6
Ifucking hated Uzhhorod. It wasn’t the dirt that blustered through the narrow, steep alleys in the slums on the outskirts, or the somehow constantly gleaming stone manors that begged for the Kral’s attention as I entered the palace’s gates. No, it was the people themselves, the courtesans who would stab you in your sleep if it brought them attention or favor, the diseased bodies that lined the roads, and everyone in between. Most were utterly useless, and it was by my will alone that they hadn’t all been slaughtered yet by the Angel army.
I was the Fates-chosen savior of the Demons: the Halálhívó, the male who called upon the dead to fight against the living. Infinitely more powerful than every single mouthbreather who lived in this city combined and without mercy to anyone who dared challenge me.
The Kral’s Guard was stationed along the paved walkway that led to the massive arched doors to Gyor Palace. Their red metal armor gleamed as the sun beat down, nearly oppressive at the high altitude. I stopped short in front of one whose form was sloppy, glaring at him through the slits of my ebony horned helmet. That one piece of attire was enough to signal who I was, for none of the other officers sported such intimidating masks.
“How does my cousin expect to be protected if you cannot maintain proper discipline?”
I growled at the male. Despite his dark skin, he paled. His laziness only confirmed my beliefs about the people living in the capital.
The male straightened immediately, throat working as he glanced at me and returned his gaze stoically forward. “It will not happen again, Halálhívó.”
“It better not,”
I snarled, spinning on my heel and stalking the remaining distance to the entryway. My hounds, Grem and Zeec, trotted at my heels, their nails clicking against the stone.
The bowing and scraping began the moment I passed through the ridiculous glass paned doors. “Halálhívó,”
a female called out, a light fabric swishing around her legs as she jogged to catch up with me.
“What do you want, Orith?”
I groused, not slowing my pace or deigning to look in her direction. Orith was the daughter of my cousin’s foremost ass kissers, and every fucking time I returned to the capital from the front, she latched onto me like a leech.
I had no time for females; they were a weakness that I refused to take on. I was busy doing far more important things than courting a noble house’s bitch.
Like, saving the entire Demon race from the zealots who snatched more territory from the Demons every day. My blood ties to the Kral were not how I rose in the ranks of the army to lead it. No, it was my devotion to honing my power and fighting prowess. Frankly, I never believed my cousin when he said he was happy with my decision to permanently join after our required service ended. Xannirin was like a brother to me, and he considered me his closest advisor. But court politics was what brought him satisfaction, while mine was killing. Our differences did not divide us as many had hoped; instead, we became a formidable team, with the intelligence and power to rule the entire continent of Keleti.
“Would you dine with me this evening? I imagine after so many months away you must be starving for good company,”
Orith asked, her voice breathier than it needed to be with our quick pace. Halls flashed by us as I strode straight to Xannirin’s study at the rear of the palace. Orith’s father no doubt put her up to this. Even if I almost felt sorry for her, I didn’t deign to respond.
“Rokath,”
she pleaded, using my given name. No one called me Rokath without my permission. Everyone referring to me as Halálhívó added to the enigma of my figure, which was entirely intentional. In fact, very few people knew my real name.
Grem snarled as her hand latched onto my wrist. I shook it off.
“No,”
I said, imbuing my tone with as much violence as I could muster, which wasn’t hard given who I was. My boots squealed against the polished tile as I slammed to a halt and spun on her. Orith flinched as I towered over her. The veil she wore could barely be called sheer with how much of her face I could see. Which was entirely intentional. “I have no interest in you. Tell your father to stop throwing you at my feet like a fallen female. I do not need you to bear my brood.”
Her cherry eyes flashed with hurt, and her mouth popped open in protest, but I was already striding away, hoping to the fucking Weaver that she stayed where I left her. When the only sound that echoed off the white washed walls was the clicking of my hounds’ nails and my own frustrated breath, I finally relaxed my jaw.
It was no secret that I had a temper, one that had gotten me in trouble more times than I could count in my centuries of life. But that rage was what made me the Halálhívó, the deathcaller, and the greatest leader of the Demon army to ever exist.
Even if it kept me isolated.
