Queen of Destruction, page 5
part #2 of Queen of Extinction Series
He sensed Carian scowling at him and realized he’d drifted away from the meeting. A quick check of Artemis’s eyes confirmed it. The king had lost the bedazzled expression that suggested he was under an incubus’s thrall. Raith cleared his throat, trying to regather his thoughts. “Sire” he ground out, trying not to stutter. “My brother and I would like to offer you our services.”
Artemis rapped his fingers on the bejeweled armrest of his throne. Orange torchlight reflected in the stones. Raith watched him carefully, noting every twitch of Artemis’s eyes, every tensed muscle in his neck. Getting Artemis back under his sway could alert the king to the manipulation. It would raise alarm bells in Artemis’s mind that Raith wasn’t all he appeared to be. Raith couldn’t risk it, so he did nothing as Artemis said, “Interesting. No doubt you think that by inviting you here, I wish to work with you?”
Raith hoped Carian would reply. When Carian didn’t, he said, “It seems logical, sire.”
A long pause from Artemis.
Raith held his breath, biting down on his inside cheek.
Finally, Artemis drawled, “I want to lure my traitorous niece back into Ryferia before she has time to gather strength.”
Translation: assemble an army of Magical. Exactly what they all were thinking, but what Artemis refused to say. Raith’s jaw clamped down. Coppery blood coated his tongue. If Aurora gathered an army powerful enough to destroy the Guardians, they were all doomed.
“Aurora is a bleeding heart,” Artemis continued. “She is weak in both mind and body. If she were to learn of, say…a massacre of the Infirm in my kingdom, she’d come rushing back. Hopefully, before she can gather…allies.”
Was Artemis suggesting that he and Carian orchestrate that ‘massacre’? Raith’s fingernails dug into his palm so hard he was surprised when the skin didn’t split. He glanced at the Intelligentsia.
Bland faces stared back at him.
How was such hate possible that not one of them even blinked at the mooting of such a diabolical plan? Raith may have desired to reap blood, but he was an incubus, designed by Maleficent to feed off the Magical. Until Carian had goaded him into reaping their father, he had never feasted on the higher Magical lines. He had limited himself to mere animal trinket magic. These men had no such excuse for their barbarism. Hate and prejudice, not nature, drove their cruelty. He had to shutter his face to hide his revulsion.
Artemis canted his head to study him. “You have already made a start, so we know you have the stomach for it.” He waved his hand at his Intelligentsia, overtly implicating them in this plan—an act both strange and out of character for a man who sought power like Artemis did. Clearly, he feared Aurora and didn’t want to face her magic alone, should she return. He continued, “Kill the Infirm. Put the bodies on display. Throw them in the sea. We don’t care. Just do whatever you need to get that little bitch’s attention. Lure her back in. And then once she’s within the Guardians, we give you full permission to kill her however you see fit. But bring us her head.”
Raith could barely believe his ears. It was as if Artemis had listened in to his and Carian’s plans and offered the solution they needed. There had to be a catch.
“And as a reward, I will forget the insults you threw at me during my niece’s ludicrous marriage trials. I will also open my Guardians to allow you to leave Ryferia when it’s done.” So Artemis still didn’t know about the broken giant? Raith breathed out a sigh of relief at that blessing. Still, all this seemed too good to be true. “Until then, your ship will remain under my control. Should you accept these terms, we would require your full…discretion while you hunt.”
Carian sucked in a breath beside Raith.
Artemis and the Intelligentsia wanted a scapegoat. Someone to point at should things go poorly. A face behind the massacre that wasn’t theirs. And it had to be someone closely tied to Aurora. Did Artemis and his cronies hope that it would turn the people against her if they believed Raith, her legal consort, responsible?
Artemis carried on, “Should you fail to lure her back into Ryferia within a space of thirty days, your lives are forfeit.”
