Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Raza has been at war for thousands of years. First with the vampires, then with the Jokeni. The Alzans. The Okahi. And finally with the Vylians.
If I cannot bring peace between us and the Vylians, how will we ever know peace with the others?
- King Richard
“How are Lief’s lessons in the Royal Guard going?
” I ask Echo as we land in Ventre. The main square we’re to debate in is already filled with angry citizens and twitchy guards.
My queen isn’t by my side. My brother is most likely by his ex’s, and so I want some good news before I step into the hel before me.
“Adequately,” she says.
Thank gods I trusted her to give me all the sordid details of Fabia’s revenge plan against her rapist.
Biting back my demand for better gossip, I step up to the podium.
Two more weeks and I will never have to do this again.
As I launch into all the reasons we should abolish the monarchy, the crowd gets more and more restless.
They do not want to hear about progress.
They only want me to feed their hunger for hatred.
“Why aren’t we attacking Vyla for what they did to our queen?”
“What are you going to do about the terrorist attack in Kholar?”
“Close the borders!”
“The Vylians should pay for their crimes!”
“The bombs were planted by Razians under Vylian stalls to attack them,” I finally say after the latest interruption.
“Most of the terrorists were killed that day. The rest were captured by the Royal Guard and FI-9. Evangeline Sinclair has personally interrogated them all and found them to be Razians acting on their own behalf. They will be executed in Kholar in three days.”
“I’m a merchant, and I place my wares under my stall!” a red-faced woman shouts. “Yet, the bombs were under their stalls, and you expect us to believe they weren’t theirs!?”
“If they were theirs, why would they blow themselves up?” I point out, trying not to call them all moronic bigots.
“Because they’re suicide bombers!”
Dear fucking gods, how much could they twist things to make them fit their own beliefs?
“Most of the casualties were Vylians,” I tell them calmly.
“Because they’re stupid!” The fucking irony.
“Nu uh!” another woman shouts before I can reply. “We carved seven names into Kholar’s tree, but only one Vylian was carried back in a casket! I can do maths!”
Clearly fucking not.
“Deirdre resurrected eighteen of them,” I say, just barely biting back the words, “Eighteen is eleven more than seven, you fucking moron.”
“Paid with our tax money!” a black-haired woman yells in outrage. “How is that fair?”
“Yeah! Why do they get benefits, and we don’t?”
“Why should we pay for their medical care?”
“Many of them were men and children –” I point out.
“The only innocent Vylian is a dead Vylian! They don’t belong here!”
“They were our fucking guests!” I finally roar. “A fairy does not break the Laws of Hospitality.” There are severe magical consequences if we do. The old laws demanded an eye for an eye, which is what Echo follows. The new laws are less exact, but pain must still be paid with pain.
“We killed nineteen of our guests. Would you rather I killed nineteen of our own children as payment instead of resurrecting the Vylians?”
The crowd grows quiet, a mad silent fury rather than any actual reflection though. I wouldn’t have had to kill children in order to sate the magic that binds us, but I need them to fucking understand that resurrecting the Vylians was not the wrong choice.
And I have to believe that once I step down as king, they will do their due diligence of actually learning about the Vylians rather than holding on to their blind hatred.
“Now,” I say, trying to get us back on track, “does anyone have any questions about what will happen once I’m no longer king?”
As the debate continues and the Court gives their side of things, I cannot help but fear that maybe they are right.
Maybe the average person is too dumb to trust with the ruling of a kingdom.
Maybe they will vote us back into war, and I’ll never get the peace I want with my queen.
Afterwards, as I mount Maeve and fly to the next city, I wonder if everything I’m doing is just a waste of time.
Looking at the scar on my hand, seeing it mostly gone, I clench my fist. The anniversary of Aurelia’s death is coming in a few weeks. I cannot fail her another year. I need her death to mean something. I need her to be at peace before I can search for mine.
My eyes closing briefly, the guilt of having found my queen fills me. I took everything from her. From Jace. From Evangeline too. Yet, now I’m seeking my own happiness? I do not deserve the future I’m desperate to have.
And yet, I’ll fight for it.
I’ll never stop fighting.
Because I want children with my queen. Children that won’t grow up drafted into war. Children that won’t have to kill each other to take the throne. Children that won’t see their first dead body before they’re old enough to drink.
I just want a world that’s safe for them.
As Maeve lands on a branch of Iklov, I decide to move up the execution of the terrorists to today. Perhaps if my people can see us and the Vylians sharing the same pain, they will realise we’re not that different at all.
And perhaps that’ll stop a riot from occurring once King Dravr and his people arrive this afternoon.
Because at the moment, my people are ready for blood, and they might not wait to overthrow me with a vote.
If King Dravr is nervous about the screaming crowd that has gathered for his arrival, he doesn’t show it.
He might be weary of fighting and greatly outnumbered, but he’s still an apex predator.
One does not get to his age on the battlefield without being able to kick ass.
Besides, I have no doubt that he’s spelled like I am, ready to swap places with some witch in Vyla.
They did not have many witches left by the time the war ended, but only a fool puts her entire defence on the front line.
“Your people seem ready for war again,” he murmurs as I greet him at the door of Kholar’s castle. My guards have kept the mob from getting close, but I still do not linger outside with him. Turning on my heels, I lead him inside.
“Change doesn’t come easily,” I say.
“And yet, you are planning for quite a big change.”
I sent a letter to him the night I struck the deal with the Court.
