Chapter 5 #3
I was cast back into my childhood, remembering a time I’d run from Magdor when she’d tried to lock me in a wooden chest full of needle ants.
I’d made it to the nearest guards and begged for help, but they’d just looked at me with this strange, empty expression, and when Magdor had come to drag me away, they said nothing.
Did nothing. I’d learned a long time ago that Magdor had complete power within these walls, but sometimes that power seemed to run so deep it terrified me.
“Why are you panicking, little mouse?” Kahn asked, rising to his feet too and moving towards me with a dark look on his face that unsettled me. “Return to your seat. You’re having dinner with me. Mother said so.”
I was frozen in place as he took my arm, unable to believe he dared lay a finger on me, but I was out of sight of the guards, cast in his imposing shadow as he leered down at me.
He pushed me down into my seat with such strength that it made the chair legs rattle on the ground and yet no one batted an eye, no guards came to arrest him, and it made me think of Cassius and the ferocity with which he had always protected my father and I.
He of all my guards wouldn’t have stood for this.
I despised that I had no weapon against any of it, no way to fight back. My shackles may have been invisible, but I felt them tightening on me in that moment, destiny binding me to this brute.
As Kahn dropped back into his own seat, the waiters arrived with our food and I turned my nose up at it. An entrée. Which meant this meal was going to be five courses. How was I going to get through five courses with this lewd arsehole?
I never dined with men, only ever women.
And I always asked the guards to leave when I did so that I didn't have to drape my damn veil over the table to eat.
There was no way I was going to humiliate myself like that in front of Kahn and I had no appetite anyway in his company, so I was going to go hungry.
“You haven't won me yet,” I said firmly as he picked up a dainty fork and skewered the braised meat on his plate before stuffing the whole lot into his mouth.
Kahn released a low guffaw. “I am twice as strong as any man who'll offer you his hand, Princess. I'm going to rip their hearts out before your eyes. Blood and gore and victory!” He pounded his chest proudly and anger flashed through my veins.
“I'm not a fan of violence,” I said dryly, not bothering to hide my disdain for him.
Actually, I didn't give two fucks about violence.
I knew the bite of it well enough after what Magdor had put me through.
But if it involved this beast beating the other suitors to a pulp, I was definitely against it.
Not that I wanted to marry any of them. But he was the last man in the entire kingdom I'd ever choose for myself.
But I don't get to choose, do I?
I just prayed a dragon showed up to enter the pageant and ate Kahn whole, because I’d rather be kept in a tower, guarded by a fire breathing monster than be owned by this man.
“Sorry, I forgot that women of your breed aren't used to things like that.” He sniggered.
“My breed? ” I snarled.
He nodded, leaning across the table and stabbing some of the vegetables on my plate, stuffing them into his mouth.
The act alone was an insult that made venom seep into my blood.
I wanted to scream, but most of all I wanted to fight.
I felt the tingle of my hair against my scalp and that always pre-empted a private session in the armoury.
I’d sneak down there and get hold of Father’s blades, let my Affinity for metal run riot as I swung and slashed and danced through that room with the steel singing just for me.
“You’re innocent. But I will be the one who gets to take that from you.” He wet his lips again and I shuddered, feeling like his hands were on me already.
“You will take nothing from me,” I hissed. “I’d rather die than let you touch me.”
A frown lined his features as the maids came to collect our plates and replace them with large bowls of tomato soup.
“Mother says you will be a good wife. An obedient one. And if you’re not, then I can put you in your place.” He picked up his spoon, scooping up some soup with more grace than I’d expected and supping it with a gleam in his gaze.
“My place?” I spat. “My place is here in my home, a daughter of the emperor, an heir to the throne that is rightfully mine . You are the outsider here. You are the one who should be respecting me .”
“Mother says-”
“I don’t care what Mother says,” I snapped. “If you think I will bow to you easily, I assure you I will not. I will fight you every day, I will hate you every day, I will make it known to the whole world that I despise my husband and I will never, ever submit to you.”