Two sentries were posted outside the doors to Kral Xannirin’s study, and both stepped aside as I approached. They held their closed fists to their foreheads, then jerked them away as I stepped past and into the bright, cluttered space.
“Halálhívó,”
my cousin greeted me, looking up from the stack of papers in his hand.
I closed the door behind me, then dropped to one knee and rested my head on my forearm. “My Kral.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that is unnecessary?”
he sighed, papers rustling as he laid them down.
I rose, and then we embraced, clapping each other on the back. “It is good to see you, cousin.”
I stepped away and snapped at my dogs to settle by the door. They obeyed immediately, mirroring each other as they sat on their haunches, red eyes fixated on us.
“Oh come on, let me get a few pets in before you force them to be all stoic like you,”
Xannirin protested.
I rolled my eyes, then jerked my head in Grem and Zeec’s direction. When Xannirin dropped to his knees, the black beasts bounded forward, Zeec releasing a bark as he tackled the ruler of the Demons. Their tongues cleaned whatever crumbs they could find from his beard and face, and he laughed as he tried to push them away.
“You brought it on yourself,”
I grumbled, sinking onto an oversized chair. Sweat beaded my brow, and I pulled off my helmet, nearly sighing with relief as a breeze trickled through an open window and caressed my face.
“You’ll keep dogs but not females,”
Xannirin shot back, rising to his feet and ordering the hounds back to their posts.
“And you’ll keep females but not dogs,”
I shrugged, fingering the buckles on my armor and letting it drop to the floor on either side of me.
“Yes, but you and I are the same in that we’ll never marry a bitch,”
he grinned, circling behind his desk and sitting. He propped one foot, then the other on the onyx wood before tucking his hands behind his head.
I snorted, running a hand over my bare scalp. “Then what is all this for?”
I gestured to the window beyond, where smoke trailed from open fires, laughter and childish screams filled the background noise, and the barest scent of garlic wafted on the breeze. All pungent reminders of where I was not. Guilt gnawed at me for leaving the front behind to return to Uzhhorod.
“I have millennia of life to sire and name an heir. That doesn’t mean I need to marry to do so, despite what the priestesses tell our people.”
His burgundy eyes sparkled with amusement, and I rolled my own, leaning back and crossing my arms over my chest. “What’s the latest from the front?”
I didn’t waste time on idle chatter and preferred to get straight to the point, which my cousin definitely knew. “The Angels have marched up to Lutsk now. They’re pressing us down through the Paks Desert, which means they are only a six weeks’ ride to Uzhhorod.”
While to some that might seem like plenty of time, to me it wasn’t nearly enough. The pressure of keeping the Angels from overrunning the Demon Realm was immense, and I alone bore the burden. Every move, every battle, every moment made a difference.
Mistakes weren’t a luxury I could afford.
“And what of the new recruits?”
he questioned, tearing me from my spiraling thoughts.
“They should arrive in a few weeks. I want to organize them by eye color and power rank. The cardinal, crimson, and scarlett are dispensable. The ruby, garnet, and maroon are not. Those in between, we shall see. They need to be protected at all costs if we want to win.”
I didn’t need to mention that our biggest loss stemmed from the male who could create sickness, and that his capture by the Angels was one of the reasons our army had been so thoroughly routed over the past year. The Angels never revealed if he was alive or dead, and if he was still alive and in their control, he needed to be recaptured or killed. I couldn’t risk him unleashing another plague that would wipe out massive swaths of the population. He was, after all, the reason for these conscripts from the far flung parts of the Demon Realm.
“Do you have no hope for more burgundy eyed soldiers?”
Xannirin asked, lifting one black brow toward his long hair. Unlike me, he kept his hair shoulder length, opting to tie back half of it to keep it off his face.
“Even if the Százados manage to find any, they’ll likely need extensive training to wield their powers during battle,”
I grumbled. While burgundy, the most powerful of all Demon eye colors, was most common in the noble houses, it was still rare—even rarer the further one was from the capital. Eye color wasn’t completely hereditary, since our power was Fates-gifted, but breeding seemed to have some impact on the outcome regardless. The secondary magic that burgundy-eyed Demons possessed was unique, powerful, and they were usually the lone wielder of their abilities.
