Chapter One #3
“Do you know what those kill trophies you brought here tell me? Our enemy is growing bolder, brasher. They are moving toward inciting true war, not these little skirmishes that have been fought between the Apollyon Court and the Six Kingdoms for centuries. That means you must marry Rishaud to ensure that our ties to the greater Hyperion crown remain sturdy and we remain his most favored dominion. When war breaks out, we need to be in as strong a position as possible. We will not insult His Excellency by breaking a betrothal contract that any woman among the Six Kingdoms would covet. What the Aetherfolk and I need from our archprincess is for you to fulfill the prophecy foretold at your birth. Becoming the Hyperion king’s bride and ultimately high queen of every dominion on this continent will fortify us against all enemies, those operating in clear view and those lurking in the shadows.
You will see this wedding through, Kadeesha.
” Her father delivered this decree with a finality that made it clear that any further argument would stoke the Aether king’s ire.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she replied, bowing low once more, acid burning her throat.
A SHORT WHILE LATER, Kadeesha sat upon a throne beside her father’s.
It was identical to the king’s, only slimmer.
There was also a third throne on the dais, one that was the same size as her father’s and fashioned from the same bronze koppa wood with golden slabs for arms and legs.
It occupied the empty space on Kadeesha’s right.
The Hyperion king would fill it as he and her father hashed out the final terms of her marriage contract.
She, of course, would get no say in the negotiations—another custom that added to her bitterness over the entire affair.
Her only role was to sit prettily between the two kings, letting the esteemed archnobles of both courts fawn over the Hyperion king’s newest prized bride while the finer points of the contract were discussed.
Adding to Kadeesha’s fury, all of her Nkita, Samira included, had been ordered away.
The throne room was now occupied entirely by Aether Court archnobles, dressed in violet gowns and brocade doublets, and select members of Sylas’s personal guard, wearing formal male scale armor whose bulk would be entirely impractical on a battlefield.
Among the courtiers were Kadeesha and Sylas’s kinsfolk from House Mercier.
A court herald, a short man with sleek silver hair who wore a black doublet and black pants with violet stripes along the legs, stepped through the throne room’s doors.
He announced, “Ladies, gents, and magnificent folk of the Aether Kingdom, I present to you His Royal Excellency, Rishaud the Conqueror—Son of House Timmu, Lord of Sunfire, Sovereign of the Hyperion Fae, High King of Nimani, and the betrothed of the daughter of His Royal Majesty, King Sylas, Lord of Aether Flames, King of the Aether Fae.”
The herald stepped aside after the tediously long-winded introduction and Kadeesha’s husband-to-be marched inside.
Kadeesha’s father was a middle-aged male in fae terms; at five centuries old, he was considered an Elder.
Rishaud the Conqueror had seen the sun that shone down on the continent of Nimani rise and set for over a thousand years and thus bore the label of an Ancient among faekind.
Yet he looked no more an old man than Kadeesha’s father.
Both could be mistaken for wickedly handsome males who’d long left adolescence behind at twenty and zero, but had not yet crossed their first century of life.
Rishaud’s reddish-brown coils that hung loose around his shoulders were streaked with nary a gray hair.
Kadeesha’s father’s stature was the towering, crane-like build of a man who avoided the sparring yards himself, but Rishaud owned the oxen mien of a warrior, of the titan in battle he was renowned for being.
And true to his reputation, their liege lord stood in Sylas’s throne room draped in kingly golden robes, power cloaking him, radiating the fact that he was the most supreme authority in the space.
Kadeesha barely held back an unimpressed eye roll.
Did her betrothed look good enough to eat, with his chiseled, imposing frame, rugged jawline, and face that rivaled the beauty of a Celestial?
Yes. However, it was a fact that only inflamed her rage over marrying the prick.
It was a cruel trick of the gods for an arrogant pig like Rishaud to possess a powerful, muscled body so clearly built for warmongering and fucking a woman senseless.
Not that Rishaud seemed like the sort to devote himself to pleasing a lover, anyhow.
