BALTHAZAR JOH’EL #2
“I’m not giving it to you,” he said. “I want to make a deal. I give you this list, you have your trials, you put them down, and you end your attacks on the Wail.”
Bal hitched his lip, yanking his wrist from Janos’s hand. “You want to trade twenty men for twenty thousand? Not a chance.”
“Twenty thousand?” Janos scoffed. “Please, give yourself a little credit. More like thirteen thousand since you became general.”
“I haven’t even killed half?” Bal shook his head in disappointment. “I’ll have much to do when I become king, starting with the men on that list, all the way down to the squires and stablehands. Might even kill the horses if they get cheeky.”
Janos’s mouth dropped open. Bal raised a brow.
“The men you kill are just following orders.”
“The men I kill choose to follow orders,” Bal corrected. “So, I choose to kill them. We all have a will, Janos. You use yours to massacre babies. I use mine to stop you.”
Janos shifted his jaw from side to side. “Why?”
It was Bal’s turn to gape now. Why? Why? “You are a monster, so I have to kill you,” he said with a shrug, as if the answer were obvious.
“You have to?” Janos raised a perfect brow. “What drives you to do that?”
“It’s the right thing to do.”
Janos chuckled. “Oh, that’s not why you do it.”
“Who are you to decide why I do anything?” Bal spat.
“I know you, Balthazar,” Janos said. “I know men like you, and I know you. You kill because it feels good.”
Bal shook his head throughout the whole stupid sentence. “I do it because it’s right, and it’s just, and it’s necessary. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t do it.”
Janos snorted like this was a joke. “You do things because you enjoy them. Just be honest with yourself.” He leaned back in his chair, legs falling open and shoulders spread wide over the back of the seat.
Bal snorted. “Honest? You speak of honesty? You, a perpetrator of genocide against your own people? You killed your own family. How dare you tell me what is and isn’t honest?”
“Oh, I’m perfectly honest,” Janos said. “My father killed my uncle, and I killed his children, my own cousins. I oversaw the deaths of my aunts, too. And I have scorched a valley into this country on my father’s request. I have killed women and men and little ones.
I have done terrible things, I have seen terrible things, and I have allowed them to happen.
” He didn’t blink. If he regretted any of what he’d just admitted, he didn’t let it show.
“But I have never lied about it. I have never pretended that I am doing it because I am good or righteous. So, I am honest. More honest that you, at least.”
“Then why do you do it?” Bal asked, setting his jaw. His hands begged for a blade, but there was nothing sharp in this room—he’d checked. He could strangle Janos, maybe, but he’d have to catch him first.
Janos lowered his gaze. “Lukas is not my father. I am a bastard, and I’m not in my father’s will.
When I was fifteen, I made a deal with him that if I gave him fifteen years of service, I would earn the right to become his heir.
Then, I’d planned to kill him and take his throne.
He probably knows that, which is why I’ve yet to be named his heir, even after all of this. ”
“You do it for power—”
“I do it because if I don’t ascend, one of the men on that list will.
If you think I’m evil for what I allow, you haven’t seen what they plan.
I know. I sit in meetings with them, and I hear their vision for my country, and I know that there is no way for me to stop it unless I am king.
So I do what I have to now to secure a better tomorrow.
You don’t understand sacrifice. Everyone does it for you. ”
“I have sacrificed—”
“You have lived in privilege since you were a child! You were adopted by one of the richest men in the country. And why was he rich? Because he fucking owned the land you rule over now. I know your history, Balthazar. General Darius Ferran owned Prelyn, and when he died, you inherited it and sold it back to the people that live on it.”
“I gave them the choice—”
“Between slavery and freedom. You made millions in those sales. And when you beg the crown for money, do you know where it comes from? The Lake. From Lukas, from the Wail, from me. From the very practices you preach against. But you made a killing scamming it from under Turiel.”
Bal lunged forward. “I use it to protect my people!”
“You take blood money from dead parents and give it to their orphans. How fucking sweet.” Janos scoffed. “Like you don’t skim a little off the top.”
“I don’t. I don’t need to,” Bal answered quickly.
“Oh, because you get it back eventually, right? I know men like you. You always get it back.” Janos bit his lip, leaned into his chair like he was some moral judge. He had no fucking right.
Bal’s heart hammered in a rageful rush. So what if Bal had sold the land he owned?
Darius had purchased it; he’d left it to him.
It was legal. He’d sold it to the people of Prelyn at half price.