Xannirin could speak with spirits that had passed on to other worlds but had not yet been reincarnated in another form. It was damn near useless on the battlefield, but extremely helpful with court politics. Once when we were young, he’d accidentally stumbled upon a Kral who had died in a world he called Earth. He’d told Xannirin about his conquest of a continent he called Europe and his subsequent modernization of his kingdom. My cousin told me he talked with the male for hours, and much of his desire for conquering all of Keleti was inspired by this conversation.
I possessed the ability to reanimate the dead. The warrior we’d lost to the Angels could create targeted plagues. My second-in-command crafted thick black ropes that not only suppressed the movement of whomever was bound in them but also locked down their magic so they were helpless to escape. I could name every rare power the Giver offered the Demons for the last three hundred years because that was what made me the best leader of the army the Demon Realm had ever known.
I planned on using every drop of dark magic to my advantage to ensure I became the most infamous general in the history of Ravasz.
But my issue was time. With the Angels surging into our realm and their control increasing by the day, I needed new recruits faster than they were coming in. For now, I’d have to settle for retaining the most powerful magic wielders behind the front lines and having their new comrades take the brunt of the Angel’s advance.
“I have every faith that you will turn the tide back in our favor with your new plan,”
Xannirin stated.
I grunted, tracing the edge of my lip with the tip of my finger, losing myself to battle plans and army structures. “Any word from Koron Stadiel and Korona Iaoth?”
“Their monthly taunt of surrender arrived this morning.”
Xannirin dropped his feet from the desk before slipping a paper from his stack and tossing it in my direction.
I caught it with one hand before righting it and skimming. “I liked it better when we were sending the taunts to those fanatics who sit upon their white feather thrones like they are better than us,”
I growled, folding up the paper and sending it flying back to the Kral.
“As did I. Make it happen, Rokath.”
Xannirin paused for a moment, gazing out the windows and into the world beyond. In the distance, the Skala Mountains that divided the continent waited, a stone wall crossing its back like the spikes on a Dragon Shifter’s back. Between the foreboding peaks and the city, rolling hills provided plenty of vantage points to see far into the distance. Beyond the valley, a vast expanse of desert waited to claim the life of anyone foolish enough to enter it without plenty of water.
That wasteland to the north was one of the capital’s greatest defenses. Situated on a plateau thousands of miles above sea level, the Paks Desert was as deadly as it was beautiful. Few managed to survive the harsh climates, and any semblance of civilization was situated on the few oases that dotted the landscape. Food in the capital needed to be imported from the fertile southern plains because of the lack of farmable land nearby.
“What else?”
I asked my cousin.
“The nobles are…restless. Especially now that House Turrokar, or who remains of it, has been forced to retreat here,”
Xannirin admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.
I gritted my teeth as the memory of escorting them from their sprawling estate in the sandy marshes on the northwestern shores surfaced. On that day, I had decided we needed to conscript enough males to more than replenish those we had lost in the plague. Retreating from the Angel’s advance irked me to no end, and I wanted—needed—to turn this fucking war around.
I rubbed my jaw to loosen the tension held there. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? I would have returned sooner.”
“Because you would have tried to fix everything right then and there and made it worse. You handle the killing, I handle the politics,”
he reminded me. That had been our agreement from the beginning. I hated politics because I hated most people. But if the nobles were losing support for the war effort, losing belief in the tales we’d spun…then it was necessary for me to step in and remind them exactly who I was.
First, the sloppy guards, now the mouthy nobles. This was what happened when I spent too long away from here—discipline flew off into the mountains and did not return until I did.
Grasping my helmet, I rose, my legs protesting the moment I was on my feet. “If anyone gives you any trouble, you know where to find me.”
“Will that be in your room in the palace then?”
Xannirin grinned, rounding his desk and leaning on it while he watched me don my armor.
“If it pleases you, I’ll stay in the palace while I am in the capital,”
I grumbled. I couldn’t lie, though. The running water and my expansive feather mattress was a perk I missed while living in a war camp.
