Lady Richelle had been communing with higher spirits. So, who else did my darling wife have under her control? They could be anywhere—her agents, her spies. As I crossed through the hall, I had to wonder if any of them were in Mag Mell, even now.
The thought made my blood simmer, and I felt the tips of my wings dragging across the stones on either side of the corridor as I stalked through it. When I looked down at myself, I realized my wings had once more erupted from my back, flames igniting some of the feathers. I wasn’t wearing a shirt, and a row of short, dark horns had erupted from the ridges in my shoulder blades.
Burning. Falling.
I was starting to turn into the beast again, and I’d hardly even noticed it happening. With an iron force of will, I mastered control of myself once more and willed my wings to disappear.
I wouldn’t stalk around in this state, like an animal. Composure, mental control—it began with presenting a sophisticated facade to the world, the thin cloak of civilization I wore even when I was thinking of devouring people alive.
As I passed a room with an open door, I peered inside. It was unimpressive, but not overgrown with plants. It looked like someone had been in there recently. The faint moonlight shone over a table set with wine and a plate of roast chicken, half-eaten. Hunger gripped my stomach.
I didn’t normally feel hunger… at least, I hadn’t noticed it for a long time before I’d met Aenor. I ate only to keep my strength up, to keep up appearances. But now? I could think of nothing but a full meal of chicken, roasted potatoes, a rich gravy…
My mouth watered. This was another effect of the mating bond, I thought. It was my instinct signaling that I needed to feed her. If the chicken hadn’t been touched by some filthy castle-rat’s hands, I’d have taken it back to Aenor right now.
Instead, maybe I’d just keep the wine.
I prowled over to a wooden wardrobe and pulled the door open. I was gratified to see an embroidered guard’s uniform and a selection of dark shirts and trousers hanging inside. I pulled my own damp trousers off, then dressed myself in a gray woolen pair. They were snug around the waist, and several inches too short, which infuriated me more than it should have. I hated looking like a slob, even in life-or-death situations.
I pulled one of the shirts out and slipped it over my head. It was made of a rough wool, like something a peasant would wear, and it clung to my body, several sizes too tight.
The state of this place… If I ruled it again, I’d have the guards’ rooms gleaming, their clothes made of the finest material.
I snatched the wine bottle off the table, uncorked it, and took a sip. That thin cloak of sophistication was slipping off, but maybe the wine would help. Maybe it would help to quiet the violence simmering beneath the surface.
In the corridor again, I stalked in the shadows, heading up toward the spiraled tower. I wanted to be done with this before Aenor woke, before she even noticed I was missing.
Maybe there was another way out of this. Who knew? If I could free myself from the curse, ascend to the heavens still… Aenor would be safe; I’d be at peace.
But for now, all I could think was that the sea glass was the only way to stop me.
I moved swiftly up the spiral stairwell, thinking only of getting back to Aenor. I wanted her in my arms again, safe. And then I wanted to get her some bloody food, and a hot drink.
But as I neared the top of the stairwell, I heard a door swinging open, then male voices echoing off the stone walls. My muscles tensed, and my fingers brushed against Lightbringer’s hilt.
As I moved faster up the stairs, I smiled with sinister anticipation. Please give me an excuse to end your lives.
By the top of the stairs, I found five royal guards all crowding the stairwell. The man in front—a fae with long black braids—stared at me a moment.
I stroked Lightbringer’s grip. “Hello, gentlemen.”
Gap-tooth stared at me. “Fellas, is this him? Salem?”
Violence roiled in my blood. They knew my name. And that meant they probably knew about Aenor.
The man in front of me swallowed hard, then drew his sword. “We saw what your swan did to Richelle.”
One of the men in the back asked, “Where is your mate? The witch killer? She enchanted us in the tunnels. Filthy bitch. We’re lucky it wore off.”
