“My crown.” He muttered.
“Hmm?” Macentyx’s brow furrowed. That faraway look in his eyes blinked out momentarily as he met Iladrul’s gaze in the mirror. “My Prince?”
“My crown.” He replied, an octave higher.
“Oh.” Macentyx gave him a nervous laugh and then reached for the bauble. He raised it upward and gingerly set it upon Iladrul’s brow. “Yes. Of course.”
“What’s the matter, Mac?” Iladrul sighed. “You seem distracted.”
“I’m to be an uncle.” He replied. His eyes darted away and his skin paled. “It’s an exciting day.”
“It is.” Iladrul replied, his brow furrowed. He turned on his seat to face his doxy. “So why are you—and your brothers—so damned melancholy?”
Macentyx gave him a weak smile. “We lose our little sister today.”
A chill ran down Iladrul’s back.
“She’ll be a woman now.” He looked away again; his skin paled even further. “Once the babe is birthed.” He swallowed and returned his gaze to meet Iladrul’s. “And you’ll have an heir.” Again, the swift flight of his eyes. “Until you wed and sire a proper son.”
“Nostimun will be a proper son.” Iladrul replied, frowning at him. “I love your sister. Why would I wed another?”
That weak smile returned. “Love and politics have never lasted.”
“What do you know about either?” Iladrul asked, irritable. Macentyx swallowed and returned his gaze to meet Iladrul’s own. “You’re not a Prince. And you’ve never been in love.”
“No, my Prince.” He lowered his gaze this time. “Of course not. Please forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to be forgiven.” Iladrul snapped as he stood, still irritable. He had the distinct impression that Macentyx was lying to him. Or hiding something. Whatever was taking place, he didn’t much care for it. “But now is not the time for this conversation. We’ve an important guest waiting.” Then, as an afterthought, “Most likely with ill news.”
“Of course, my Prince.” Macentyx’s smile was apologetic now. “Forgive me. There are more important matters at hand.”
“Not more important.” Iladrul sighed, shaking his head. “Just more . . . pressing. And far reaching.”
“Yes, my Prince.”
Iladrul gave him a last, mistrustful glare and made his way out of his dressing room. Not a word passed between them as they navigated the halls of the castle to the Throne Room.
Once at the door he warned, “Be ready for anything.”
Macentyx nodded at him before opening the door and leading his Prince within. When Iladrul’s eyes fell upon the young vampire, pacing the length of the room, the chill that he had felt when Macentyx had spoken about the loss of Sezja returned to him.
“Prince Iladrul.” The creature stopped its trek and turned toward Iladrul to give him a respectful bow. “Forgive my intrusion.”
“I hope that the message that you bring from Lord Jamiason is one of peace.” Iladrul replied to this, walking toward him. “We tire of your people and your war.”
“My message is not from my Maker.” The vampire’s dark, brown eyes darted nervously over Iladrul’s face. “And it is a word of warning rather than peace.”
“What warning?” Macentyx’s hand immediately flew to the hilt of his sword. Iladrul knew that, if he didn’t like the vampire’s message, all that would be left of the child monster would be soot and ashes. “Speak swift and true.”
“Iykva and his people have allied themselves with the House of Fyrsoth.” He lowered his gaze slightly. “I overheard a conversation between Iykva and Lord Fyrsoth. Their intent is to strike where you’ll least see it coming.”
Iladrul felt his brow furrow. His doxy, he noted, paled. He turned toward him.
“Mac?” He reached for the other boy’s wrist. “What is it?”
“Sezja, my Prince.” Macentyx’s eyes darted to the vampire and then returned to meet Iladrul’s gaze. “She’s . . .”
“What?” Iladrul demanded.
“She didn’t want us to say anything until after the birthing—”
“Tell me now!” Iladrul rounded on him.
“She’s been poisoned.”
The rage within Iladrul upon hearing these words was stronger than any emotion Iladrul had ever, before, experienced. For the first time since he had taken on the responsibility of being the master of doxies, his hand flew free and he struck the other boy.
It would not be the last time.
He would never forgive Macentyx, or any of the others for that matter, for the moments with Sezja that they had stolen from him.
Her last moments; her last breath.
Nor would he ever forgive the baby that, at that moment, was ripping her womb apart.
He stormed out of the throne room, forgetting his manners where Marchand was concerned.
He didn’t care.
To the Hells with the vampire. If he knew that Sezja was in trouble, he should have made haste. If he were really on the side of the elves—if Lord Scrountentine were—Sezja’s life would never have been put at risk at the hands of his people.
He ran past the angel who guarded the royal apartments without giving him a second thought or look. This, he would later regret. The guard had always been kind to him; had always been kind to Sezja. Had he realized that he would never see the angel again, he would have taken the few extra seconds to acknowledge his proud, secret smile.
But Iladrul’s thoughts were on one person and one person only: his beloved Sezja. The true depths of his grief over others he would lose that day would not be understood for years and years to come.
For now, his only hope was that he had not arrived at the birthing bed too late.
-58-
Unlike those around me, I had time to grieve for them both. Iladrul burst through the door to the birthing room to find Sezja alone and breathing her last breath.
