had, I shoved the feeling aside and focused on the unexpected threat in my office. It took real witchcraft to bind someone’s intentions. Harper’s youngest looked unbecoming, but I had been wrong before about judging a book by its cover.
Weak, pathetic and out of place—it was a ruse. Or it wasn’t. I couldn’t decide. Casting aside her witchcraft, she supposedly commanded fire, too.
Give me a break. She looked as though she wouldn’t even be able to stand in stronger wind. She’d sway like a damn kite.
I walked to my little stash in the cupboard by the bookcase and pulled out a disgustingly expensive whisky. Pouring myself a glass, I relished the discomfort I had recognised in her posture. What I wouldn’t do to be the one to break her…
But not everything went according to plan. Sometimes life throws curveballs that save you in the long run. I would treat it as such.
Before the meeting with my general andhim, I’d been planning how to make her life a living hell. The interrogation blades had been laid out in the chambers, awaiting her arrival. The cold metal wanted blood, and I didn’t plan on keeping it waiting.
Then a better opportunity dropped into my lap. Princess Avari would teach me to conjure my dragon, and she would cease to be my problem and hopefully everybody else’s. If that came with her terrified screams, I could only be hopeful.
The only issue was how to stop myself from ripping out her throat in the meantime.
Chapter Three
Avari
‘The queen requests your presence in her office, Princess Avari,’ Councilman Alexander, my mother’s trusted right-hand man, barked the moment I stepped out of the portal into my castle wing’s transportation chamber.
The man had always made me uneasy, but it was my mother’s impatience that pushed me to move. Now that the Ortensian Queen had a tangible connection to the Kingdom of Fogoya, she was busy plotting ways to expand her dominion.
‘How was the session?’ It was the only acknowledgement my mother offered as I stepped into the room she rarely vacated.
The bare walls and sterile furniture were the perfect representation of her as a person.
It smelled of doom and bitterness, her signature scent, a mix of burnt sand and something acrid that clung to her clothes.
‘As expected, the king’s excited about the idea of conjuring his own dragon.’ My reply made her giggle. The sound scraped at my eardrums like nails on a chalkboard.
‘You do realise what’s going to happen if he conjures his dragon?’ She clicked her tongue, not even glancing at me. Typical. ‘They’ll use those beasts to annihilate us and the other kingdoms, just as they’ve always planned.’