I tilted my chin down, enjoying the looks of fear on their faces as my wings erupted behind me, filling the stairwell. The scent of smoke filled the air. “Did she now? Let me explain something. You have one chance to make a blood oath of undying loyalty to your new king, Salem. One chance. Fail, and you die. Sacrifice your blood to me, here on the stone, pledging unending fealty to obey my commands, and you will live.”
A blood oath would ensure they would follow my orders, that they’d be completely under my control.
My fingers twitched at the sword’s hilt. No… maybe a blood oath wouldn’t do at all. I was in the mood for something more dramatic.
All these fae guards were now blending together in my mind, like a faceless mass. Nothing but blood and bones. Living detritus. Mortals.
And what would King Tethra do with my mate? I didn’t even want to imagine it. No, much better to imagine the deaths of the men in front of me.
The black-haired guard pulled his sword. “You don’t understand. You don’t know what King Tethra would do to us. He’s mad. He boils people in oil. And in any case, I don’t like to be controlled, do I?”
“You don’t know what I’ll do to you.” My low voice reverberated off the stone walls around us. “But I am looking forward to it.”
The monster in me was rising like magma, pressure building. I longed to unleash the full force of my flames, to give in to that pure savagery. My searing aura was already starting to boom through the stairwell, a red-hot vibration over the stone. The castle walls around us almost seemed to fall away, giving way to the golden stones of Gehenna. I felt myself in that cave again—a god before mortals. A quivering, faceless mass of supplicants stood before me, ready to burn for me.
The gods demanded sacrifice.
I was the power of Vesuvius, a fiery reckoning sent from the heavens to punish the wicked. I was the smoke blotting out the sun in the end of times. I was the earth shaking, the divine wrath of the gods.
Burn for me, mortals.
“Wait!” cried the one in the front. “What if we just pledge a regular oath? It’s just that if the king learned of a blood oath—”
“I am your god, and you will offer me tribute.”
He started to raise his sword. I smiled, a snarl in my throat, and smashed his hand against the wall. I was crushing the bones, and his eyes bulged. His sword fell to the floor, skittering all the way down the stairs. I liked that feeling, the pure dominance. The scent of fear.
Behind him, the other men had drawn their swords, but their fear was just as strong. It thickened the air like smoke.
The man with the black hair was shouting at them, but his words were indistinct to me now. Words meant nothing. The only thing that had meaning now was that my hand was on his skull and I was bashing his head into the wall. The red blood painting the stone was all that mattered.
A tentative blade cut into my side, and that was enough for me to end it all. Mortals would learn to bend to the will of a god.
The heat that erupted from my body blinded even me. All at once, the air smelled of burned hair and flesh. The blast of white-hot flames singed the walls, turning them black as soot. It all happened so fast that my victims didn’t even have time to scream. Ash rained around me, coating my clothes.
Smoke billowed through the stairwell, and I waved it out of my face. It smelled of sulfur now. A wretched smell.
When I looked down at the men, they’d curled into contorted positions on the stairs, their bodies now ashy cinders. I’d cracked one of the skulls open before the blast, and a bit of his brains had spilled out, turned into dark glass by the heat of my fire. That was the effect of extreme heat
on fat. I’d seen it many times. In the eruption of Vesuvius as well… I had been there, of course. There to hear the screams, to find the bodies.
I brought the bottle of wine to my lips and took a long sip.
But I didn’t feel the sense of release I’d hoped for. I still felt shame cutting me open. Perhaps I should have gone slower, drawn it out. No, that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that I was a monster.
I took another long sip of the wine, closing my eyes to try to calm myself. I’d recovered from this once. I’d freed myself from this. I didn’t want to unleash myself completely, not when I was so close to the end.
I glanced at my wings, which were burning again. Then I brushed the ash off my clothes, trying to regain my composure.
I took a deep, shaking breath. The veneer of sophistication was gone. I’d taken off my thin cloak of civilization, and I’d lit the fucking thing on fire.
I was falling all over again.
