You always knew it couldn’t be you and Emilia both on the throne.
But he didn’t want it like this.
“I was going to become a temple brother before I got called to this Trial!” Lucian cried. “This whole empire is a bloated, fly-studded carcass! What good can I possibly do you?” Tears stung his eyes and throat. “Change your vote back!”
“No,” Lord Aurun said.
Before Lucian could respond, the parlor doors opened.
Emilia looked at him, betrayal shimmering in her eyes.
Emilia did not like being the center of attention. The Pentri and the Tiber stood smugly alongside Camilla in a corner, watching her with withering contempt. Camilla waited to see if she would or would not record a win. Lucian, Alexander, and Dido, meanwhile, clustered together beside the far window.
Her parents had her scrunched beside a bookcase.
“I negotiated the Tiber and the Pentri for myself!” Emilia’s parents had never been openly affectionate with her, especially since her powers had manifested, but she’d never imagined they’d look at her with disgust. The pride at her own cunning fell away, and she transformed back into the person who’d grown up under their eyes: awkward, unappealing, an oddity who had no business being noble, or indeed much of anything. “If I take the throne, I’ll give you whatever you want.”
If you’d love me, I’ll do whatever you want.
“You might win this Game, Emilia, but we all know you will never take the throne.” Her father’s words landed heavy as a slap. “In exchange for our support of Lucian, Hector has agreed to give us trade ports on the far eastern fringe of his territory. You in power is more dangerous than not.”
Trade ports. That’s all that was required to buy her parents’ affection away from her.
“You don’t know what I can do,” she growled.
“Thank you very much, but we do.” Her mother spoke low. “And none of it is good.”
Emilia’s stomach chilled. None of it was good. None of her was good. “I’m getting better at controlling it,” she breathed.
“Keep your voice down.” Her father sneered. “That’s the other thing. In case you erupt in some disaster, we need to distance ourselves from you. Think of Alexander, if you can think of anybody beside yourself. Do you want him put to death on your account?”
Emilia could not help the misery that itched all over her skin. Unthinking, she began to rub her fingers together. Her mother slapped her hand.
“Have some dignity,” she said. With them looking at her like this—less than nothing, worse than bad—she wanted to crawl under the carpet to where no one here would stare at her again. “Just don’t look at me” had been the refrain of her childhood. At least, locked up in that tower, she’d been given the satisfaction that she wasn’t hurting anyone. Sometimes she’d imagine all the happy things people were doing without her and took some relief that her presence wasn’t making everything worse.
She repressed a sob.
“If we don’t have a win,” Lord Tiber drawled on the other side of the room, “I’m thinking of switching my vote. Lord Lucian. Now, that’s the kind of profile you can imagine on an imperial coin. Don’t you agree, high priestess?”
“It’s not my place to give an opinion,” Camilla said.
Emilia had not won anything. She couldn’t even keep her own family. This was the one outcome she hadn’t planned for. Emilia had never thought, not for one second, that her parents would back anyone else.
Her fatal flaw had been the belief that, beneath everything, her parents loved her.
Her father and mother turned away from her, signaling their position quite clearly to everyone in the room.
They were done.
Emilia trembled as pain began to slice into the backs of her eyes. Kill them. She could kill them for this. The rage merged with the chaos in her blood and burned hot. Her vision blurred with tears as she imagined her parents as trees in winter. Beneath their bark slept veins and capillaries, the slumbering buds that needed only the correct season to bloom. Emilia pictured her parents blossoming in crimson.
You’re a monster.
Gasping, Emilia looked away from her parents and shut out the deadly images. She bit her lip and clenched her fists. They were right to turn on her. They were right to hate her. What normal person could ever love a monstrosity like her?
Emilia realized with horror that she was beginning to cry.
“Castor. Imogen.” Lord Sabel said her parents’ names with horror, and pity. Pity for Emilia.
A buzzing started in her brain, and it felt like sharp pins were being inserted underneath her fingernails as the whole room regarded her with expressions alternating between disgust and sadness. Tiber and the Pentri were already muttering between themselves and eyeing Lucian. Alexander had yanked their parents aside and was speaking urgently, his face bright red.
Lucian watched Emilia with the tenderest sorrow she’d ever seen.
If you knew what I am, you wouldn’t care.
Bad. Evil. Monster. Vile. Freak. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
The buzzing turned into a hum, which grew into a grinding, awful sound in the center of her mind, like the clash of metal. Emilia tilted her head back and shut her eyes as she gave herself over to pain. Her body burned with hate.
The pulse of chaos moved through her.
No. Not here. Please, not here.
But as Emilia’s eyes snapped open, she felt the power shoot out of her, rippling through the room, the hall outside, the entire building.
And that’s when the screaming began.
“My lady, you look stunning this evening.” Ajax brought a woman’s hand to his lips, smelling the expensive lavender oil on her skin. She peered down at him through her mask, and even beneath the painted grin, her frown was evident. Ajax kissed each individual finger, sliding a ring off as he did so, one that sported a square-cut emerald the size of his eye with a ripple of blue in the center. Only the best jewels for nobles under Volscian rule.
