Briar #2
I tried to hide the pain of it, the fear, that she was unwilling to help them.
Maez was so powerful, so strong, she could annihilate the Silver Wolves just as she had in Taigos.
There was nothing to fear except the ghosts of her past. But she chose not to go, and I had no control over that decision.
It had been foolish of me to think I could sway her.
I knew I could push her forever and she wouldn’t budge.
“To the tower, then,” I said, holding her gaze. “At least we can end one evil king.”
“That’s a plan we can agree on.” Her eyes alighted with mischief, and she held out a hand. “Lead the way, Princess.”
WE CUT THROUGH THE ROOMS IN SEARCH OF THE NEW KING.
The top floor of the palace was a twisting labyrinth of doors, hard to navigate.
And in each room, we found more maids and young pups, the children surrounding the King’s chamber like rings of a tree, protecting their King with his most vulnerable.
“Who uses their young as shields?” I growled, looking around one of the anterior rooms where a human servant wrapped her arms around three cowering pups.
“Sick, evil men,” Maez growled back. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she added tightly to the Wolf pups who flinched at the shooting sparks of her angry magic. “My lightning will carve up a much more appropriate host.”
“Get them out of here,” I said to the human servant. “Take them and whatever gold you can carry into the villages. Raise them better than the ones before them.”
I said it over and over to every carer who’d listen. Sending them from the squalor of the beautiful rooms that had rotted under their confinement. The farther from Tadei, the better.
Maez had told me the way the King had leered at Sadie, of the failed marriages and wives who’d barely escaped .
. . and of those who didn’t. And I knew then why when she swore she didn’t care for anyone but the two of us, she was determined to put an end to this King: she’d lived through this story before.
We got to the last antechamber. This one only filled with mountains of treasure like a dragon hoarding its wealth.
“He uses his young to protect his gold,” Maez snarled. She grabbed a burlap bag and began stuffing it with jewels and coins.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m taking a souvenir.”
“You’ve come for treasure?”
“I’ve come to kill the Onyx Wolf King,” she said. “But stealing his treasure is far more satisfying than pissing on his grave. He will have no need of these riches now.”
“We don’t need this treasure,” I said. “Let the humans keep it.”
Maez shrugged. “I’ll leave most of it to them, just a token for me.”
“Maez—”
But Maez wasn’t listening. She dropped her bag of spoils at the last door and kicked it in. A pathetic yelp sounded when the door banged open.
The place looked ravaged by a madman. The bed upturned like a barricade, shredded open with feathers strewing from the spilling guts of the stuffing. It reeked of piss and shit, the windowless room unable to throw the excrement out. A lone candle was burnt nearly to the nub.
Two bloodshot eyes peeked up from behind the overturned bed frame. Pupils blown so wide that they nearly consumed the sockets, hollow faced, the effects of the mountain flower evident even without its sickly-sweet cloying scent filling the air. Drugged half out of his mind, Tadei watched us.
“Come to finish the job, you monster?” he asked, but his voice was only filled with fear, no heat of venom left in it without his many guards to protect him.
“Everyone uses that word as if there’s only one definition. Take a look in a mirror, King. Look how pathetic you’ve become in only a few short weeks,” Maez said with a click of her tongue. “Only babes to protect you now.”
“You can have them,” he said all too quickly. “Take them, they’re yours. A trade for my life.”
I let out a little snarl, and Maez took another step forward, the brightness of her magic illuminating the shadowed room.
“You are truly loathsome, Your Majesty,” she said.
“They—they’re all gone,” he whispered. “All of them. My pack dead or stolen by Nero to fight his own battles and not for their King. He convinced me to send every last one somehow,” the King rambled, his voice tinged with madness.
“I don’t know what spell he cast over me to compel me to do so.
The power he wields now . . . But what about me?
What of my power? He’s going to steal my crown, isn’t he? He’s going to take my gold.”
“Your gold should be the least of your concerns,” Maez growled.
“I-I’m all alone now. Please. Please don’t kill me.”
“You’re begging me?” Maez asked, cocking her head.
He instantly dropped to his knees. “Yes, yes, please. I beg you. Spare me.”
Maez threw her head back and laughed, the sound making Tadei flinch again. “You know, I’ve heard many things about you in my time, Tadei,” she said. “I heard you were quite fond of making people beg.” His eyes grew even wider at the accusation. “Tell me, did you ever show them mercy?”
“Please—”
“No,” Maez cut him off as bile rose up my throat. “It turned you on, didn’t it?”
“Mercy, please—”
“You don’t know the meaning of mercy.”
Tears streamed down Tadei’s face as he blubbered, begging and pleading that Maez spare him.
“Silence!” Maez shouted and Tadei abruptly stopped.
She wandered over, nose wrinkling, and she stooped in front of him to meet his watery eyes.
“One day, Tadei, your death will feed my power. Your soul will give me enough magic to end another dozen just like you.” His whole body trembled violently. “But I will spare you today.”
My mouth fell open in surprise as Tadei collapsed in relief, sobbing his thanks.
Maez turned and looked at me, and there was nothing but hatred in her eyes as she said, “Let’s go.”
“But—”
“Let’s. Go.” Low and lethal. She stepped back to let me go first, stooping to blow out Tadei’s candle as she went.
I walked out of the room, and she closed it behind us, leaving the sobbing pathetic King in the dark.
“I don’t understand . . .”
Maez ignored me as she picked up the bag of treasures and slung it over her shoulder.
She surveyed the walls. “You know it took hundreds of years for builders to place each of these stones,” she said, and I turned to her with a questioning look.
“Hundreds more for them to paint every tile. And yet with one flick of my wrist, I can undo what took hundreds of years with a single burst of power.”
She turned her hand over, emerald sparks shooting out so bright I had to shield my eyes. And when I lowered my hand again . . .
The doorway was gone. Only a smooth wall of beautiful, intricate tiles, not even the slightest inconsistency or crack to denote old from new. It was as if the door to the King’s chamber never existed.
I gasped—not at the result, but at the show of power. At the ingenuity of her actions. This was vengeance. Not only was Maez killing an evil king, this was one small ounce of retribution for what had happened to her so many years ago.
“Briar,” Maez rasped my name, and I looked down to see the hand she offered out to me.
I looked back up at the wall in surprise as I heard the faint screams and bangs from the door beyond. But instead of gaping in horror, a smile curled the edges of my lips.
Maez held my harsh gaze, but I didn’t shrink from this darkness.
My surprise morphed to glory until I basked in it.
How many more would be saved by her—my Goddess of Vengeance?
I knew I would never blame Maez again for taking that dark magic, for using it like this.
If anything, I wanted her to use it more.
A rueful smile split Maez’s lips as I stepped into her side and took her hand, leaving the King of the Onyx Wolves to die in his pitch-black tomb.