His eyes darkened to deepest midnight and I continued to glare at him, starting to tremble with the rage I felt towards this man.
He pointed at me with his spoon, slopping soup all over the table. “If I can break a man’s neck with my bare hands, I can break a woman in just fine.”
I had so much anger inside me, it lived there like a fiery beast coiled up in my chest. So many years of being told no.
That women couldn’t do this or that. That princesses didn’t get to inherit thrones.
I was expected to marry and birth a son.
A child who would be entitled to rule after his father dropped dead.
Which I can always hope happens sooner rather than later.
Before I could respond to that heinous declaration, Kahn’s spoon clattered to the table, his jaw fell slack and he face-planted into his soup bowl unconscious.
“By the Fallen,” I gasped.
I stared at him, hope singing a joyful song in my chest as a possibility occurred to me.
Please be dead. Please, please, please.
“Dismissed,” Magdor's voice rang out, and I jolted in surprise at her sudden arrival.
She stepped onto the veranda, ushering the guards away and they hurried off before I could object, though they weren’t exactly helpful to me.
Magdor faced her son with a wicked smile and the hope I felt dissolved in my chest like sugar in hot water.
Something wasn’t right, and that smile said it all.
“Oh Kahn,” she sighed, moving towards him and yanking his collar so his head was pulled out of the bowl.
His tongue lolled between his lips and his eyes had rolled back into his head.
She dropped him again with a bang as his forehead hit the table and she rounded on me instead.
“Not good enough for you, is he Austyn?”
“Aren’t you concerned for your son?” I rose from my seat, unsure why the hell she wasn’t more worried that Kahn looked dead.
“He’s fine,” she huffed, tossing a lock of raven hair over her shoulder and killing off any lasting hope I had over him falling prey to a heart attack. Life really isn’t fair. “He’ll come around in a minute.”
“What do you mean?” I glared at her. “What’s happened to him?”
“The Prophet Jahalus sent me a little gift for him, that’s all. A simple potion. I wrote to him weeks ago with a tiny request.”
My pulse raced at those words, shock jarring my thoughts.
The Fae had lost all real contact with the magic our Affinities linked us to hundreds of years ago when the Fallen learned to lie and offended the deities who had once loved us so dearly.
But in the wake of that loss, some Fae had hunted down other ways to wield the power of our world and through twisted rituals, blood sacrifices and heinous concoctions they’d managed to claim some of it.
Everyone knew that kind of perverted power came at a cost, and most Fae were far too wise to ever risk messing with it.
Not the Prophets of the Fallen though, or so they called themselves.
They were Fae who travelled the world, gathering ancient texts, wielding lost magical artefacts and brewing potions outlined in their findings.
They were often hermits, living in caves or in the ruins of the Fallen’s temples where the Fae of old had once prayed to the lost gods.
There weren’t many who trusted the experimental alchemy the Prophets took part in, most believing the magic shouldn’t be wielded now that we didn’t have the abilities needed to harness it the way we once had.
It was considered a black art, and it was outlawed in my father’s empire.
So why the fuck did Magdor think it was okay to drug her son with some dangerous magical draught?
My eyes narrowed sharply on my stepmother. If Magdor was associated with this kind of thing, that gave me even more reason to suspect her as a snake in my empire. How long had she been buying potions from a Prophet? And what in Osaria was she capable of doing with them?
“Magic?” I hissed accusingly, glancing around like just saying the word could summon a virulent plague to our door.
“Oh, do calm down, Austyn.” She pressed her fingers into her eyes as if I was giving her a headache. “It’s a gift for you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, a shudder of trepidation rolling down my spine.
She floated towards me, brushing her hand over my shoulders and angling me to face Kahn. “It means you will soon see past his teensy-weensy flaws, my dear.”
I gave her a death glare. “We're incompatible, nothing’s going to change that.”