Crown of Ruin

by Keary Taylor

“For what, though?” I question. “They don’t seem to be looking for power, or they easily could have asked for their own House and we probably would have given it to them. Lorenzo has just been laying low here at Court. He hasn’t caused any trouble.”

  I shake my head, feeling frustrated beyond words. “What’s his game here?”

  My phone buzzes in my back pocket. I pull it out to see a number I don’t recognize, but answer it anyway.

  “My Queen,” a familiar voice immediately says. I recognize it as the spy we’d been talking with. “Another vehicle showed up just moments ago. There are six more yellow- eyed Royals inside.”

  “That’s as many as Irene said were coming,” I say, looking up at Cyrus.

  “We’ll keep an eye on the situation and let you know if anything happens,” he says, and then hangs up.

  I slip my phone into my pocket, rubbing my temples. “I want Lorenzo’s four children who live here at Court under constant watch,” I say. “I want them in a secure lock up. And I want Lorenzo to know that we’re cracking down on them.”

  “Of course,” Dorian says with a nod.

  I don’t trust them.

  I don’t trust anyone.

  “Tell me how the interrogations are going,” I say. Too much needs to happen too fast. “Please tell me you’ve caught conspirators.”

  Matthias actually smiles. “We interrogated a man and a woman this morning. We’d had reason to suspect that they’d let the attacker into the castle. So after leaving them out in the sun for the last six days straight, they were finally ready to talk. They confessed to conspiring with the Born. They were on guard when the man slipped into the castle. They let him right in.”

  My eyes grow wide. Finally. Something concrete.

  “Where are they now?” I demand.

  “Under guard in a house,” Matthias says with an evil grin. “Four doors down from here.”

  Without a single word, or without even a breath of his plans, Cyrus turns and stalks out the door, silent and terrifying as the grave.

  The rest of us stand frozen, listening, our ears straining.

  There’s a shout of surprise, and Cyrus’ calm but terrifying voice requesting to see the prisoners.

  A few moments later there are screams of agony.

  I can clearly imagine the painful death they’re suffering right now.

  “What about the rest of them?” I ask. “Has anyone else confessed to being vampires?”

  Malachi looks back to me. “Another seven confessed this morning,” he says with disappointment. “In addition to the three last night.”

  I swear under my breath. That’s twenty-five total. More than I feared.

  “How close are we to feeling solid?” I ask. “How soon until we will know we can trust everyone else to be on our side? Because I don’t know what is going on with Lorenzo’s family, but it certainly has me on high alert.”

  There’s a frantic scream, and then the sound of wet, ripping flesh.

  My stomach turns.

  Even Malachi blanches. He looks toward the building where we all know a lot of carnage is taking place. He swallows once before looking back to me.

  “Give me two more days,” he says. “We’ve made progress. I just need two more days.”

  It’s more than I want. More than I feel we have. But shorter than I expected him to say. I nod.

  “I need you to send another sixteen Royals to the inn to assist in surveillance,” I say. There has to be some more we know we can trust.”

  Malachi nods.

  I hear the sound of a door shutting and footsteps crunching over the cobblestones. A moment later, Cyrus steps back into the building.

  Blood is streaked over his entire body. Over his face. Coating his clothes. It drips off his hands. Streaks of it are smeared from his mouth, down his chin and neck.

  I look at him, and he looks like a nightmare. He looks like a demon.

  But I can’t muster even an ounce of horror when I look at him. I don’t feel any pity for the people I know he just eviscerated.

  “We will return in a few hours,” I say. “I want to talk to Lorenzo. Make sure that he hears more of his descendants have arrived. I want him good and agitated when I speak to him.”

  They all nod in acknowledgement. Cyrus and I walk out of the building, and head back to the castle in the brilliant sunshine, him dripping in blood from head to toe.

