Chapter 30 Tyche
Tyche
Apowerful hand slowly cut through Tyche’s field of vision, and the tips of the fingers landed on his endlessly bouncing knee, applying the smallest amount of pressure. It was enough for Tyche’s entire body to still. His eyes snapped up to Shey’s gently smiling face.
“It’ll be okay. I’ll watch your back,” the prince reassured him.
Tyche’s throat tightened, and he forced a crooked grin onto his lips. “Yeah, but are you going to be able to stop me from clawing his eyes out or making him explode with bad luck?”
Shey drew his hand to his own lap. “I could probably handle the former, but not the latter. You’ll have to exert a little self-control.”
“We’ll see.” He wasn’t making any promises.
But his sudden case of nerves didn’t have anything to do with facing Ruben.
It was the fact that he was taking any kind of confrontational action at all, and that he had companions to support him.
He was part of a team. A strange team, with a prince infused with the power of the God of Storms, a dragon, and a royal guard who had this interesting thread of magic from the God of Hope.
Sure, he was a god, but he was a rather useless god and didn’t have any kind of fight training like this trio.
Of all of them, he was the most likely to have his head lopped off.
Of course, if he were being honest, the past week had been too strange for words.
He’d been living in this posh hotel penthouse with Haru, Adrian, and Shey, eating the most delicious food and wearing amazing clothes.
Mostly, he lounged about, read books, and had the oddest conversations with the dragon.
Haru had the perspective of a long-lived being—unlike the humans—but he’d lived a sheltered life on the Isle of Stone.
He’d missed out on so many things that were happening in other kingdoms. While Tyche had been happy to fill him in on thousands of years of random history for Ilon, New Rosanthe, and more, Haru told him about life on the Isle of Stone and the various dragon clans.
However, his favorite time was at night, after they all turned in.
Shey had offered to share a room with Tyche, despite there being three bedrooms. Adrian and Haru shared, though Tyche didn’t miss that occasionally he found one of them sleeping on the sofa in the morning.
Very confusing. The third room was reserved for Vitor, who was absent more often than not.
At night, with all the lights turned out and darkness soaking into the room, Tyche and Shey would whisper silly things to each other like they had when they were locked in their cells.
They never talked about anything serious or important as they drifted off to sleep in that giant king-sized bed with an ocean of space between them.
Yet, there was a strange comfort in hearing that familiar voice reach out to him, reassuring him as it had so many times before.
He glanced over at Shey, viewing the man beside him in the car from the corner of his eye, and he looked perfectly at ease. Of course, he thought little of running off to confront bad guys and save the populace.
“Answers first, people,” Adrian called out from the driver’s seat as he maneuvered the black car through midday traffic to Ruben Deinum’s house. “Answers and then killing. We can’t get answers from a dead man. Unless you’ve got some tricks you haven’t told us about yet, Ty?”
“Nope. Can’t make the dead talk,” Tyche replied.
“He will die today,” Haru grumbled from the passenger seat next to Adrian.
The guard shot him a dark look. “You know, I really resent all of you turning me into the responsible one. I’m beginning to understand why Rayne was so grumpy all the time during our travels. I liked it better when I got to be reckless and stupid with Drayce.”
Tyche had questions about Rayne and Drayce, but he let them go as Adrian pulled up to a guard shack and announced that Yujian Visconti had arrived for his meeting with Ruben.
The guard in the neat uniform took a couple of seconds to check his tablet prior to pushing the buttons needed to open the giant swinging iron gate.
He moved around in his seat, peering through the different windows to take in his extravagant surroundings.
It had always struck him as strange for humans to erect such elaborate homes and landscaped gardens.
They had a tiny number of years to enjoy it all.
In the blink of an eye, the owner was dead, the home had been sold and the land often divided up to make room for several new, smaller homes.
All memory of their existence was gone. At least with royal palaces, they lasted for a few hundred years and were viewed as magnificent monuments to the kingdom and not just one royal family.
“Know of any gods living in places like this?” Shey inquired in a whisper as he leaned toward Tyche.
“Centuries ago. Long before kingdoms like Damardor and Caspagir were even dreamed of. But now…” Tyche paused, gazing at the enormous house that rose in front of them. “If there are any living like this today, I don’t know them, but I think they’ve lost what remained of their minds.”