And fine, he collected taxes he didn’t send back to Turiel, but it all went back to the kids, into the city.
All of it. Not a talon spent on anything else.
Bal had his own money. Darius had made sure of that when he’d left Bal his other lands. Bal hadn’t made a talon off Prelyn.
Balthazar wiped a hand down his face. His stomach turned inside.
Why was his body betraying him? All full of acid and anxiety like he was the villain.
Just because Janos could pick out a few facts from his life to paint him in such crude light.
Balthazar was no villain. Fine, he had a wealthy father, and fine, he was wealthy.
The details of those facts meant nothing, were nothing, especially against the mountain of good he’d done for the past decade and a half.
He gave an easy laugh. “I don’t know why I’m letting you rile me up,” he said, getting up to pour himself a glass of water.
“I kill bad people. And you know what? Fine, I enjoy it. It feels good, stabbing one of your friends in the head. It feels good, cleaving their fingers off, to hear them scream. It feels good, knowing exactly where I need to jam my blade to stop them kicking without killing them so they can watch what I do to their comrades. It feels good. And it is good. So I’m going to keep doing it.
I’m going to keep enjoying it. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me. ”
He took a slow swallow of water and a deep breath.
“You’re mad,” Janos muttered, and Bal was glad to see fear poking holes in his easy facade. He’d taste it on the prince’s blood when he cut him open.
Bal gave a fake pout. “Is that supposed to hurt me?”
“Does Esme know what you are?” Janos asked, his eyes tracking Bal’s long stride.
“Does she need to?” Bal asked. He shrugged and took another drink.
“I assume you and Urias are very honest with each other. Adorable. But soon he’s going to know exactly what you are.
He’s going to pull away. He’s going to cringe.
He’s going to get cold. Your truth isn’t lovable, Janos.
Everyone who knows you wants you dead.” He finished off his drink. “Now hold still.”
He launched the cup at Janos’s head.
The prince flinched away just in time. “Trying to kill me now? Don’t be predictable,” he seethed.
Balthazar shattered the pitcher of water and grabbed the longest piece of glass. “I never claimed to be anything but,” he said, grinning, and swung for him. Janos leapt up from his chair. Bal’s blade sunk into the fabric.
Janos grunted. “You’re wasting the bit of energy you have.”
Bal threw himself at the prince again, and Janos kicked him backwards into the ruined chair.
“I’m going to kill you.” Bal beamed.
“Of course you are,” Janos cooed, crushing Bal’s hand and the shard of glass clutched within it under his boot. The razor edge sunk into his palm, deep enough to nearly tear through his hand. Undaunted, Bal wormed his fingers out from under Janos’s boot and stabbed the shard clean through his foot.
“Fuck!” the prince screamed.
“I thought I was predictable?” Bal said, pushing out his lip in mock sympathy.
He pulled the shard from Janos’s shoe, and the prince limped two steps back.
Bal was on him in a second, shard raised and ready to stab clear through Janos’s eye.
But just as he swung down, Janos punched him in the gut.
When Bal doubled over, the prince landed another punch on his jaw.
Just a second of distraction, and Bal’s grip on his makeshift blade loosened.
Janos grabbed it the second he dropped it and sank it into Bal’s shoulder.
He drew back to stab again, but Bal pushed them apart just in time.
Bal bit off a curse and stumbled back into one chair. Janos tripped backwards into the other. The shard fell in the scuffle and shattered into a scattering of unusable pieces.
The men panted at each other, waited, bated. Bal just had to get his hands on Janos’s throat before Janos got his hands on his…
“Oh look, they’re having a playdate!”
Both the general and prince’s gazes snapped to the door, where Urias and Esme had kicked it open.
“Come, Janos,” Urias said, crooking a finger.
The prince’s face darted down to his bleeding foot, and Urias’s eyes lit in fury. Esme’s sparked just the same when she noticed the gasping hole in Bal’s shoulder.
Bal had expected the Wraiths’ anger, but he had not expected them to look at each other like territorial dog owners whose mutts had just got into a biting match.
“This will have repercussions,” Esme gritted out.
“No shit,” Urias growled back. “You. With me, now,” Urias snapped, pointing at the floor by his feet.
Janos tried to drag himself to where his owner told him, only to falter. Urias caught him just in time.
“Can you move that?” Esme asked Bal, eyeing his shoulder. Judging by the tightness of her words, Bal’s own leash was about to get cut short too.