  We step into our bedroom, and I pace back and forth. Cyrus goes straight for the bathroom. He doesn’t shut the door when he turns the water on in the shower. Or when he strips out of his bloody clothes, throwing them in the garbage. Or when he steps into the shower.

  I avert an embarrassed but lustful eye, but I’m so distracted, half of my brain doesn’t even notice.

  “What do you think is going on, Cyrus?” I ask, still pacing the space at the end of our bed in front of the bathroom door.

  I hear water splash, and look over. All I can see is bloody water hitting the glass walls.

  “I think that there is much more to Lorenzo than we ever worried to know,” he says. I see him reach for the soap and begin scrubbing the blood away.

  It’s a sight Sevan has seen so many times. Cyrus washing the blood of others from his skin.

  But Logan shyly looks away from the fiancé she still hasn’t seen completely naked. Not like this. This isn’t the way she wants it to be for the first time.

  “I think this is some kind of power play,” he continues. “He has spread his posterity out, hidden most of them. What he plans to do with them, I don’t know the answer to that yet.”

  I nod. Everything he says makes sense. Of course it’s about power. It’s about numbers.

  “What would you do with them?” I ask, looking over my shoulder at him. “With everything we are already dealing with, what would you do with these people trying to get into the city?”

  Cyrus looks over at me, and I meet his dark green eyes. And there’s that flicker in them, a darkness there that tells me exactly what he’d do with them.

  He’d slaughter them. No more questions.

  They’re making us feel uneasy. Perhaps unsafe.

  He’d kill them all.

  “I think you are wise in being cautious,” he answers me, because he knows me.

  I nod. “I think we need to force them to leave. Now that the interrogation is wrapping up, I think we take those soldiers and make our own show of power. I think we utilize them, and make Lorenzo’s descendants leave.”

  “And what then?” Cyrus asks. “At least with them here, we can watch them. If they leave, they’ll go back out and about in the world and we will have no idea if they begin to conspire against us.”

  I swear. He’s right.

  I sink onto the bed as Cyrus shuts the water off. I flop onto my back, staring up at the ceiling as wave after wave of pressure crashes down on top of me.

  The mattress dips to my right as Cyrus sits on it. He lays beside me, a towel wrapped around his hips, still dripping water everywhere. He brushes hair from my forehead, staring into my eyes.

  “You have done incredible things with the resources at hand, and with little to no help, my love,” he says gently. “You have held a kingdom thrown into chaos together and kept the beginning of anarchy from rushing to our doors. We will get through this.”

  He dips down, gently kissing my lips.

  I bring my hand to his cheek, drawing him closer into me.

  I need him right now.

  I need his strength.

  I need his wrath.

  I need his experience.

  I need his support.

  Letting my hand slide down, I touch him, feeling he is real. My hand slips down to his neck, where I can feel his pulse. It slides further down, resting over his heart, feeling it beat.

  Logan is so hungry, so eager. It’s been weeks and months of anticipation. I want this man. I want to be with him. I want him to know every inch of me.

  Soon he will. Soon he will
be mine.

  My Husband.

  My partner.

  My equal.

  The King to my Queen.

  “Thank you,” I breathe.

  He kisses me deeply, his tongue dipping into my mouth, dancing with my own. He shifts on top of me, grinding his hips into mine. I sigh, his mouth trailing to my jaw and then to my neck.

  Let the rest of the world go to hell.

  My only plans are to stay in this bed with Cyrus, here in heaven.

  But on the bed beside me, my phone starts ringing.

  With an annoyed growl, Cyrus presses his lips to the base of my throat one last time before pushing off of me and going to the closet.

  “What?” I demand, irritated.

  “There are another three vehicles that have just arrived, my Queen,” the spy reports, undeterred by my tone.

  “All children of Lorenzo’s?” I demand, sitting straight upright.

  “All with the same golden jade eyes,” he confirms.

  “How many individuals?” I ask as I climb to my feet. I go to the window, slipping on sunshades as I look out into the day. It’s busy down in the city, as Malachi and Dorian try to hurry and wrap up things.