I stepped over the incinerated bodies, fury still raging. It took me a few moments to realize that I was angry at myself. Maybe I’d needed to kill them—if they were going to find Aenor, maybe they needed to die. It was just the way I’d done it. The blood lust. The need for sacrifice, the lack of control. The delusions of divinity. I was a false god again.
The old Salem was back, and gods, I desperately yearned for the peace of the heavens again. I wanted to be free of self-loathing. Because there was no way I could stay with Aenor like this. Perhaps we were mates, but she should not be with a monster.
At the top of the stairwell, I pushed through the door, onto the castle walkway. The rain had stopped now, and the clouds had thinned. I stared out over the dark kingdom that had once been mine. My wings spread out behind me, and I took to the windy skies.
There was one way to kill this monster, and it required a bit of sea glass.
32
Salem
Getting through the gates of Mag Mell had been easier than I’d hoped. The Court of Silks seemed to be in complete chaos, not a single guard standing before the gate. As I’d swooped over the winding roads, people had rushed from their houses, thronging the streets. Wild shouts rang out across the waters, screaming, anguished or ecstatic…
No one even noticed the dark figure sweeping through the sky above them.
The wind rushed through my hair and over my feathers as I arced around the Horned Palace.
When I glimpsed the amphitheater, my heart sank for a moment. The seawater still filled it. Bizarrely, Richelle’s body had been left where she’d died, her blood spilling over the stone stairs, eyes wide and staring. Others had left belongings behind—bits of clothing, empty glasses. It was as though her death had unleashed complete insanity in everyone around her.
I smelled the scent of blood in the air as I circled over the arena. I didn’t have time to search for the sea glass in this shallow water, but I maybe I could remember where I’d been when I pulled it out.
I closed my eyes, and my thoughts ignited with the terrible images of our fight—the one I’d been helpless to stop. I felt like an angry god was etching these memories inside my skull: Aenor on her knees before me, my elbow slamming into the side of her head. That terrible crack ringing out, Aenor falling into the water. My hand around her neck…
It felt like the sea glass was already piercing my heart.
Me killing her—it was such a terrible corruption of our mating bond, a perversion, like a statue of a god hung upside down. And Richelle had received her instructions directly from my former wife.
I uncorked the wine again, drinking deeply to try to dull some of the sharpness in my chest. Then I remembered it vividly: exactly where I’d been standing when I ripped the glass out of my neck. I took a few steps closer to the wall below where Richelle’s body lay, then saw the glimmer of blue under the water. The moonlight shone off it like a beacon.
I snatched the shard off the stony arena floor and shoved it into the pocket of my trousers. My wings beat the air, and I lifted into the skies again.
I needed to get back to Aenor as fast as possible.
* * *
I stood outside the door of the bedroom where I’d left her, already sensing something was wrong. It was like tension was vibrating from the room. When the door swung open, I found Aenor, dressed in the white button-down dress.
She was sitting on the bed, glaring at me. “You got the sea glass, didn’t you?”
“If you saw what I did to the five guards upstairs, you’d want it.”
She started crossing to the door. “I’m not using it. We’ll go back to Ossian’s place, check in with Gina, and find another witch from there. I know how to contact Lyr if I need him. Maybe he’ll even open a portal to get us where we need to go.”
At Lyr’s name, my lip curled. So, we would rely on Lyr? The thought made me want to burn another stairwell of guards. But I supposed if he truly could help her, I wouldn’t let my pride stand in the way.
Aenor was already at the door. She turned back to look at me. “Are you coming?”
Wordlessly, I followed her, and we crossed into the corridor.
Aenor glanced at me. “You’re how old? Tens of thousands of years? You must have met a few witches in all that time.”
“They don’t tend to like me. In general, I can’t say I’ve made many friends during my time on Earth. You’ll see why in a moment.”
As we climbed the stairs, the stench hit me.
Aenor saw them first. “What in the hells…?”
The charred bodies lay before us, the walls blackened on either side. The man’s glassy brains gleamed in the dreary light.
“They got in my way,” I said.