The car fell silent as they drove the last of the way up to the monstrosity.
Adrian parked right by the stairs, creating what should be an easy getaway after they wreaked chaos and havoc with Ruben.
The butler blinked and hesitated as his eyes lifted to Shey and Tyche standing behind Haru, but the man still welcomed them inside and led the way to Ruben without giving away to his master that he had some extra guests.
It appeared Adrian was right in the man’s urgency to get his hands on the other godstone shard.
Tyche’s eyes traveled over all the shiny surfaces and expensive objects—all of it undoubtedly more important to Ruben than the countless people who had died because of his actions.
Anger boiled in his stomach, and he tightened his hands into fists at his sides.
He wanted to see all of this burn. Haru was right. It needed to be ash and rubble.
“Yujian, finally!” Ruben exclaimed the second Haru stepped into the room.
“We should have met days ago, but the Milway fiasco took longer to clean—” His words seemed caught in his throat as Shey and Tyche followed a few steps behind him.
His dark, bushy eyebrows slanted down hard, and heavy lines cut through his face.
“Forgive me, Ruben. Some friends of mine were in town and I thought I’d bring them,” Haru said with a careless wave of his hand.
His lips shifted into a smile sharp enough to slit a throat.
Behind them, the double doors to the study thumped softly as the butler closed them, shutting them away from the world.
Adrian wandered away from Haru’s side, positioning himself along the wall halfway between Haru and Ruben.
“What—” Ruben gasped. His narrowed eyes lit on Tyche, snapped to Shey and stuck, but Tyche couldn’t see any light of recognition.
Why should he? The couple of times Ruben had looked in on him, they’d been pale, filthy shadows of themselves.
They were piles of trash he was hoping to extract a tiny bit of useful ore from before discarding.
Yet, the people who’d strolled into his study today were clean, immaculately dressed, and so very free. Of course, he didn’t recognize them. But he would soon enough.
“We’ve met, actually,” Shey stated. His hard voice was like a rumble of thunder.
Haru gave the fakest gasp Tyche had ever heard, and Tyche was left struggling not to laugh. The dragon was enjoying the game.
“Wait? You’ve met Crown Prince Shey Thrudesh-Vo of Caspagir?” Haru asked.
“W-what?” Ruben’s mouth bobbed, and he managed to get out only that soft stammer.
Shey approached and briefly laid a hand on Haru’s shoulder. “No, he didn’t meet me as Prince Shey. But he held me captive and threatened my life at his illegal facility in Milway.”
Joy rushed through Tyche, stealing his breath away as he watched all the color drain from Ruben’s face. Sweat beaded on his broad forehead and glistened in the afternoon sunlight that poured through the windows.
“Oh! Then that means you remember my other friends too!” Haru continued with wicked glee.
Tyche walked closer, stepped on the cushion of one chair positioned in front of Ruben’s desk, and planted his ass on the back of the chair while bracing his other foot on the arm.
He leaned forward and grinned, flashing clenched teeth.
“Remember me. I believe on your last visit you promised to deal with me. You still wanna deal with me? The God of Luck?”
Ruben grunted as if he’d been hit in the gut.
His face went from pale white to mottled red, his dark eyes bugging out.
He opened his mouth and started to shout for help.
Tyche easily tapped into his magic and flicked a finger at him.
Ruben just so happened to have a beautiful pile of bad luck sitting at the top of his personal collection, waiting to be used.
The rich man choked. His shout fell into a harsh fit of coughing and wheezing. Shey turned his head to Tyche and lifted one eyebrow in silent question.
“What? He choked on his spit. You’ve never done that? So embarrassing.”
Shey snorted.
“No! No! That can’t be!” Ruben choked out at last. He looked at Shey, but his eyes kept straying to Tyche as if he were afraid to glance away from the man who called himself a god. Tyche smirked.
Go ahead. Doubt me. That little trick was nothing. An accident. Not magic.
“Y-you can’t be Prince Shey!” Ruben stammered out. He took a step closer to his desk and was sliding out his right hand toward the edge.
Adrian zoomed forward, grabbed Ruben by the collar of his tailored pale-blue shirt, and jerked him into his rolling leather chair. Air rushed out of Ruben, and he coughed.