  “Six in one vehicle, five in each of the others,” my spy reports.

  Sixteen more descendants.

  “Shit,” I breathe. “Have my reinforcements arrived yet?”

  “Five showed up a few minutes ago, they said more are on the way,” he says.

  I swear again.

  I feel like everything is about to unravel.

  “Hold tight,” I say. I nod toward Cyrus, who is now fully dressed, and we set off together. “More will be there soon. Please let me know if any others show up.”

  He makes an affirmative noise and I hang up.

  “Thirty-two,” I seethe. “There are now thirty-two of Lorenzo’s children waiting just outside the city.”

  “No one has ever had so many direct children,” Cyrus glowers. “Not our son, not Dorian. Not any other House. I think we know exactly what Lorenzo was doing all that time he was traveling.”

  “He was gathering mothers, whoring out every night attempting to make children,” I say. I feel sick. Because I think of Alivia, totally ignorant as an eighteen-year-old girl, having no idea the sick bastard who tricked her into sleeping with him was doing the same thing every night with a different woman.

  I feel sick, because I bear the same eyes as him and all his other bastard children.

  Chapter 30

  Only an hour has past since we left town, but it’s a flurry of activity. Royals are escorted all over the place by armed soldiers. But when they see Cyrus, he’s met with cries of relief and demanding questions.

  We can’t answer any of them. They deserve to know the answers. But there is no time.

  We find Malachi and tell him to bring Lorenzo to us.

  In a secluded home close to the castle, we wait.

  “I don’t want him seeing you,” I say. “He can’t have gotten word yet that you’re alive, the people have only just now seen you. You can watch, but I don’t want him seeing you.”

  Cyrus looks at me, wariness in his eyes. But I see something else: trust. He nods, and slips into the adjoining room, and I don’t even hear him breathing.

  Thirty seconds later, the door opens, and three guards march Lorenzo in, guns pointed at his back and head. They shove him down into the seat across the table from me.

  He meets my eyes, his own bloodshot, watering against the sun and pain ripping through is brain.

  I feel sick. I want to literally tear his eyes from his head, so that my eyes can be my own. So that any tie I have to this man is erased from the earth forever.

  “Are you alright, Sevan?” he asks, which makes me even angrier. “This invasion…” He shakes his head. “I can hardly believe that after all these years, it’s come to this.”

  “Cut the caring bullshit,” I say. I lean forward. “I don’t know how much is a lie and how much is truth, that story about how you met Alivia, about how I was conceived. What I want to know is how many other children you have out there? How many are out there that you’ve hidden from Court?”

  His gaze instantly sobers. His eyes harden. And I see it, one piece at a time chipping off. His façade. His lies.

  “I know you’ve heard, because I asked that the truth be whispered outside your door,’” I say. “I wanted you to know that your children were arriving at Roter Himmel. Tell me, how many more are coming?”

  There it is.

  A tiny smile begins pulling in the corners of his mouth.

  “I don’t have time for games, Lorenzo,” I say, making my tone icy cold. “I’m a very busy woman these days. It isn’t the easiest task, holding all this shit together on my own. There’s no time for grief. There’s no time to get my head on straight. I don’t even have time to breathe. So tell me what is going on, or I will peel your flesh from your bones, right here and now, and I will feed it to the birds piece by piece and make you watch.”

  His expression does not falter. He holds that smile that makes me want to rip his lips off.

  “You know, Court has had no problem pretending like the man who made our population possible didn’t exist,” Lorenzo says. He places his forearms on the table, leaning in slightly. Goosebumps flash over my skin at the unexpected change of topic to the Blood Father. “There isn’t even one single record in this city that bears his name. There are less than a dozen Royal or Born who were alive when he was, and every one of them seem happy to never hear his name spoken again.”

  My insides grow cold. I feel very still and frozen.

  That name echoes inside of my brain, over and over, and with each reverberation, my heart cracks.