Raith’s blood turned to ice. The catch. The consequence. This was no free meal. How was he to attract Aurora’s attention when she was days away in Warrendyte, and he was trapped in a land with closed borders and no means of contacting her?
He was about to say it wasn’t possible when Carian stepped forward, speaking for the first time since they’d stepped foot in the forum. “We accept.”
Raith had one month—one measly month—to lure Aurora and Jorah back into Ryferia, and to make the potion he needed to take her magic, all while still under the curse of the Guardians.
One month of washing the city with Infirm blood.
Raith’s shoulders slumped as he stared out the window of his lavish apartment in the palazzo. The musketeers had brought him and Carian here after the meeting with Artemis. He noted all the escape routes. They were four stories up. Not an easy jump, but not impossible.
He sighed deeply. His room was attached to Carian’s through a wooden door; he would have to remember to bolt it from his side. The thought wasn’t comforting. If Carian wanted to get in, he would.
His room had its own bathing chamber—oh, how he longed for a bath!—but Carian waited expectantly for him to turn and face the inevitable. There was no way Carian would just let what had happened in the alleyway go unnoticed.
Or unpunished.
Carian sauntered to the overstuffed couch and plopped down. He propped his feet up on the end table, rattling a crystal vase filled with blue flowers Raith didn’t recognize. Despite being marched across the town, through the forum, and now into the palazzo, Carian’s boots were still flecked with blood. Raith swallowed hard and tried to focus his eyes on anything else.
“That went well,” Carian smirked. He crossed his arms behind his head. “Either way, we get what we want. Dead Infirm for potions and reaping, and Aurora running straight back into your loving arms.” He chuckled to himself.
Raith didn’t find it funny.
Carian’s smile broadened. “I’ll get started on our potions tomorrow. Artemis won’t mind if we use Aurora’s burrow if he thinks it’ll somehow get her here.”
Too angry to trust himself speaking, Raith didn’t respond. But his fingernails finally broke through his skin.
Carian raised a single brow. “What’s wrong, brother?” He waved a vague hand at their surroundings. “The accommodations not good enough for you? Oh, how stupid of me. Of course, you much prefer whorehouses.”
“That went well?” Raith ground out. “We have one month, Carian. One month to do the impossible. We could murder everyone in this town, but that’s no guarantee Aurora will hear about it.”
“Leave luring the bitch back here to me. I have a plan I’ll share with Artemis in the morning.” Carian’s lips thinned into an unforgiving smile. “Meanwhile, prepare to get your hands dirty with all that killing. You’re taking the lead on this little genocide.”
Raith blanched. “What?”
Carian shrugged. “You didn’t think I would just forget that you wouldn’t kill that girl tonight, did you?” He clicked his tongue. “Foolish brother.” He retracted his feet from the end table, leaving a small trail of blood behind. “We have to hunt down all the Infirm needed for your potion. Lucky for you, we have a breeding ground for the taking. It shouldn’t take too long for you to gather them all together. Just bring me a few bits and pieces once you’ve finished carving them up.”
Raith spluttered, “Why am I not hearing a ‘we’ in this?”
“I can’t exactly be cooking up potions and hunting Infirm at the same time, can I?”
“That’s what you were doing before!”
“I was, and I would happily have continued chopping up the lame and the ugly, but you decided not to kill that girl tonight. You risked our entire meeting with Artemis—our lives—for that damn girl.” He shook his head. “Weak, dear brother. Weak. From here on, if you want my help, you have to help yourself. If you want to smoke body parts, you’ll have to get and burn them yourself. Paint the town red. Make it pretty for Artemis and his cronies, and I will cook up your potion before Aurora gets here.”
Raith stumbled a step back, mouth gaping. “This is blackmail.”
Carian shrugged. “Semantics.” He got up, stretching his muscular legs as he made for the door to his chamber. “It’s time you grew a backbone, brother. Get some blood on your hands. Be an incubus!”
Raith’s head burned, and he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Is that what you said to Trojean before you got her killed?”
