Chapter Fourteen
“THE SHADOWS CARRIED AN INTERESTING TIDBIT about your day’s activities to me,” Jakobi said in a smooth manner that let Malachi know his friend had decided he’d risk a void blade to the chest. “How does kongamato fire feel up close?” Jakobi asked, sporting a slick grin that stretched wide enough to reveal the dimple in his cheek. “Did you almost shit yourself?”
Leaning on the edge of the oak desk at his back, Malachi folded his arms over his chest, unamused.
He wasn’t about to deign to answer that question.
He was about to exact a bit of retribution, though.
Jakobi held a worn book in his hand, of course, as he sprawled in one of the leather chairs positioned around Malachi’s study.
Kiyun, Dedrick, Shionne, and Zayvier were also lounging in various states of repose in Malachi’s study, and they all looked interested in what Malachi’s response would be.
Malachi tipped his head toward Jakobi’s reading selection.
“That looks like a lovely new gift from Trystin.” The cover and binding—dark green with gold lettering in a mostly extinct dialect of the faefolk’s tongue that was as ancient as the Yunna Mountains themselves—were distinct enough that Malachi was positive he hadn’t seen Jakobi formerly reading it.
Jakobi snapped the book shut and clutched it to his chest, eyeing Malachi warily. “It is. He found it among the library ruins in the Unclaimed Lands.”
“How thoughtful of him,” Malachi observed. “How mad do you think he’d be if you failed to take care of his gift? Like, say, if you were to allow something to mar that beautiful cover?”
He set shadows to encircling the book.
“You dickhead! You better not!” Jakobi shouted.
Malachi did away with the shadows and burst into laughter at Jakobi’s horrified expression.
He laughed harder when a dagger whizzed past his temple.
Damn, he loved this. It felt terrific, euphoric, whenever they all had a moment to sequester themselves away from the formalities and airs that needed to be put on at court.
He flicked a glance behind him to where the dagger had embedded itself in a dark oak bookshelf cluttered with books—all on either Nimani’s history or doctrines of war that Trystin had carefully curated for Malachi’s study. “You’re funding the restoration,” he informed Jakobi.
“I am not,” Jakobi protested. “You don’t give a shit about that shelf.” He said it like he took Malachi’s lack of reverence for the piece of furniture as a personal insult.
“And yet my cousin does, and I will never hear the end of it from Trystin if he sees a notch in last year’s Winter Solstice gift.
” Apparently, the hulking ebony-colored shelf with archaic carvings along the sides and top arch had been unearthed among the subterranean stacks of some eons-old library in the Wind Kingdom’s remote eastern regions that Trystin had managed to get access to.
Trystin had its mate in his study—he’d called it a solstice gift to himself.
Jakobi sucked his teeth. “That’s your issue, my good friend. Good luck with it.”
“Is it, though? If I tell my cousin the shelf is scratched because you were careless with it, it becomes our issue. Good luck ever getting him naked again after that,” Malachi deadpanned.
“Find a woodsmith to restore it to pristine condition and send me the bill,” Jakobi grumbled.
Malachi scoffed. “I’m a king with a court to run; I’ve got shit to do. Find one yourself.”
“You’re testy today, friend,” observed Kiyun.
He occupied a chair near Malachi’s desk.
He slid a conspiratorial look to Jakobi.
“But I’m sure any of us would be after the morning Malachi has had.
I’m curious,” he said to Malachi, “how is your ego handling the fact that you haven’t been able to fuck a woman into utter devotion for once?
Instead, your princess tried to roast you alive in your own arena after you were just inside her hours before.
Although I hear you put on a nice show during the revelry. ”
“Apparently not nice enough,” Jakobi said, coming dangerously close to finding a void scimitar impaling his chest. And the more Malachi thought about it, Kiyun wasn’t too far behind.
Malachi scowled at their hoots. “She isn’t my princess. And I’m not responding to the rest of that mess other than to say I’ll take care of Kadeesha’s little stunt.”
“Will you spank her since you can’t kill her yet?” Dedrick, who leaned against Kiyun’s chair, asked, joining in on the heckling.
“You are all juvenile. Why was I cursed to be a part of this band of fuckery?” Shionne cried exasperatedly. The only one who could get away with it, she sat behind Malachi’s desk with her feet propped on it.
