by Gwynn White
At least in Raith’s eyes.
Carian’s fear had, too.
Carian and Trojean had laughed through Father’s beatings. Eventually, those beatings had stopped. Even if the mental whipping was a given.
Raith had never been that lucky. And Carian knew it. That was why Carian expected him to kill Father. A test Raith had to pass to prove that he would not let his fear choke him in Ryferia.
He wanted to run. To fly away. But with the trials just days away, this was the only chance he would ever get to kill the man.
To prove my worth and to avenge us all.
Come morning, he and Carian had to leave for Ryferia. If he didn’t act now, his courage would also fail him when he entered the arena there. He’d either be killed in his first combat, or worse, he’d run away. He’d be stuck forever in the shadows. There’d be no stained-glass windows of his life.
No legend. No memory. For me, Trojean, or Carian.
Just ashes.
And Jorah.
As the oak door to the bedchamber swung open, he sucked in a breath.
Lypil, Father’s green bearded iguana, waddled into the room. Father’s heavy footfalls followed, his dark-red robe flowing out behind him. Wine goblet in hand, Father made his way to the washroom. He didn’t bother closing the door. Lypil settled down into her bed of sheets and feathers in front of a glowing fire in the grate.
Water sloshed in the washroom. Father pouring from the jug into the basin on the washstand. It would not be long before he finished swabbing his face.
It was now or never.
Raith flexed his fangs, gulped a breath, and brushed the curtain aside. He crept on silent feet toward Lypil and crouched next to the creature he had hated for so long.
The Untalented reptile Father loved more than his own children.
Not knowing what this animal had communicated about Raith to his animal-whispering father had almost driven him mad.
Now, he would get even.
As Father crashed about in the washroom, Raith whispered, “Lypil, I’m going to kill you.”
Although she didn’t understand him, the iguana’s eyes flared open and her dark-pink tongue hissed.
Before she could alert her master, Raith sank his fangs through her leathery skin, into her neck. They pierced her jugular.
The iguana gurgled and tried to wiggle back to escape him.
Raith cursed inwardly. Surely even his drunken father would hear the benighted thing?
Heart threatening to snap his ribs, Raith pressed down harder. The iguana’s Untalented blood gushed.
Vile tasting. Raith could not bring himself to swallow it. He pulled his face away and let the animal bleed out onto its bed. Father slurred a tuneless whistle as Lypil wheezed out her last breath.
Nausea rising, Raith let Lypil’s body slump back. He had killed many Magical animals, and none of their deaths had affected him. If anything, he enjoyed the dribble of power he gleaned from them.
Only Lypil was not Magical. And she had been Father’s love.
Desperate to be rid of her blood, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick. And don’t laugh, either.
Footsteps sounded from the washroom.
Raith started to slip behind the drapes to await Father, but he paused. In his drunkenness, it was unlikely Father would notice Lypil until morning.
Raith wanted his father to suffer before he died, the way he’d made his children hurt.
He scooped the iguana and its bloody bedding up and tossed them onto his father’s bed. The old man stumbled back into the room, and Raith swept behind the drapes.
Dressed in nothing but a soiled vest, his father looked impotent. Spent. His trembling fist clenched a goblet. Wine slopped onto the floor as he swayed his way to the bed.
Raith gaped at him. Disgusting. Unkempt, barely conscious, the man was hardly above an animal himself. And this is the creature who’s lorded over Trojean, Carian, and me all our lives.
How was it possible that he had allowed this drunken shell to torment him all his life? Since his earliest teens, Raith had towered over his slight father. Vital and strong, he could have ended the abuse years ago.
But his courage had failed him.
No . . . I looked at him through a child’s eyes. But I’m not a child anymore. I’m a man . . . a man about to shape my destiny.
It no longer mattered if his father saw the petty death of the iguana.
Raith stepped out from behind the drape as his father reached the bed. He cried out in shock, then stumbled back—right into Raith.
Raith locked his arms around his father’s frail body in a first—and last— embrace. He considered saying something—a last accusation, perhaps—but decided against it. His father’s horrified expression said he knew exactly who held him and what was coming.
That was enough.
Deliberately, Raith extended his fangs and sank them slowly into his father’s neck. His father’s blood, the most delicious Raith had ever tasted, spurted into his mouth. It coated his tongue before slipping down his throat.
Magic, glorious magic, more powerful than Raith had ever experienced, flowed like nectar into his veins.
With it came knowledge. A thousand languages, spoken by as many animal species, rushed at him. He reined in his mind before the noise overwhelmed him.
Then a low voice from the corner of the room hooked his attention. “Come, come, my lovely. Don’t be scared. I won’t harm you.”
Raith glanced up.
A spider coaxing a fly into its web.
He would never have understood her if not for his father’s animal-whisperer magic flowing into him with each pull on his neck. Raith trembled with excitement. From this moment on, he would command the mundane animal kingdom—and they would have no choice but to obey.
Then another noise.
A different animal this time: his father squealing like a pig at slaughter. The old man writhed. But weakened by a lifetime of alcoholism, there was no strength left in his arms.