She turned to look at me, grimacing. “Was this method really necessary?”
“I believe they wanted to kill you. I demanded a blood sacrifice to ensure their loyalty. They refused.”
“You told me never to make sacrifices. You had a whole moral problem with it. What happened to that?”
I crossed my arms, satisfied that I was proving my point about the sea glass. “What happened to that was that gods aren’t supposed to be on Earth, Aenor. Because we are full of jealous rage and fury. Our pit of need, our desire for worship, can never be filled.”
Aenor stared at me. “You’ve had moments of peace on earth. It’s like you told me about the dawn chorus of birds, the rising sun across your cave floor. You were peaceful an hour ago in that mossy bedroom, at least until you started messing with the curtains. You weren’t demanding sacrifices then. You just need more of those moments to fill the emptiness.”
“Is that all?”
“And in any case, I think you killed the guards because you had to. They’re Tethra’s guards. If you had let them live without a blood oath, I’d be dead. So, you did what you had to do. You don’t need to make a big thing of it.”
Aenor was startlingly pragmatic sometimes.
“Perhaps,” I said.
She curled her lip at the sight of the bodies crowding the stairs. “I could have done without knowing what incinerated brains look like, though.”
“We do have a lot of people after us, and we need to go.” I felt a sudden urgency to get her out of here, to fix the hex in her veins. What if Tethra were lucid enough to communicate with my former wife? In me, they had a common enemy.
I scooped Aenor into my arms and moved swiftly up the stairs. I kicked through the door into the night. On the tower’s walkway, my wings spread out, and I took off into the darkened sky. The wind whipped over us, but my body warmed Aenor so she wouldn’t freeze in the autumn air.
With Aenor’s arms wrapped around my neck, the fire of my curse had begun to simmer down a bit. With the feel of her soft hair against my neck and the stars beaming above us, this felt a bit like one of those moments of peace. She made me feel… rational, almost. And not as alone. In fact, I felt as if our hearts were beating in time together. It was like crawling out of a dark cave to notice the rising sun.
My name meant whole, complete. Since I’d fallen, it had seemed like the worst sort of misnomer. I was the opposite of whole. But that was how I felt now, with Aenor, under the dome of gleaming stars. I felt complete.
She looked up at me from underneath her lashes. “Tell me more about what you were like before the curse. What was a day like for King Salem in Mag Mell?”
“I was often restless. I didn’t like to sleep. Courtiers surrounded me, always wanting something… I sometimes went off on my own to my little cottage. I liked to eat sweet things: heath-fruit with apples, sloe-berry pies with honey, whortleberry tarts.”
Aenor’s lips quirked. “Okay. So you ate like a child. Also, what in the gods’ names are these fruits you’re naming? Are these actual fruits?”
I’d nearly forgotten about them. The curse had ruined my appetite, until I craved only blood and the misery of others. “They are real fruits; you will have to try them someday.”
My smile faded as I realized I probably wouldn’t be there when she did.
“Anyway, I spent mornings by the sea, watching the sun come up. Shahar visited me sometimes, at dawn, but she didn’t like living at court. I was easily bored in those days, and I used the amphitheater to stage fights between monsters and soldiers. And when I got really bored, I fought the monsters myself. In the heavens, I’d been a warrior. In Mag Mell, we had no enemies, so I had to find ways to amuse myself. But no one really stood a chance against an immortal king with infinite firepower.”
“So, you had to fight the monsters instead of other fae.”
“I sometimes led our forces into nearby courts. I’d demand that they pay us heavy taxes or I would destroy them.”
“Okay. This is a bit of a dark turn since the charm of the whortleberry pies.”
“I liked being a tyrant,” I said. “And what I liked best about it was that the women of those courts hated me, but they also desired me. It was one of my greatest thrills, to seduce them when it broke them a little inside afterward. See, it wasn’t just about seduction; it was about ruining them. That was the appeal. Frankly, I think the sense of the forbidden made the sex better for both of us.”
Rising Queen Page 17