Chapter Thirty-Seven The Emperor and the Abyss
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Emperor and the Abyss
The Emperor sat alone upon his throne.
With a sneer of cold command, the Emperor said: “There are no more worlds to conquer. Let me begin to destroy them.”
Then he spoke the last word, and the word came true. Once the last word was spoken, the story of life ended.
The Emperor remained untouched.
Under the broken moon, beneath a barren sky. Around his throne the wasteland stretched, boundless and bare. He was the last living soul in his shattered world.
The story of the Once and Forever Emperor will end in the next book…
Excerpt from the Once and Forever Emperor series, ANONYMOUS
The late unlamented king had outfitted his private quarters in luxury past the point of decadence.
Key considered that it was like one of those cakes at nobles’ feasts, layer upon layer of indulgence.
A circular feather bed, a library stuffed with gilt-wrapped tales of chivalry, a wine cellar lined with the most enchanted vintages and, directly above the wine cellar, a bathing chamber that was more giant bath than chamber.
The royal private quarters were now the imperial private quarters. Key didn’t sleep in the bed or read the books, but he was meant to play the Emperor. He should enjoy his luxuries.
A fight might come at any moment, and he hoped it would. So he refused to slow his reflexes, but now and then he would drink a mouthful of the wine and smile. Once he had been hired to cart barrels of this wine into the palace, because he looked strong.
A noble had struck him, as a warning to take care. “A drop of this wine is worth more than all your blood, gutter rat.”
His lady was fond of taking baths. He used to threaten people to make sure the water was as hot as she preferred.
The room she called their villains’ lair would fill with steam like smoke, and she would laugh and sing, her voice far more beautiful smoke.
She bathed behind a red screen. Through the gaps in the panels he would sometimes catch a glimpse of glistening skin or a wet tendril of hair, then turn away.
Emer used to say, “My lady is not for the likes of you.”
Emer always saw so much, almost as much as he did. Key wished he could find Emer.
The vast bath had rough black stone sides, and a clouded glass bottom that let the lights from the wine cellar shine through. The bath was always full to the brim with water, so hot the steam curled white in the air, filling the room like smoke, but not like song.
Rose petals perfumed the steam, red as blood in the night-dark water.
When the Emperor rose from his bath, a guard had a robe of black silk held out waiting for him.
Though water still ran down his back and limbs like rain, and petals clung to his shoulders, Key slipped into the robe. Nobles didn’t even notice spoiled silk.
It was almost time for his appointment with the intriguing Lady Glacia.
He stood at the window, framed on either side by black beeswax candles in steel brackets. Across the carefully sculpted grounds of the Palace on the Edge, he could see his abyss, and the Tower of the Maidens.
His guard waited for his command.
His guard Conn, the one who had killed him, would say he was glad to serve his god. But Key had sent Conn away with a message to the ice raiders. A dead man stood guard instead.
“Are you glad to serve your god?” he asked the ghoul’s still face.
He thought they must be. They preferred doing his bidding to anything else, even satisfying their endless and ravenous hunger. Perhaps more power would let his dead speak. Then they could tell him they were glad to serve, and Key would know the story they told him was true.
Truth made him think of her. Lady Rahela. Rae. His lady, with her hair like shadow and her words like snakes.
She had failed the test. Her mother had not recognized her.
His lady had warned him she was ambitious, heartless and ruthless. That she would destroy anyone in her path to achieve her aims, and all she cared for was power.
He wished that was true. It would have been simpler.
Key looked once more at the message in the Cobra’s writing, held out to him between dead fingers.
“Rae, the Great God has taken over the Duke of Valerius. The god can walk the earth once more, and he will come for his son. I don’t know how much time you have before he reaches Themesvar, but it cannot be long. Before he arrives, you must prepare, and if necessary, you must prepare to flee.”
Key’s reading was far more advanced than he let on, but puzzling out this many letters made his head ache. Besides, he never listened to anything said after the words “you must”.
Rae. That was easy enough to read. Rae. Short for Rachel. He had read that name in letters of fire against the sky, and heard it from his lady’s lovely, lying mouth.
Rae, short for Rachel. Not Rahela. She wasn’t Rahela at all.
“My lady Rae,” said the Emperor thoughtfully aloud. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Key lit the candles with a touch. Then he held the Cobra’s letter to the flame, and watched it burn.