“I ask myself the same question every day,” Zayvier said in commiseration.
“I think I could deal with my Cadre shrinking down to two,” Malachi said as if he was truly considering it.
Kiyun chuckled irreverently. “I’m indispensable, and we all know it.”
“Me too,” Jakobi chimed in.
“I’m not even going to pretend like your threat was real,” Dedrick stated. “If you got rid of us three, there’d be no one left who actually likes fun among your inner court. What a dreadful, lonely existence that would be.”
“I’d make do,” Malachi informed Dedrick.
“Trystin has his moments where he isn’t a bore.
So keep playing with me; you all aren’t that indispensable.
” It was a lie, no matter how much the three males were begging to be gutted at the moment.
Each one of them was indispensable to Malachi—as one of his Cadre and, more importantly, as brothers. As family.
“No, you would not,” Jakobi said, pointing out what they all knew and shifting into a rare seriousness.
“Especially since even after you wipe Cassius’s irksome presence from the world, it won’t quash the dissent that has seemingly sprouted among some of the cardinal bloodlines.
If Cassius has grown brazen enough to issue a challenge, it means he has support among them that has emboldened him.
We need to discern who has expressed a preference for Cassius to be king, because when you defeat him in the challenge, their sentiments against your rule will remain. ”
As Jakobi spoke, Kiyun had produced a short throwing dagger that he now rolled across his knuckles, his tell that he was a great deal more agitated than he’d let on.
“Crushing dissent needs to be as high an order of business as preparing to deal with Rishaud. We—I—will not lose you in the way that happened to our last king,” Kiyun said, embedding the dagger in the arm of his chair.
A chorus of the same sentiment echoed from the others.
His people were worried about him; how touching.
He’d give them shit for it later. Right now, he supposed he needed to be their king.
“I am not my father, nor my mother,” he reminded his Cadre.
“I, we, don’t have blinders on. As I said at the challenge, we will root out those who are treasonous among the cardinal bloodlines with expediency.
We will crush whatever treachery runs afoul.
” The words were a decree. A pronouncement that left no room for his Cadre’s worries about him.
Now, more than ever, he needed them focused and operating per their usual manner of utter confidence.
Not caught in the grip of fear and possibly making calamitous decisions because of it.
That was another flaw of his father’s. He’d loved the man with every part of him, but their former king had made decisions for himself, his court, and his family based upon what he feared might occur.
And it’d happened anyway because that fear had left his father vulnerable and exposed.
A knock sounded at the closed door of his study before they could continue the conversation.
“Enter,” Malachi called, wondering who was on the other side and what business they sought at so late an hour.
Most fae in the palace should’ve either been asleep or lingering at a card party hosted by Nychelle that he and his Cadre skipped out on.
One of the guards to whom he’d given orders to patrol the area outside Kadeesha’s room entered. “An assassin attempted to kill the Aether princess in her quarters,” the guard said after bowing. “She killed the intruder and is asking for you, Your Grace.”
MALACHI STARED DOWN at the fae male who’d been behind the bull mask—the individual who’d dared to breach his palace. “Why’d you kill him?” Malachi rumbled.
The archprincess frowned. “Is that a real question? He was trying to murder me.”
“Yes, and his penance for all his offenses is over too soon.”
“Next time someone tries to kill me in my sleep, I’ll be sure to not meet the threat with deadly force so you can get off on torture games properly, Your Grace,” Kadeesha snapped.
He dragged in a slow breath through his nose.
The princess didn’t know it, but Malachi’s control was hanging on by a thread and she was pushing him to the edge, as per usual.
This fucker had infiltrated his palace, slipped past his guards, made it all the way to Kadeesha’s room, and managed to get as far as stabbing her—someone he’d announced as belonging to him—in the chest. “I want every guard on duty tonight rounded up and questioned,” Malachi told Shionne.
“I want to know what the hell they were doing to fuck up on their watch so egregiously. I also want to know if any of them helped the intruder gain access to Kadeesha. I’d like to believe none of the palace guards are so idiotic as to value their lives so little, but the attack on Kadeesha aligning with Cassius’s challenge and near-certain dissent amongst at least a portion of the lord primes points to exactly that. ”
“So you think the assassin was sent by someone inside your court and not Rishaud?” Kadeesha asked.