I do not know if he still has spies in our kingdom.
It was part of the terms of the treaty that we would recall our women and men, but I know Evangeline has left a few of her ants, and I suspect he’s done the same.
Regardless, I didn’t want him to be ambushed by this when he arrived in Raza.
If there is to be peace between us, there first needs to be trust and communication.
“Raza is ready for it,” I say as we walk towards the Great Hall. The prisoners have been moved into there as I did not want to show King Dravr how to navigate the tunnels of our prison. It is a detail I know he doesn’t miss, but nor does he call me out on it.
Trust takes time to develop.
“Is she?” the Vylian king asks. “People are afraid of the unknown. And a scared populace is a stupid one, which makes them dangerous.”
“We are not all monsters. Spend the next few days here getting to know my people and see for yourself.”
“And how would you expect me to do that without being murdered in the street?”
“The execution has been moved up to today. Tonight, we will celebrate in the Great Hall. Tomorrow you will have Echo as your guard and given free reign throughout our cities.”
“I would not know where to begin. It would help if I had a noble to show me around.”
I keep my face flat, but my gut is blaring, telling me he’s leading up to something. “Who do you have in mind?”
“Deirdre,” he says.
I glance at him. “Echo will stop you from killing her,” I warn him.
I don’t have to tell him she’ll do it by ending his life before he can blink.
He is probably more aware of what she is capable of than even I am.
I had her as a teacher after she ‘retired’.
He had her as the monster that slaughtered his people and kept him awake at night.
“I wish Deirdre no harm.”
“Then why do you keep seeking her out?” She tried to kill him when we were younger. She nearly succeeded too, having snuck behind enemy lines with my sister, Jace, and Evangeline. But then… then everything went wrong.
I force my thoughts away from that day. Only for my eyes to widen. Evangeline later claimed King Dravr had let them go because Deirdre was his lifemate. We’d all assumed she was lying out of her ass like she usually did for some joke. But…
“Is she your lifemate?” I ask straight out, wanting to know if we might lose the best necromancer on Gaera. Even the bigger races can’t compete with what she can do.
“No,” he says. “But if you want to show us being allies, then what better way than if I spend the day with the very woman who nearly killed me?”
My lips tighten, trying to hear the words he doesn’t say. But he has played this game much longer than I, and I know nothing of his true thoughts. “Very well,” I say as we near the Great Hall.
“Good. I have always wanted to visit Aurelia’s –”
“Not there,” I say harshly, only to mentally curse myself.
My sister would’ve been the first to welcome him into her sanctuary.
But I cannot bear it. I still blame the Vylians for her death, even though I know if she’d fought on the front lines against the snake-like Alzans, the beetle-like Okahi, or the ant-like Jokeni, the outcome would’ve been the same.
“It is under construction,” I lie smoothly.
“A shame,” he says as we reach the double doors of the Great Hall, the guards opening them for us. “I would have liked to pay my respects. Her loss was felt by us all.”
My heart aches. My hand burns. I do not tell him she was not mourned by her own people. Even though they expected Seqora the Mad to take the throne, they still did not grieve. It was better to support a psychopath than a bleeding heart who risked the lives of her women to save the Vylians.
“Maybe another time,” I say, meaning it. If he truly did mourn her, maybe his mere presence won’t feel like he’s desecrated my sister’s space. Aurelia would’ve hated how empty her library sits.
Needing to move past this conversation, I move quickly down the hall. The four prisoners responsible for bombing the market are kneeling in a row, with their hands chained behind their back. Defiance and hatred fill their eyes, but it’ll soon be replaced with fear and pain.
“So these are the ones responsible for the attack?” King Dravr says as he walks up to them. His eyes judge them like a caterpillar at the market. “There’s not a lot of meat on them.”
“Each will have two healers to keep them alive until the last fist of flesh is taken.”
“All nineteen families have come.” Meaning they are as hungry to spill Razian blood as we are theirs. Otherwise, his people wouldn’t have risked coming back to the very place they’d died.
Two of the prisoners lunge for him, but the four guards instantly start beating them with their batons. Blood sprays as bones break and ugly bruises form.
King Dravr doesn’t flinch as he looks at the smaller of the two women who just attacked him.
“I do believe we’ve met before,” he says as he squats down in front of her.
She lies curled in a ball on the floor. Lifting her head, so much rage still in her blue eyes, she spits a wad of blood at him.
But she doesn’t speak; her tongue has already been cut from her.
We cannot risk them shouting fanatical bullshit and riling up the crowd.
“If only you hadn’t hesitated to cut my head off,” King Dravr murmurs, “life would’ve been so different for the two of us.”
She tries to lunge for him again, but one of the guards kicks her in the head. Whatever innocence or mercy she had during their first meeting no longer exists. War is a cruel teacher, and I wonder whether he killed her lover or family while she stood frozen. Perhaps both.
Not that it matters.
That was our past, and I’m determined to look to the future. The gods know my hands are dirtier than his.
“You have been found guilty of treason,” I tell the four in front of me. “You are to be executed now.”
The only man in the group sags forwards as he cries. But, really, what did he expect when they were lead out of their cells a few days early? That they’d be miraculously freed? Forgiven?
My wife was traumatised because of them. So I will take the fist of flesh I’m owed. And let it serve as a lesson to anyone who dares to even think about hurting her.
She is mine.
And I am hers.
Even if I can’t yet say those three fucking words.