She reached for him with what she feared what was her last bit of strength, taking his hand in her own. It was with her final reserve that she whispered his friend’s name.
His eyes widened.
Hers closed.
Chaos, though he did not know it then, reigned around them.
-59-
Osete did not wait. The moment the child had squalled its first cry, he yanked it from the angel who had assisted with the birthing, swaddling it as he went rather than waiting for the babe to be properly bundled. These precious few seconds, the doxy would later reflect, saved the girl’s life.
These precious few seconds and his penchant for wandering around the castle when he was bored.
He had found the secret passageway that led from Wisterian’s room, beneath the expanse of the castle grounds and into the cave beyond. He was certain that few, if anyone else, were aware of it, but he took no chances and made haste.
The cool air rushed through the mouth of the cave to overwhelm him. It invigorated him, giving him the extra push he needed to put the required speed upon the balls of his feet so he could sprint that extra mile through the cavern, out of the mouth of the cave and into the darkness of the recently fallen night.
-60-
From the window of the cottage that was set upon the land just outside of the mouth of the cave, the face of a young boy, not quite yet in his tween years, watched as Osete darted across the yard beneath him with the bundle of Iladrul’s baby clutched within his arms.
The scene was familiar to the child, though he could not place it. Some distant memory lost in the land of nod.
Perhaps, he smiled as the strange creature with the bundle in its arms darted into the forest beyond the young boy’s lands, another one of his dreams.
Turning his gaze in the direction of the flames that brightened the night sky to the far west of the cottage, he shrugged his shoulders, pulled the curtains closed and did what he ever did when he was confused by his surroundings.
He crawled into his bed and fell, blissfully, into a dreamless sleep.
-61-
Iykva stood in the middle of the courtyard, his thick lips curled into a satisfied grin. He was surrounded with a litter of bodies ranging from whores to royalty. Though some of them were the soot and ash of his people, he felt not the first lick of regret on the back of his neck.
The Fyrsoths had promised him that they knew the weaknesses of the elfin kingdom and they had made good on that promise.
He hadn’t believed that it would be as easy as the humans insisted. Given it had been, he intended to pay them not only the gold that he had promised, but an extra chest or so more.
Three extra chests if they handed over that damn brat of a Prince’s newly born baby.
The news that the doxy bitch was pregnant had surprised Iykva. He wasn’t certain why. Perhaps it was the fact that he had tried to force hundreds of them together and not a one of them had conceived. He supposed that he believed, after such a defeat, that the elves couldn’t breed. That they were mutant in some way, like the vampires, who passed their lineage in a manner other than by the natural method.
Now that he knew better, the anger that he had felt from the moment his ability to find his pleasure by way of the hungers of the flesh had been stripped from him returned, compounded exponentially.
He felt cheated all over again. Lied to all over again. Shamed all over again.
Enough so that, even now, with the taste of victory on his lips and warm blood still flowing through his mouth, his only thought was that of revenge.
Revenge and, finally, laying the damn angels, who had always held themselves above Iykva and his kind, low.
-62-
“Lucias, you aren’t listening to me.” Sappharon frowned to herself as she pressed her ear against their bedroom door. She had long since grown past the point of spying on Loki and Lady Lucias. Yet, when he raised his voice to the Lady, she found that she couldn’t resist. The only other time he’d done so was when he had learned she’d traded Gorgon for Michael. “Your husband is watching the demons toy with the elves like a dog watches a cat play with a rat in a trap. This attack on Wisterian’s lands—”
“Hasn’t played itself out.” The Lady replied with a weary sigh. This last baby that she had birthed had depleted her now limited source of energy. Sappharon, who still disputed Lucias’ decision to give Loki a portion of the source of her power, rolled her fiery eyes and shook her head. “Let one side or the other win. Then let us discuss what next steps will be.”
“My words to Aiken.” Sappharon heard Loki sigh. “And I was wrong.”
“No.” She sounded irritated. “We can’t tempt Noliminan now, Loki. You must wait!”
Loki’s silence stretched between them for far too long. Finally, he let out a frustrated sigh.
“I am still to be your golem then?” He asked, his tone sharp. “And your husband’s marionette?”
“Loki, I—”
“Sometimes I wonder, my Lady,” he growled, the sound of his voice moving away from their bed toward the door leading to the chamber next to it, “which of you it is that pulls my Gods be damned strings.”
At the sound of a door slamming crashed on the other side of the door behind which she hovered, Sappharon’s brow furrowed.
It was a question she had asked, within her own mind, on several occasions. She wished desperately that Loki had given Lucias the courtesy of time to deliver her answer rather than storming out of the room.
Not, Sappharon supposed, that she would have.
She turned away from the door and walked toward her own room, biting the inside of her lip as she did so. She had the barest of a glimmer of what she must do. It would go against everything that Lucias would have wanted of her.
When has that ever stopped you?
If Loki believed that he couldn’t interfere—and if Lucias wouldn’t—there was only one person left to stand up to Noliminan who might see reason.
And reason must be seen.
The great will of the Gods had more important things to resolve its focus on than a pointless, mindless, mortal war.