Carian’s hand froze on the doorknob. “What?”
Raith tried to calm his quaking hands as anger burned through him. “Did telling her to grow a backbone convince her to go on a suicide mission to Warrendyte? Or did you blackmail her into that, too?”
Carian pivoted slowly to face him. His eyes were menacing. “I didn’t need to convince her of anything. Trojean already had a backbone. Grow some steel in your belly and get the job done. Like she would.”
Raith’s jaw dropped like a stone.
Carian didn’t spare him a second glance, before disappearing into the adjoining chambers.
The room swayed—
Those words…his father’s exact words, now falling from Carian’s mouth, designed to cut him deep.
He sank onto the couch, but the scent of Infirm blood smeared on the table made him groan and lurch to his feet. Carian had no doubt left it there on purpose to torment him.
How long had he been blinded by filial loyalty not to see that Carian was his father incarnate? Only, Carian didn’t use a cane or a belt for his beatings. Carian would manipulate and destroy his mind, taking it apart piece by piece.
And it could already be too late to stop the carnage.
No. Raith punched his open palm. No, I can’t let that happen. I have to control him. Just like he thinks to control me.
Despite Carian’s threats, Raith still needed him. He knew nothing about potion making, or what it would take to get a complicated potion like this right. Until that potion was finished, he still needed his psychopathic brother.
Fangs burning in his jaw, he snatched up the vase and chucked it onto the blood smear. Flowers littered the floor, and the water turned pink.
A few strides brought him to the large armoire on the other side of the room. Waiting inside was a belt of jet daggers so dark they swallowed up the light from the oil lamps flickering on the tabletops. Several swords, made of the same black jet and steel, were beautifully displayed beside a bow and quiver of arrows. A curved double-headed axe was suspended above them all. Perfect for slicing through bone and muscle. Everything he could possibly need for slaughtering Infirm. Artemis had meant it when he’d said he wanted Raith to hunt.
It was time to get his hands dirty. And time was fast running out.
Sand and seashells crunched beneath Jorah’s feet as he led Aurora and her entourage across the lobby outside the council chamber for their meeting with Sabrisia.
In keeping with Water’s predictable, if boring theme, the glass-domed lobby resembled an underwater grotto, although to him, it stank like a swamp. Aurora and her friends seemed absorbed by it, if their racing hearts, darting eyes, and gaping mouths were any indications of their thoughts.
Aurora pushed her way through a shoal of brightly colored fish, sending the glamor skittering across the room. Her hand brushed a fern clinging to the stone walls Water had used to make their grotto, before fingering the delicate petals of a purple orchid freckled with black spots crammed into a nook in the rock. “The plants are real. The stone wall, too. Why no glamor?”
“This is the council building. No Magical line can conjure a glamor of another line’s magic in here. It’s considered rude,” Jorah said dryly. “Or that’s what we had in mind when we laid down the laws of Warrendyte.”
She looked at him through grass-green eyes, made even more striking by the magnificent green dress, trimmed with gold thread, Feloran had provided for her. Her red hair, bursting from its restraints as it always did, seemed more fiery and wild today. She said, “I get that. Plants need water. And air. Earth, too. And plants create air. Fire forms the earth. We are all connected. Surely, Sabrisia and the council will act on that truth? They must know that the Magical in Ryferia are part of this great connection. We don’t just want to take from Warrendyte. We want to contribute as well.”
His eyes softened as he drank her in—he could almost sense them melting in their sockets. Not conventionally good-looking, Aurora’s beauty came from within, fueled by her courage and loyalty to those she claimed as her own. Even now, she strived for fairness for everyone. Once, he had also held such lofty ideals. A hundred and eighty years on the Magical council had robbed him of such illusions. As tragic as it was, the council was nothing more than a forum for each Magical line to grasp as much as they could, usually at the expense of everyone else. Still, her innocence touched a chord deep in him. He walked over to join her and said softly, “They know that, my nymph. Whether they act on it is another matter. But whatever happens, I will be there for you.”