She’d bet all the riches in the royal coffers that he was a selfish lover.
Likely a quick finisher too. The image of Rishaud coming anywhere near her made Kadeesha ill, and she had no idea how she’d navigate that on their wedding night.
The whole room—Sylas, his courtiers, and the few dozen male kinsfolk and guards Rishaud had brought with him—fell to their knees at once before the Hyperion king to acknowledge his superiority.
Like their liege, every male in Rishaud’s retinue wore slim gold bars piercing the pointed tips of their ears—a marker of the Hyperion Kingdom’s warrior class, which sat at the apex of its caste system.
Rishaud’s kinsmen wore white jackets and capes with gold stitching, and his royal guards wore pearlescent scale male armor with gold spikes adorning their shoulder, arm, and shin guards.
As Rishaud’s kinsmen knelt, their capes fanned out across the throne room in a sea of untouchable white behind their liege.
Everything a fae king did was intended to make a statement.
It was ludicrous posturing, but her tutors had ground the intricacies of royal politics into her throughout her youth and she’d become adept at recognizing and interpreting power plays.
As Kadeesha knelt also, it felt like a kick in the teeth to bow.
This wasn’t the first time she’d been in the presence of the Hyperion king; their paths had either indirectly or directly crossed at many points while she grew up as an archprincess of the Aetherfolk.
All those other times, even knowing she’d been betrothed to this man without her consent, she hadn’t felt the level of visceral repugnance that she did now, with her wedding ceremony to take place in less than twenty-four hours.
Her impending nuptials were certainly why it took all of her will to drop to her knees and show proper deference before Rishaud.
Amplifying the bad taste he left in her mouth was the reason that the long-lived king needed a new wife in the first place.
Each of Kadeesha’s four predecessors—all women who had been archprincesses of one of the Six Kingdoms that had been bound in matrimony to Rishaud over the past centuries—had ended up dead at some point during the course of their marriage.
The rumors were it happened whenever Rishaud grew tired of a current wife and sought to treat himself to a new queen.
Oh, he didn’t murder them in any capacity where their ancestral courts could lay blame at his feet—that would result in the vassal kingdoms they hailed from growing enraged and possibly becoming a thorn in his side.
Rather, Rishaud’s first wife had suffered an untimely hunting accident; his second wife was an adventurer who’d stumbled upon a nasty magical curse while chasing a mythical fae relic; Rishaud’s third wife had died in childbirth, the breech baby dying and taking the life of the mother too; and his fourth wife, supposedly stricken with women’s afflictions, had jumped to her own death during an episode of melancholy.
As Kadeesha bitterly wondered at the way Rishaud would try to kill her when he grew bored with his new toy, Rishaud let his kneeling supplicants linger in place for a ridiculous enough time to punctuate that he was an ass.
“You all shall rise,” he finally spoke, his baritone voice booming out across the throne room.
Kadeesha hastily got to her feet. She remained standing instead of dropping back onto her throne while Rishaud strode up the violet runner along the center of the room and to the dais.
His eyes locked with hers as he neared, never once straying.
Kadeesha mused if it was some warped intimidation tactic, and decided she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking away.
She knew males like Rishaud. Her own father was one.
If they thought they could intimidate someone they considered lesser, they would—if only as an amusing test of willpower.
So Kadeesha locked her spine and gazed back at His Excellency, unimpressed.
If her father caught it, he’d be livid. But it was too late to back down now.
And though it was a small rebellion, it felt damn good.
Rishaud smirked as he ascended the dais and stopped right in front of her.
“It’s lovely to see you again, Archprincess.
” Rishaud spoke low, almost intimately. His emerald gaze roved down the length of her, unashamedly lascivious, lingering on all the places along her body that sported lush curves.
“I look forward to our forthcoming union and all the fruitfulness that will follow,” he said, full of barely concealed innuendo that made Kadeesha’s skin crawl.
He bowed to her, as polite as ever, and then turned to her father.
Rishaud straightened to his full staggering height and slipped back into proper court etiquette, waiting silently while the lesser king addressed him first.