Chapter Seventeen #2
“The warden’s daughter, Lady Arrenia—what role does she play in this?
” Malachi questioned coolly. He wanted to hear the verbal confirmation so when he tore through Lady Niyarre’s entire cursed bloodline, there would be no excuses for people to balk at his actions.
He’d be well and truly justified and operating within Court Law.
Gengin recovered a portion of his balls. “Arrenia was meant to get close to you. She was to learn any habits or weaknesses that the rebellion could use against you,” he sneered.
“Again, how would you possibly know this? How would any of your friends?” Malachi asked, curling shadows around Gengin’s throat just tight enough to wipe off the insulting sneer. “There’s no way they’d be so careless as to speak of this around any of you.”
“Bed talk makes for loose lips,” Gengin choked out, and glanced at a body to his left. “He … Arrenia … They were close.”
And now they’re far apart. But not for long …
“Where is the warden hiding the Cleric’s Rebellion?” Shionne asked, interrupting Malachi’s violent thoughts even as he felt the surrounding mist plunging to unforgivable temperatures.
“I don’t know,” Gengin said.
“What else do you know, then?” Shionne pressed. “How about the names of other lord primes conspiring with Lady Niyarre? Can you tell me that?”
“I … I can’t,” Gengin gritted out. “I don’t know.”
It might’ve been the truth, or it might’ve been a moronic attempt at a lie. Malachi decided at this point he was very close to just ending this idiot’s life, so instead he chose to play nice and share.
“Jakobi, Shionne—would you two like to verify if that’s true?” he offered the pair.
Jakobi tossed him a gleeful smile. Shionne crooned, “That sounds delightful.”
They struck at the same time. Jakobi sliced his void sword across Gengin’s gut, spilling his entrails; Shionne forwent using a void blade and instead let ice that would deliver an agony worse than frostbite encase Gengin’s body from the neck down.
It’d also prevent Gengin’s gut wound from beginning to heal while simultaneously keeping him alive.
The man screamed so loud that the kongamatos above screeched in response, causing even Malachi and his Cadre to glance up.
“We can repeat this process over and over, as many times as it takes,” Malachi said.
He motioned to Kadeesha, who hovered nearby in the air.
“Or we can involve others. There are fae who command aether fire here.
And I have a feeling their beasts are never too full for another bite or two.
Which means I can ask the archprincess to thaw you out, let Jakobi spill more of your insides, and have Shionne freeze you again to prevent immediate healing from kicking in many, many times.
“Or just feed you to a kongamato.”
“I swear I speak true!” Gengin cried. “I do not know of the whereabouts of the Cleric’s Rebellion! The information is above me! I am only a lowly sentry!”
“Who talks with your other ‘lowly’ sentries, who seem to have quite a bit of information. So my question is: Do we believe him?” Malachi asked his Cadre.
“Honestly, I think I do,” Dedrick grunted, in on the fact that Malachi was toying with this guard, who looked relieved until he said, “but it is best to be thorough.” He produced a void dagger.
He stalked to Gengin and plunged it into his right eye.
The soldier shrieked. “Are you certain you do not possess that information?” Dedrick inquired.
“No! No! No!” Gengin wailed.
“No you don’t? Or no, you aren’t certain?”
While Gengin tried to parse that sophistry, Dedrick pulled the blade out and then stabbed him in the cheek. “What’s that?” he asked. “Dagger got your tongue?”
“I think he’s useless now,” Zayvier spoke up. His cool blue gaze settled on Malachi with a weight that implored him to put Gengin out of his misery. “We’ve gained enough, and you cannot force additional sap from a dried-out tap,” he told Dedrick blandly.
Dedrick grunted in annoyance. He left the dagger lodged in Gengin’s cheek. “When will your balls finally drop?” he asked Zayvier, who’d always been a shade sensitive to violence and found it intolerable when senseless.
Zayvier waved the taunt off. “That happened forever ago. But if you want confirmation, I’ll allow an up-close inspection. But be sure to use all tongue; I’m not a fan of teeth.”
Jakobi and Kiyun snickered. If Malachi was in a better mood, he would’ve done the same, but there wasn’t shit funny about the situation. “We’re done here,” Malachi told Dedrick, honoring Zayvier’s line that he’d long ago drawn.