  “My own parents were taken from me at a young age,” Lorenzo continues. “I was alone, left to take care of myself for a long time. It wasn’t easy, especially in this town. So I became obsessed with the idea of family very early on. Family is supposed to be there for you. You are supposed to be surrounded by them. They’re supposed to help one another, be there to help you achieve your dreams, your goals.”

  No. I know where this is going.

  No.

  “But because the Blood Father thought differently than his family, they turned their backs on him,” Lorenzo says. He’s very calm. And there’s a hint of excitement in his voice. “My parents were killed, at Cyrus’ own hand.”

  I sit straighter, as if Lorenzo just slapped me.

  He nods. “My father was caught feeding on a human outside of town but didn’t realize he was followed back into Roter Himmel. When Cyrus found what had happened, realized how much this human had seen, he executed the human and my father. And my mother…” he shakes his head, his expression bitter and hard. “Even though she was human, she tried to save my father, and it cost her her life as well.”

  I feel sick.

  Because I understand his bitterness, his pain, his anger.

  Cyrus doesn’t even remember doing this. I asked him what he knew about Lorenzo. If he had remembered killing Lorenzo’s parents, he would have told me.

  Cyrus took away his family, and doesn’t even remember it.

  “If we didn’t have to hide, if we weren’t keeping our existence a secret because Cyrus is afraid, my family wouldn’t have been slaughtered,” Lorenzo says in a thick voice. “I hated hiding, but I’d seen our kind killed by humans, because we were outnumbered.”

  My heart beats so fast. My brain is exhausted trying to keep up. To piece all of these pieces together, to figure out what they mean.

  “Left alone, I never identified with anyone, my entire life, except with the stories I heard of the Blood Father.”

  He folds his hands, one over the other, and smiles. “I was surprised as a teenager that there were no books about him. There were only legends. So I took it upon myself to become his historian. I asked, and maybe because they felt sorry for me, others told me what they knew. They told me of his travels arou
nd the world. Of him building his family. Of his rise to power. Of how he could influence the world.”

  “My son was a power-hungry mogul who wanted to take the world for his own,” I say. The ice around my heart makes it very difficult to breathe, much less speak. “The world would have descended into constant bloodshed and ruin if he had taken crown over it.”

  Lorenzo gives a little laugh, his eyes falling to the table. “Probably so,” he says. “But you still have to admire him. For spreading our kind. We wouldn’t be here if not for him.”

  Madness. He’s spouting madness.

  “Why are your children here?” I change directions, leaning forward. My eyes burn into him, begging to find the truth hidden beneath his skin, written on the surface of his scarred, black heart.

  “They are here, because after being patient and building my family, after hiding them from knowledge of the Court for the last six hundred years, I have asked them to come. Our time has finally arrived. Now that the King is off the throne.”

  I feel my face go numb. I sit back in my chair, needing more room to breathe.

  There were whisperings at Court. That Royals were not happy with Cyrus. That things needed to change.

  “The Royals, Court, the Houses will not mourn that tyrant’s death,” Lorenzo continues, and I hate that absolute confidence in his voice. “But his absence will throw the world into chaos. You may have experience, Sevan, you may have great ideas. But you and Cyrus? You are only two sides of the same coin. After more than two thousand years, the time for change has finally arrived.”

  He has gathered his large family so that he can challenge me for the throne. He has brought his own Royal support, people who have claim and say, to back him.

  “You want to be King,” I say.

  Lorenzo smiles. “I want the people to be free. I want them to finally live free of an ages-old tyrant. I only want to help guide them into a new age. Perhaps that is one where all the world knows we exist. Perhaps that is one where the dominion of weak humans comes to an end. But I do believe there is need for an usher.”

  I shake my head.

  I’m filled with horror.

  Because I can picture it all. Everything he’s described. And with everything that has happened in the last few weeks, I see how easily it could be brought to pass.