She bit her lip. “I just…” She brushed a tendril of hair from her face. “I need to free my people. Nothing else matters.”
“And we will. You will. And you will be a fine queen when you do.”
“Jorah.” She swallowed loudly. Even more telling, her heartrate spiked. He braced himself for what she seemed so hesitant to say, but which meant so much to her. “I—I need you by my side. As my consort—” Her pale skin flushed. “But only if you want it.”
What could he say? That he wanted that too?
He cared for her too much to admit such a thing. All week on the caravel, he had been tempted to act upon his growing affection for her. He hadn’t because the memory of Lila still gutted him every time he gave in to thoughts of loving Aurora.
Lila had even intruded the evening before when Feloran had mentioned cleaning out a dressing room Lila probably hadn’t entered for years before her death.
Intruded.
What a terrible word to describe the memories of the woman he had loved almost all his life. No matter that Aurora stirred his heart; he wasn’t ready to abandon Lila by committing to her.
Perhaps he never would be.
He must have waited too long to reply, because she looked over at Keahr, Zandor, Peckle, and Niing. Her face was unnaturally pale. “You’ll wait here for us?”
“Of course,” Niing said. He tapped a ledge of rock with his pipe. “We’ll sit here until you return.”
Aurora turned to Jorah. “Then let’s get this done.”
He grabbed her hand. “You did not let me answer you.”
She tugged away from him. “It doesn’t matter. As I said, all that counts is that we win today.” The rapid pitter-patter of her heart belied her assertion, but now wasn’t the time to challenge her.
“Then let me do the talking.” He smiled at the memory of her tossing her chair back at dinner the previous evening. “At least until after the introductions are made.”
“Fine. Just don’t waffle. Get to the point. And don’t take no for an answer.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He stepped away from her to give himself space to shift into dragon form. Relief spilled through him as his bones and muscles cracked and stretched into their natural shape, and black and gold armored scales replaced his skin. He flexed his leathery black wings and furled the plumes of gold and black feathers trailing down his back. Even the barbs on his tail thumped their joy on the floor. With his clothes tucked away in a pocket under his armor, and his change complete, he peered down at Aurora, so much smaller now as he towered above her. A single one of his curved talons was the length of her hand.
Mouth hanging, she gazed up at him with wonder in those green eyes. No matter how many times he had changed before her during the last week, she never seemed to tire of seeing him in his true form.
He blocked out the pleasure that gave him and bumped his wing gently against her. She placed a hand on his side, her soft fingers caressing his scales. He shifted away to stop an unexpected shiver of want from distracting him. After checking that his magical shield was in place and covered both of them, he led her to the golden doors of the council chamber. Spelled to recognize him, they swung open silently on their giant hinges and then swooshed closed behind them.
The lower reaches of the vast glass-and-wood dome were swathed in mist so thick Jorah saw nothing of the grand space ahead of him. He stopped short and let his tail swish against the pearly floor—a warning of his disapproval. He pushed out his senses to probe for enemies. Along with the usual three councilors from the major Magical lines he’d expected to be at the meeting, the room pulsed with Water fae energy. Newcomers; although he couldn’t see them through the mist, he sensed them lined up against the glass walls and crowded around the golden lectern in the center of the hall, where speakers stood to address the council. They must have been invited here by Sabrisia. Old alliances had probably come into play to permit Sabrisia to do this. Air and Water had long been united against the Shifters, Fire, and Earth. It was one of the reasons Sabrisia hated him: he held the ear of two of the Magical lines. But with him absent, Spirit’s vote would have been needed for this array of force. Sabrisia must have offered Spirit a trinket they could not refuse for them to have permitted this. It did not bode well for any of them if Fire and Earth didn’t step forward to support him and Aurora. His shifters would never accept the affront. They had long sought a reason to openly war against the fae. Jorah didn’t need that kind of trouble now.