Dedrick grumbled but yanked the dagger out of Gengin’s cheek finally and wiped its blood off against his pants. “He seems to be speaking the truth.”
“Agreed.” Malachi scrubbed his hand across his jaw.
It was all he could do not to slip into a cold, killing rage that would wreak indiscriminate destruction.
That might prove the bullshit prophecy true after all.
Still, the roaring inside his veins hadn’t dampened since Gengin mentioned the Cleric’s Rebellion.
It spilled forth from his blood, lashing against Malachi’s mind like a furious hurricane.
He blinked, forcing the thickest part of the black haze away because he wanted to see clearly what happened next.
Wanting to prove—to himself as much as anyone—that the prophecy was false.
As king of the Apollyonfolk, the mantle we wear is only as strong as our word; if that is worth nothing, then so is our crown.
That was a lesson that had often been imparted by his father.
Another one of the few points on how to rule that they’d agreed upon.
So, Malachi kept his word now. He resisted the urge to send tendrils of darkness infiltrating every crevice of Gengin’s being, directing them to break him apart piece by piece, and slower than the others had died.
Rather, he drew in a calming breath, curbing the need to do precisely that.
He then formed a pair of void scimitars and cleaved the soldier’s head from his shoulders.
Gengin’s lifeless eyes stared up from the ground at Malachi’s feet.
“Take the heads of the others and bring them with us. They’re decorating my war room,” he told his Cadre.
Zayvier cleared his throat. “We’re placing our kills inside the palace now?”
“Trystin and Nychelle are going to love the new decor.” Jakobi snorted.
“I don’t give a fuck about Trystin’s sensibilities, and my auntie will see we have little other choice,” Malachi stated. “After all, the courtyard will be crowded with the heads of treasonous nobles and clerics by the time my larger hunt is finished.”
“Does that mean we’re returning to the palace and snatching up Lady Niyarre at once?” Shionne asked eagerly.
“Not right away,” Malachi decided. “How about we let her, and any other lord primes who might support her bid for queen, squirm for a bit?”
“I know that look,” Shionne said. “And I’m glad I stay on your good side. What’s the full plan?”
“You and Jakobi hang back and launch a full inquisition among the warden’s army while she’s away at court,” Malachi said.
“Somebody among them must know of where she’s stashed the remaining members of the Cleric’s Rebellion.
I don’t care what it takes to obtain the information; whatever you’ve got to do, you have the crown’s blessing.
” He held both Shionne’s and Jakobi’s gazes so they understood that if they needed to take a route that made the deaths of Gengin and the others look merciful, they had the official order up-front.
Which also meant that if things unavoidably got too grisly, the blowback wouldn’t fall on anyone except their brutal liege whose orders they were only following.
The individuals on the ground with him were his Cadre, but they were also lord primes and were expected to at least play at being some level of civilized.
Malachi, on the other hand, was already thought of by many as a king who’d bring ruin to his court, so everyone already expected him to be reprehensible.
“I, like every last one of us here, am fully capable of owning anything I do,” Jakobi told Malachi tightly. “You don’t always have to play shield.”
Malachi ignored that. It was an old argument they weren’t going to have again right now. At least, that’s what he thought.
“Jakobi is right,” Shionne asserted. “Plus, you need to walk a fine line between the acceptable level of brutality any monarch would use to reasonably smoke out and quell traitors and also not giving those who believe in the prophecy further cause to think it will come to pass.” The stubborn female raised her chin a fraction.
“I am more than capable of carrying out an inquisition in whatever manner is needed and standing behind it as my decisions and actions that I decided upon as the fist of the crown.”
Malachi worked his jaw. He hated having politics dictate his actions—and then almost laughed at the ridiculousness of a king having such thoughts.
“Fine. Have it your way,” he eventually told Jakobi and Shionne.
What he spoke next to the entirety of his Cadre lifted his mood.
“As for the fates of Lady Niyarre and the other lord primes at court, we’ll wait to take care of them until after Cassius’s challenge is put to rest. That’ll give any guilty primes time to hear about the inquisition and get sloppy when they hastily move to double-check that their own tracks are covered. ”
He didn’t despise all political games, he mused. There was something to be said about the satisfaction that came with being the one pulling the strings, especially when those strings would prod his enemies straight toward their demise.