Prologue #3
“Perhaps they will be angry. Perhaps they will rage. But at least they will be safe. When Raelion returns in full once the term of his bargain expires, they must be ready. Not dead or dying, but strong. United.” He smiled sadly.
“Theia’s vision is true, Mithras. Seeing you today has only confirmed this fact. It has to be done.”
“Theia isn’t the Maker,” Mithras bit out. “She cannot know everything with certainty.” He added in desperation, “And you’re the king. You’ll be crushed by stone if you destroy the entrance—surely beyond what Raelion can knit back together.”
“You will say I died in my sleep. You will fill a coffin with sacks of grain and bury me like you would any other.”
Mithras was crying now. He could not stop it. “You deserve to be honored in your death.”
“Honored? Oh, my son. I deserve no such thing.” Gabriel gripped Mithras’s hands.
Shakily, he kissed them. “You will be a more honorable ruler than I,” his father continued gently.
“And so will your children. And your children’s children.
And in time, the world can begin anew.” Gabriel was weeping now, too, tears streaming into his beard.
“The duty to bear will fall heavy upon your shoulders. You are the one who must light the torch that will span centuries.”
The ground tilted beneath Mithras’s feet. He recognized the tone in his father’s voice.
Guilt.
“Father, what will happen to Raelion after you die?”
A powerful burst of demonic energy crashed into Mithras’s chest, shoving him down the hall.
“I love you,” Gabriel shouted. “I pray you and Erebus will bring peace to our kingdom. I pray you will finish what I could not. And may you one day forgive me for what I am about to do.”
And then he slammed his hands into the tomb’s entrance, igniting the doors in a roar of red flame. Mithras had no time to grieve; the entrance collapsed on itself, immediately burying his father. Mithras scrambled backward, mouth dropping open in abject horror.
He was nearly to the top of the stairs when Raelion slammed into him.
Claws and razor-sharp teeth pried into his skull, piercing and prodding.
It took everything within him to keep running; all Mithras wanted to do was fall to the ground and curse the injustice of it all.
His father and Theia had planned this. They knew Gabriel wouldn’t be strong enough to contain Raelion for five hundred years.
Twenty more steps.
“Let me in,” Raelion snarled in Mithras’s mind.
Ten.
“Let me in and uphold your father’s bargain.”
Five.
“Let me in or I will wear the skins of everyone you love.”
Mithras gritted his teeth as he shouldered the door open, barely suppressing a scream. Raelion’s claws were cruel against his mind, raking fiery lines down his skull.
“Get out of my head,” Mithras gasped.
“I will wear them one by one until their minds rot and their souls forsake them. I will require another body to bear the rest of the bargain. Will it be yours? Or—”
Mithras could hear Erebus from a nearby hallway.
“What is that voice I hear?” the demon wondered, curious.
“There is no one else,” Mithras said quickly, demanding Raelion’s attention. “Look at me. What better body to inhabit than that of a prince?”
“A prince no longer,” the demon mused, a smile creeping in the edges of his oily voice. Mithras shuddered. “For as soon as I left the husk of your father, you became a king.”
“Then choose me,” Mithras heard himself say. “I will welcome you in my father’s stead.”
Raelion crashed into him without hesitation, pinning his soul down with horrible, heavy weight.
“Five hundred years,” the demon promised. “Then I will burn your kingdom and feast on its remains.”
Mithras threw up on the citadel’s floor, the contents of his stomach mixing with the blood and wine stains already on his boots.
He could feel the demon rising within him, aching to take control of his mind, but Mithras shoved the parasite back down.
Raelion was weak from being torn from King Gabriel and searching for a new body to inhabit.
But Mithras was strong. He burned with rage and despair.
He imagined grabbing the demon’s filthy spirit and shoving it in a locked chest.
Raelion did not speak again.
Mithras stumbled forward, hastily swiping the bile from his mouth. He had to pull himself together. He couldn’t be seen like this. No one could know what he had just done. He needed to find Theia.
And honor his father, even after Gabriel’s betrayal.
But how?
He turned a corner and ran into a tall, dark-haired man dressed in black.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Erebus greeted his friend, storm-gray eyes calm and serious.
He was an anchor; Mithras was a gale. “We need to prepare for the Revel. I was thinking that…” His voice drifted off as he studied Mithras’s face.
Mithras wasn’t sure what Erebus saw there, but it couldn’t be anything good. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Mithras said stiffly, trying to sound unaffected. As if his father hadn’t just died. As if a demon wasn’t lurking under his skin. As if his world would ever be normal or right or safe again. “I’ll meet you in the Dream Realm shortly. We’ll talk there.”
And Mithras spun around, a plan frantically forming as he staggered to his bedchamber.