The woman gasped.
“How dare you!” she cried.
Ajax was jerked about by some fancy guy in a silver suit, one positively dripping with clusters of diamond and pearl. The guy’s weak chin quivered with feeling. Oh dear.
“What in the depths are you doing to my wife?” he snapped.
“Sorry. My mistake,” Ajax said. The guy dragged him forward by his lapel.
“If you were not one of the competitors here this evening…” The fellow let the dangling end of that sentence imply something truly frightening. By the blue above, how would Ajax ever feel safe again?
“A thousand apologies, my lord. I didn’t realize that the lady had such a big, strong defender.” Ajax patted the man on his breast; no hard feelings. The guy snorted through his nose in the manner of the affronted rich.
“This is what happens when common blood gets into the Trial,” the man huffed. Taking his lady by the arm (she was now swooning to have been rescued), the pair bustled off into the crowd. Ajax, meanwhile, gazed down at the treasure in his hand: a brooch of platinum and white gold, studded in pink diamonds with a fat, glistening ruby at the center. Much more valuable than the ring. The emerald had been bait to land a bigger prize.
“Prick,” he whispered with a smile, before opening the pouch at his side and dropping the thing in. He surveyed his little magpie collection: a diamond bracelet; two emerald earrings (got off a lady who was five cups of wine into the night and singing drunken songs on the veranda); a gold ring bearing a family crest; a pair of crystal saltshakers he’d swiped from the buffet table; and now this brooch.
Oh. And the grand prize, of course.
He smiled bitterly at the little gleaming jewels as he tightened the strings of his pouch and went in search of another cup of that good, crisp wine. Ajax shouldered his wa
y through a sea of sneers and whispers. Look at him. So short. So ugly. So illegitimate. So wrong for the throne.
He ground his teeth as he snatched a goblet from a passing server and leaned against the far wall. The room whirled on without him, letting him know how little they cared. Couldn’t get an audience with any of the families.
Even his own father hadn’t received him. The exact words Lysander had relayed, delivered with a simpering smile: “What for?”
All the other Houses had decided he had nothing to offer.
Ajax had spent much of his life taking whatever he could, because nothing had been given. Well. Hopefully these rich pricks missed their little bits and baubles at the end of the night. He drank, but the wine soured in his mouth.
They’ll be sorry, those mouth-breathing, weak-chinned idiots.
Ajax thought of that woman again, the one with the green eyes he’d seen outside his room. Maybe one day she’d see her own eyes staring back at her from the dragon throne, and she’d know the shit and the shame she’d gone through had all been for something.
Ajax let the sounds of the party pass through him like water through a sieve.
I’ll make you sorry, you rich pricks. I’ll make you beg on your knees for—
Ajax stumbled, catching himself on the edge of the buffet table as the ground shook beneath his feet. Glass shattered in every direction as the mirrors and latticed windows exploded. Men and women on the dance floor collapsed with cries.
“What the depths?” Ajax froze as a colossal crack sounded throughout the room. He looked up as a hideous fracture tore open the ceiling, radiating outward in a growing spiderweb of damage. A sound like thunder pealing throughout the ballroom. Plaster rained onto people’s heads, and…
Everyone screamed as two chandeliers unrooted with a groan and crashed below. Crystal shards skittered across the floor as the fissure in the ceiling grew wider, like an ugly, looming smile. More plaster fell, the snap of timber started—
“Out of the way!” Petros boomed. The priest appeared as if from thin air, striding into the center of the ballroom. In his orange silk robe, he looked like flame sparking in a sea of ice. Hands up, he concentrated…and the crack in the ceiling began to knit itself as though it’d never been broken in the first place. It was slow going, and Ajax noticed that the old man had to pause and wipe his face repeatedly. The crack grew wider, then smaller, then wider again. The orderly magos was fighting a damned rough battle, it seemed. “Everyone, stay where you are!”
But panicked people don’t listen well. They all rushed for the doors in a stampede of silk. Ajax was pulled along with them, though he kept craning his neck to check out the damage as it was repaired. He whistled.
Chaos.
Ajax knew that’s what it was, a surge of the most evil power imaginable. He felt it in the fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck. Better leave that disaster to the priests to fix. And yet, as he ran for his life alongside the screaming nobles, he couldn’t help but admire it.
When Hyperia tore into the ballroom, Ajax made sure to lower his head so she couldn’t see him. Though he’d have liked a dance with her, and maybe a chance to nab her pearl earrings, this was not the time.
Damn. Maybe it was the wrong way to think, but if only he could get the power of chaos on his side. No one would turn him away then.
Hyperia entered the ballroom with one word singing in her ears: chaotic.
A chaotic had infected her ancestral home. Evil, disorder, destruction, death. It was a curse, and only she could stand bulwark against it.
Once she’d heard that the priests were healing the crack in the ceiling, she stormed downstairs and began ordering the guards. They followed her instructions with precision, golden pawns in a game of warfare. The one game she relished playing.