Raith bit down harder and sucked . . . and sucked.
A gargled scream turned to bubbling moans.
And then nothing.
Nothing but a wineskin.
Raith released his arms, and the old man crumpled on the floor. His wild eyes stared blindly ahead.
Raith had never liked his father more. He tossed his head back and moaned. “Liberated. Finally.”
“Well done, brother.” The drapes stirred as Carian’s brawny bulk eased into the room. “But you’re not done yet.”
Raith’s head snapped back. “I know. The ritual.” He smiled with the joy of a child at a harvest festival. The thrill of more power exploding through his tissues was so heady he had to grip his father’s bed post to keep standing. For the first time, he understood Trojean’s willingness to try something risky to magnify the pleasure.
Carian tossed him a handkerchief. “Your mouth.”
Raith laughed as he took it. “You’re just jealous.”
Carian looked down at their father’s sunken corpse with unveiled envy. “You have no idea.”
Raith locked eyes with him as he wiped his bloody lips. “I promise you, I will do anything—everything—to share this power with you.”
Carian pulled Raith into a tight embrace. “I know that. It just took time for you to see it.”
Raith hugged him back. “I won’t fail you. Not now. Not ever.”
“That’s why I want to share everything I have with you. My knowledge, my strength—everything is yours.” Carian pulled away and patted Raith’s arms with powerful strokes.
Raith winced.
Carian chortled as his hands dropped. “Sorry, brother. I forget my strength at times.”
Raith believed him; Carian would be the last person on the planet to hurt him.
“Now to the ritual.” Carian pulled a dagger out of a sheath attached to his belt. “I will talk you through it, but—and this is very
important—if you think reaping Father’s magic was incredible, you haven’t even lived until you feel the power of my ritual. But take in too much, and the magic will kill you.”
“That’s what you meant about it being dangerous?”
Carian nodded. “At first, I had to hold Trojean back, but she learned to control her craving. You will, too.”
Craving.
The word worried Raith. It always had as he’d watched Trojean deal with her cravings for more and more power with each Magical species she supped from. It had been one of the reasons he’d been so loath to follow in her footsteps. She may have been stronger than him, but he had been freer than her.
Not anymore, it seemed.
Before his father, he could have gone months without reaping magic off animals. Now, he was already hungry for his next hit.
It was worth it for power. Power he could share with Carian. Power he could use to destroy Jorah.
He held out his hand for the dagger. “What do I do?”
Carian let him take it. He kicked their father’s corpse. “Find the body part where the magic is manifested.”
Raith’s eyebrows bobbed. “He was a whisperer. So his tongue, obviously.”
“Cut it out.”
Raith grimaced as he knelt at his father’s head. “Gruesome much?”
“You want the power, then get your hands dirty.”
Raith didn’t just want the power; his tissues yearned for it. From watching his sister, he knew it would only get worse. If Carian’s ritual sated that craving, then it was worth mutilating bodies.
He sawed his father’s tongue off at the root, then held it up gingerly between two fingers. “And now?”
“Toss it in the fire.”
“Hm . . . that’s got to stink.” But Raith obeyed.
The fire sizzled and spluttered as the tongue hit the coals. Dark tendrils of smoke curled up the chimney.
Raith was right. The stench was truly awful.
It must be all that wine.
He looked to Carian for direction.
“Breathe in the smoke. Let it become one with you.”
As he leaned over the fire and breathed in the putrid odor, he almost gagged.
Magic hit him with a rush. It spread from his lungs to his heart, to his brain and down to his feet. Every inch of him writhed as muscles he didn’t know he had fired with power.
Only now, the smoke didn’t smell awful. It smelled like honor. Praise. Adoration. Every animal born bowed to his will. They chanted his name. They—
Carian tapped his arm. “Enough. Time to stop.”
Raith ignored him and breathed in even deeper, like a starving man eating at a feast.
But now his head swam and his eyes watered.
Understandable. The word slurred in his head as he rocked on his feet.
He didn’t care that he swayed, or that he wanted to vomit, or that his head threatened to burst. He was weightless, fearless, invincible . . .
Carian pulled him roughly back from the fire. “Maleficent’s arse, brother!” He spoke with affection. “Do you want to die?”
Raith’s mind snapped back. He blinked away the light flickering before his eyes. Unable to bear his own weight, his legs folded under him. “What . . . what happened?”
“You almost overdosed.” Carian looked singularly unconcerned.
Raith gulped. “You mean I almost died?”
“As if I would let that happen.” Carian rubbed circles on Raith’s back, almost too intimate.
Raith was too weak to object. He closed his eyes to wait until his pulse regulated and his breathing normalized. Finally, he looked at Carian. “That was quite a ride.”
Carian’s hand paused in its circles. “How do you feel?”
Raith reached into himself—then shivered. “Hungry. Very, very hungry.”
Carian’s eyes danced. “Then on to Ryferia.”
FIFTEEN
Aurora
Hands on her hips, Aurora stared up at Artemis. “What do you mean Niing is not allowed at the harbor to meet my suitors? He sent the invitations in my name. It’s only proper that he be there when the Guardians open and their ships dock.”