Xannirin knew that too. “Go get cleaned up and we shall dine together tonight.”
“On food or on pussy?”
I asked, pulling the horned skull helmet over my head.
“What do you think?”
he snorted.
“Both.”
With a sharp whistle, Grem and Zeec were on their feet and ready to patrol the halls with me.
As I opened the door, my cousin called, “Bring the dogs!”
I rolled my eyes and walked out of his office, not bothering to respond.
My rooms were exactly as I had left them on my previous visit over the winter, though it appeared the maids had entered on a few occasions to clean and tidy up. The papers on the desk in the corner were still haphazardly tossed about, but the chair was neatly tucked in. The sitting area still had an abundance of blankets and pillows, but they had been neatly folded and arranged. The cushions for my hounds sat squarely against the wall of books on military history and strategies from all the continents of Ravasz, but the pile of chews remained in the center, untouched. Grem and Zeec bounded forward and grabbed one each before plopping down to gnaw on them.
Leaving them to relax, I entered the sleeping chamber and strode toward the mannequin in a corner. The first item removed from my body was the horned ebony helmet, and after settling it in place, I began unbuckling the straps to the rest of my black armor. Every piece of metal that slid from my body was secured with the utmost care around the stuffed fabric. Appearances were important, and I had this set made especially for intimidation. A scuff or a scratch would only serve to make people think I was weak, and I was anything but. They could underestimate me at their own peril.
When I was down to my under clothes, I kicked off my boots and strode toward the attached bathing chamber. Months of excessive sweat and grime needed to be washed away.
A sunken tub centered the space, large enough to seat at least four Demons comfortably, and six if everyone was in a particular mood. Thankfully, Olrith wasn’t waiting for me, and I was blissfully alone. That was the problem with war camps, one was never truly alone, at least physically. Messengers were constantly dipping in and out of my tent, relaying movement reports from scouts, asking for assistance on trivial matters that should have been handled by my lower ranked officers, or to inform me that it was time to strategize on our next attack.
Turning the taps, I let the water splash into the bottom of the tub, the sound filling me with a sense of peace. It would be a while before it was filled enough for me to enjoy, so I stepped toward the vanity, where a bowl of cool water, a sharp razor, towels, and soaps were neatly arranged, as if the maids had been in here only hours before preparing for my arrival. Which, knowing Xannirin, they likely had.
Picking up the blade, I examined its edges, pleased when I saw that it had been recently sharpened. The wood handle was smooth beneath my calluses as I flipped it around and leaned toward the mirror. Splashing some of the water from the bowl over my head, I began to shave. After the second swipe, I dipped the blade into the bowl of water, cleaning it, before continuing my ritual.
The tattoos on my scalp sharpened as the pricks of hair were removed, and once I had finished my first pass, I turned my head this way and that, ensuring that I hadn’t missed a single spot. The twin snakes on either side of my head flashed their fangs, while the three crows that flew down the center of my head melted into an intricate design that dripped down my temples and disappeared around my ears. I left the hair coating my jaw alone, letting it add to the intensity of my look. Burgundy eyes flashed in the light as I backed away from the mirror and yanked my tunic overhead, letting it fall to the floor as I returned to the tub.
It was nearly full, and I ceased the flow of water. Stripping the rest of my clothes away, I stepped one foot in, then the other, nearly groaning as the heat sank into my bones and chased away the lingering soreness in my muscles. The bathing room remained cool from its stone interior, from the polished floor to the walls. Even the ceiling was made of some type of stone, though it was high enough that I’d never paid it much attention other than to gaze out of the skylights.
The perk of being the Kral’s cousin was a favorable location in Gyor Palace, and the rear top corner was as good as it got. The only other rooms along this hall belonged to Xannirin himself.
Finding one of the carved seats, I settled onto it, letting my head rest against the side. The only sound rushing into my ears was the slow drip of the leaky faucet. Each plop of water into the tub sent a tiny wave across the surface until it lapped at my broad chest. One small action with consequences that reached much farther than where it initially took place.
That was the theme of this entire fucking war.