-63-
Iladrul stormed through the castle, the three doxies who remained in his service beating off demons to his left and right. Losing Sezja had been a devastating blow. Finding his father, drained of all blood, cut from stem to sternum, had driven him into a madness that stole all of his reason.
And now I know who is responsible! Who has always been responsible!
His blood was pounding through his skull, darkening his vision in a shadows of red. His fury, as he made his way through the castle grounds, whirled around him. His sword flew through the flesh of his enemies, though he didn’t waste time watching them turn to ash beneath his feet. There was only one man whose death he would relish this day.
Relish and savor.
Forced to follow him, I reflected upon the fact that the last remnants of the boy that had resided within him, the boy who had hid under his bed in utter terror, was completely gone from him now.
The boy would have shown his friend mercy; the boy would have asked why.
The man—the King—wanted only revenge.
Iladrul flew the door to the chamber open, his sword split and swinging in front of him in circling arcs. When he stood before the cowering elf, his rage overcame him.
“It was you then!” He cried. “You all along! You who told them where we would be! You who let them in the castle to slaughter your own people!”
“I would rather die,” Faunus replied, standing tall now, his eyes blazing, “then bow down to a King who cares more about protecting the cities whores than its people and who trusts the world of a stable boy over his rightful General at Arms!”
“A wish I shall gladly grant you!”
The silver of the blades of the split sword in Iladrul’s hands swiped through the air, cutting neatly into Faunus on either side of his neck. They continued their circling arch through his body, barely passing one another, before escaping just above the bone of his hips.
As if gravity no longer existed, his torso and arms, where he had been cut, slid slowly downward until they fell with a disturbing thud at the boy’s feet.
The boy, himself, did not fall right away. Rather, he stared at Iladrul as if surprised that any threat would be made good, before a gush of blood escaped as vomit from his mouth and began pouring down his chin.
It was then that his knees buckled beneath him and he fell in a crumpled heap to the ground.
The sound of it was not nearly satisfying enough. The bloodlust had taken hold of Iladrul now. He swung around, glaring at Haidar, whose brown, gold ringed eyes were wide with fright. Had Jeavlin not stepped before him, Haidar would have joined Faunus in whatever traitors Hell waited for him on the other side.
“Your Majesty!” Jeavlin’s voice trembled. It was that tremble, rather than anything else, that brought Iladrul to his senses. “There are still vampires—demons—raiding your lands. Would you turn on one loyal to you? When there is real justice which must be wrought?”
Iladrul, slapped back into reality by Jeavlin’s words, shook his head.
“Take me to Iykva.”
How he managed to hold such a calm tone to his voice, I shall never know.
Forgetting that his threat was an impossibility given vampires turn to ash when they die, “His will be the first head to stand on guarded spikes at my castle walls!”
-64-
Zamyael looked up from her needlework as she heard Ishitar sigh. She hadn’t been paying attention to Sappharon, who had burst into their little cottage with her chin cocked in defiance and determination burning in her flaming eyes. She knew her sister well enough to understand that, although Sappharon always acted with good intentions, the consequences of her ill wrought interference in the games of her betters always ended poorly for all involved.
Zamyael, who had lived through enough of her own trials, thank you very much, had no intention of getting caught up in Sappharon’s latest motives and schemes.
> “Lady Sappharon,” Ishitar’s tone was patient, causing Zamyael to smile. “If my mother and father will not interfere, and if Loki believes that he cannot interfere, why, precisely, do you intend to meddle?”
Unable to resist, Zamyael raised her black eyes to watch.
An old and persistent hunger—mixed with a new passion that I had never in life believed I would ever know—exploded within me. I had come to love Zamyael as no man has ever, in the history of all worlds and times, loved a woman. The turn of her curiosity, mixed with her amused apprehension, brought me great joy.
“Must there be a reason aside that it is the right thing to do?” Sappharon signed. “The war your parents and Loki should be fighting is amongst each other and for the right of the Divine Crown. Instead, they play games with the mortals, turning demon upon angel or angel upon demon. Time after time it is the same thing. These are mortal matters, your Royal Highness. They became so the moment that Noliminan exiled Jamiason and Wisterian.”
“And,” Ishitar reminded her, “it is Jamiason and Wisterian who are at war.”
“No, Ishy.” Zamyael shook her head.
She was loathe to agree with Sappharon in this matter, but the brat of a demon—Goddess, now, she reminded herself—had the right of things. Just as Noliminan had culled the mortal worlds of the benandanti by way of the bronzies, he was now culling the elves by way of the vampires.
“It isn’t right,” her tone was low and motherly, “Your father demands the right of free will for the mortals. And, yet, he yanks it away for the turn of his amusement.”
She lowered her gaze so that he would not see the loathing that she felt for his father burning within her eyes. I sensed she needn’t have bothered. Her story was not a secret one.
“He toys with them; teases them. Each time a new batch of exiles is born, he picks one side or the other and manipulates them to destroy the other race.”
He looked doubtfully upon the demoness before turning his gaze toward me. He had barely acknowledged my presence since Sappharon’s arrival. I sensed that this was because he did not want to give away my mortal disguise rather than that he resented my presence.
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