She hadn’t mentioned the severed head to Artemis, per Niing’s advice. She couldn’t let him see how much he had rattled her, how violently sick and heartsore she felt whenever the image of that poor little boy and his grieving father swam into her mind.
Today of all days, she had to conduct herself in a queenly manner if she was to win a consort of worth and power to her cause.
Outside the leaded window of Artemis’s office, ten anchored caravels, flying ten different insignia, tossed in the swell beyond the chain-mail Guardians.
Regardless of her most persuasive arguments, Artemis and the Intelligentsia had insisted that the Guardians only open once all the ships had arrived. Despite appeals to their logic and their manners—not all of her suitors had arrived at the same time—the early comers had been forced to remain at anchor for the last three days. Thankfully, the weather had been fine with no storms. Even now, the early morning sun bore down with a bite in its teeth.
Distracted from her argument, she shook her head in wonder that ten—ten!— firstborn heirs had accepted her challenge.
In truth, she should have been the one to welcome them at the pier, but vanity prevented her from doing so. The last thing she wanted was for them to see her for the first time in the blazing sun.
Sweat, blisters, and freckles were not the way to woo a man.
All it will do is inspire them to turn tail and sail out of here.
As it was, she planned to arrive at the arena to meet them wearing a half-mask to cover part of her face. It would give her some anonymity to spy on them before they got the full measure of her lack of beauty.
Artemis’s sneer pulled her back to the present. “You forget, Aurora, that Niing is a mere tutor, nothing more.” A disparaging hand wave at Niing, standing at her side. “The men you have assembled are all princes and lords in their realms. They would expect to be greeted by someone of equivalent rank.” A cruel smile. “And, as I’m sure you would not wish to inflict yourself on them, I will do you the honor of standing in your place.”
All thoughts about her blotchy face blown to the wind, she opened her mouth to say that she would indeed go, and where Artemis could shove his so-called “honor.”
Niing’s loud throat-clearing stopped her. “Lord Artemis makes a valid point, my princess.” His brown eyes narrowed, almost losing themselves in the creases on his cheeks and forehead. “But perhaps not for the point he suggests.”
Artemis’s head picked up like a beagle on a scent.
She unclenched her fists. “What are you suggesting, Niing?”
“Traversing the docks like a mere deckhand”—a smug look at Artemis—“will do nothing to increase your allure. These men have traveled far for you. Keep them waiting until the trials begin to see you for the first time.”
Artemis snorted his derision.
“Tonight, then, in the arena when I remove my mask?” She ignored Artemis, speaking to Niing as if her uncle weren’t even in the room.
“Exactly,” Artemis said, as if it were his idea. “Tonight, in the arena, when they fight the first elimination for you.”
She walked to the window to consider her options. Because of the time limit—three weeks of which had already been spent assembling her suitors—she had been forced to launch the trials on the day everyone arrived. With only a week of her month left, the sooner she legally wore the crown, the sooner she could deal with Artemis and his threats to enlist the Intelligentsia’s support in condemning her to death on trumped-up charges of murder.
That evening, to the delight of the court, her suitors would fight each other with swords. Only five would survive to go on to the next trial.
Nausea billowed at the brutal bloodletting. She swayed on her feet. If she could have chosen a consort without all this cruelty, she would have,
but to do so would fly in the face of Ryferian tradition. The Intelligentsia and courtiers would never forgive her if she thwarted them in their blood lust.
At least she had yet to declare the full nature of each of her trials. There was comfort in that. Perhaps she would still get a chance to structure the games so more brain and less brawn would be required to win.
She faced Artemis and Niing. “Tonight at the arena, then.” She couldn’t resist adding, for Artemis’s benefit, “I trust you will have your magic-sniffing snout firmly in place—we would hate for a firstborn from Warrendyte to have slipped into the harbor.”
Artemis’s lips narrowed to a thin line. How could he? Everyone knew that no Magical creature would dare slip past the Guardians.
Aurora lurked in the shadows near the portcullis guarding the entrance to the circular arena where Ryferians held their blood sport. In the gloom, she caught the flicker of the torches, which burned at intervals along the stone walls above and below the stands encircling the Ryferian killing zone. Five thousand people crammed those benches.
Every ticket issued to this event, and three others planned, had been snapped up within hours of becoming available. At her insistence, tickets had been distributed by lottery to her ordinary subjects as well. If she was to rule successfully, she had to be queen of everyone, not just the spoiled palazzo nobles.
When she finally plucked up the courage to face this spectacle she had created—albeit from behind an expertly crafted blue-and-silver mask covering half her face— she craned her head around the portcullis to catch a glimpse of what awaited her.
Nine strangers, not the ten she had expected, dressed in armor and bearing swords stood with Artemis on the golden sand in the center of the vast space.
Her suitors, come to fight each other for her hand in marriage—and for her kingdom.
Where was the tenth man? She had no idea.
All these princes and lords had to be at least six feet tall. Happily, dark hair predominated, with a smattering of light brown, and even one redhead.
There wasn’t an ugly one amongst them. She liked men with dark hair. Especially if she wasn’t taller than them.