The moment that group of Angels attacked me and my soldiers a decade ago, it caused a ripple that had been expanding across Keleti ever since. While they felt justified in their ambush of me, they couldn’t have foreseen how it would spiral into the full-blown conflict that saw both Angels and Demons dying by the thousands. With our long lifespans, we didn’t reproduce at the rate the Shifters, Fae, and Mages on the other continents did, though the past few centuries had seen an uptick in that thanks to the propaganda campaign Xannirin and Kiira had woven once we took power.
And with my new plan, it wouldn’t be long until the Angels were subservient or exterminated completely. Koron Stadiel and Korona Iaoth might think they had the upper hand at the moment, but this fresh wave of recruits would turn the tide and lead us all the way to Sivy, the capital of the Angel Realm.
Satisfaction curled through me at the thought of the hundreds of thousands of broken, feathered wings that would line my path through the gates of the gleaming city in the Es? Forest. We’d been so fucking close before they captured Banand and forced him to create a deadly plague. By the following summer, Xannirin would straddle both thrones. I had every bit of confidence in my abilities.
A knock sounded on my outer door, and Grem and Zeec’s barks echoed all the way to the bathing chamber. “For fucks sake,”
I cursed under my breath. “Quiet!”
I ordered my hounds, and their sounds ceased immediately. Then, once I was certain the would-be caller was listening intently, I yelled, “Go away.”
“Your Glory,”
a male said, though his words after that fell on deaf ears. I couldn’t care less what he had to say, and I was enjoying my bath. How dare he disturb my peace.
I ought to storm out there and show him what happens when you interrupt the Halálhívó.
Fury filling my veins, I did just that, not caring that I dripped water the entire way or that I would present myself to the male fully nude. Nothing about my body necessitated hiding, and my dick was enough to intimidate anyone—male or female. Grem and Zeec both stood at attention, eyes trained on the door when I reached the main chamber. In three strides I had it flung open.
“What?”
I growled.
The male shrank back as I towered over him, his attention momentarily pulled lower before shooting back up to my face. “Your Glory, I am merely here to offer my service to the army. My father said–”
“And who is your father?”
I snarled, mentally preparing to add another name to the list of nobles that needed a thorough army punishment that included a flail.
“Teko Sarafok, cousin to Kormánzó Ammon–”
he stuttered.
“I know who he is.”
I took a menacing step forward, causing him to stumble back. “Tell him that should he dare interrupt my bath again, I will see him flogged in the palace square for all the nobility to see.”
The youngling blanched, nodding furiously.
I bent ever so slightly at the waist, bringing my face closer to his. “Now run.”
He wasted no time racing down the hall and around the corner, out of sight.
Satisfied that I would not be disturbed again, I shut and locked the door, then returned to my bathing room. This time, I grabbed soaps from the counter before entering the bath, wasting no more time in cleaning myself.
Intimidating others got my blood running in the most delicious way, and I needed something wet to sink my cock into to satisfy me. Thankfully, Xannirin already had plans for us that evening, so the entertainment would be coming to me. It had been too long since I’d had a good fuck, since we did not allow females into the war camp to keep the males focused on the task at hand. My last rotation out had been months ago, and it wasn’t for nearly long enough. I had a few weeks now to make up for lost time.
Once I was thoroughly clean, I lifted the plug and exited the bath. Grem and Zeec had migrated from their cushions in the main area to the foot of my massive bed, and they picked their heads up in tandem as I entered the sleeping chamber.
“You’re not supposed to be there, and you know it,”
I scolded them. Their tails merely thumped against the mattress.
“Just this once,”
I told them, going to the head of the bed and pulling back the blankets. We all knew that it was not just this once. Once I’d settled back on the pillows, I groaned, letting the plush feathers envelop me. I was fucking tired of the rock-hard mattress in my tent. By the way Grem and Zeec flopped over, they were too.
A seed of guilt took root in my stomach as I lay there, appreciating the luxury of Gyor Palace. I should have been at the front, using my Giver-blessed magic to fight off the Angels. Yet I was so exhausted from months away that sleep claimed me faster than it had in a long, long time.