“The damage came from that side of the ballroom?” She glared at the musicians standing aghast on the stage, and the flood of people attempting to escape. “Stop them. Line them up by the wall—everyone who was here when it happened. If anyone left, drag them back.” If anyone attempted to escape, well, Hyperia would act immediately.
The suspects’ wails did not reach her. She waited as they were organized into rows, and a few at a time brought to stand against the far wall. With Petros at her side, she surveyed the shivering lot.
“Are you sure this is wise, my lady?” Petros grunted. The priest’s eyes narrowed. “A chaotic’s attack is horrifying, but Camilla and I can handle it. This is your challenge.”
“This is my home,” she replied. She dragged a man forward, knocking his dragon’s mask off. He whimpered; the sound of his weakness sickened her. “Can you tell if he’s the one?” she asked Petros. Hyperia recognized this man, some lesser noble from her family’s southern territory. A floppy, drunk aristocrat, same as all the rest.
“M-my lady Hyperia, I swear I know nothing of—”
“Quiet.” She unsheathed her sword and held the tip under the man’s chin so that he knew not to trifle with her. “I don’t want extra reason to suspect you.”
“Suspect me?” The man’s face reddened. “My family has served yours for generations, my lady!”
She did not even recall his name. Hyperia had never had her sister’s knack for people. If only Julia were here now…
If only things had gone as they were supposed to from the start.
“This is not the way,” Petros muttered, stealing close so that only she could hear him. His soft words sounded almost like a scold. “We have laws in place for suspicions such as these.”
Ah. Yes. He was testing her.
He wanted to see that she would not yield.
“Your Grace, simply tell me what I want to know as we walk down the— Don’t move!” Hyperia’s blade came up to the man’s throat as he lurched off the wall. He halted, face paling as he stared down his nose at her blade.
And then something exploded on the other side of the room.
Hyperia reacted.
A clean cut across the throat with a flick of her wrist, and then a splash of blood as the lord collapsed face-first into a pile of glass debris. Red seeped out from beneath him. Like wine, Hyperia thought.
She looked up to where the explosion had happened, finding that, in place of chaos, one of the musicians had tripped and fallen over the shards of the chandelier, dragging the whole thing down in a cataclysm of broken crystal.
Oh. Hyperia gaped at the dying man at her feet. Only the slightest pressure, and this was the result.
Damn. Counting Julia, this made two people she had killed in the same week. This is becoming a bad habit.
The lord’s wife screamed, a long, awful sound that stretched from one end of the room to the other. Hysteria bloomed as Petros tried herding everyone into proper formation. It was too late. The place erupted into full discord. Hyperia realized, watching the woman clutch at her dead, drained husband, that she had broken with all etiquette.
He might have been the chaotic, but he certainly had been a guest. She’d killed a nobleman with the same efficacy with which she might dispatch a troublesome servant.
Turning around in a daze, Hyperia found hundreds of nobles all looking at her with bone-deep horror. She’d broken the rules. She’d treated one of their kind with total disregard for rank.
Hyperia could feel the reins coming out of her hands, as surely as if losing control of Aufidius in a morning flight.
For the first time, she wondered if she wasn’t losing the reins on her mind, as well.
Alexander sat against the wall with Emilia, his arm around her as they witnessed the room’s cacophony. Emilia’s body was as sore as if she’d completed a ten-mile run. She’d never loosed that much power before. After the explosion in the ballroom, they’d all been told to wait in this parlor and not to leave for any reason until the danger was under control. Camilla ha
d left, but soon returned. After all, one priest needed to be on hand to record a potential victory. Everyone else was standing about or seated on the furniture. Emilia didn’t want to be close to anyone except her brother.
“Mother and Father are impossible,” Alex muttered. Emilia nestled against him. He still smelled of home, sea salt and bonfires. Or maybe that was her own fancy.
“From a logical standpoint, it makes sense,” she said lifelessly.
“Family shouldn’t have to make sense, Emi,” he hissed. He enveloped her in a hug, let his chin sit atop her head. Neither of them brought up the explosion in the ballroom. They both knew.
By some miracle, Emilia’s power had projected several rooms away. She’d never done that before. Of course, she’d never hurt like this before, either. She felt flayed before the world.
The pain grew worse as Lucian broke away from a cluster of nobles to walk her way. The Aurun siblings glared in solidarity as he knelt before them. Emilia had lost his blue cloak in all the scuffle. Oh well.
“I’m so sorry about this.” Lucian winced.
“I’m sure,” Alex snapped. When Lucian made as if to touch Emilia’s knee, her brother shoved the other boy away. “Haven’t you done enough? Leave.”
“It’s fine, Alex.” Emilia regarded Lucian with heavy lids, trying to suppress the fury that gnawed at her. She could not risk feeling right now. That could only bring chance of another attack. Looking away, Emilia noticed that Lord Sabel was watching them closely. She lowered her eyes.
“I tried to convince your parents to change their minds.”
House of Dragons Page 18