Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Picking up his goblet of spiced cognac, he sipped the contents and eyed Nychelle and Yashira’s interaction.
The two were engaged in a clearly intense conversation.
Although it didn’t look hostile … which unnerved him for some reason.
They kept their voices low and heads bent toward each other, so Malachi couldn’t hear what they discussed.
But their dispositions were quite interesting.
So was his auntie’s tinkling, flattered laughter that was lively enough to reach Malachi’s ears.
Similar laughter from Yashira followed behind it.
He made a mental note to question Nychelle about it later.
It was peculiar that she’d taken to an outsider so immediately—or even at all.
But then he was handed some manner of an answer when Yashira, clad in a blue gown that had a similar fashionable plunging neckline as Kadeesha’s and long lace sleeves, trailed her hand down Nychelle’s arm, left bare by the strapless black gown his auntie wore.
Nychelle abided very few individuals touching her besides close lovers and the few she considered confidantes.
Yet Nychelle leaned into Yashira’s flirtatious caress.
And she threw the Aether female a heated look instead of rebuffing her.
His auntie’s eyes then snapped to Malachi’s watchful gaze.
She looked … not exactly guilty. However, she definitely assumed an above-reproach air.
Very interesting.
He took another sip from his goblet before tossing his dear auntie an indecorous grin that would absolutely get him gutted later.
However, it was worth it after the endless shit she gave him for indulging in his own pleasures.
He cut the amused pondering short, though, for now.
He had serious business to handle, a show to put on.
He scooted his chair back from the table.
The raucous chatter, the tinkling of glasses, the up-tempo music played by a band of drummers and fiddlers, all ceased as soon as he stood.
In a calculated move, he held his arm out for Kadeesha.
Before he could glance down at her and beckon her to rise, she was already doing so, linking her arm through his.
She was now playing the hell out of the role she’d agreed to with their initial bargain, he’d give her that.
He admired her skill while filing away—though not for the first time—how exceedingly dangerous Kadeesha already was and how much more of a force she’d evolve into once she fully settled into the role of Aether queen.
“Before I bested my late cousin in challenge, there were two attempts made on the life of a visiting Aether Court royal, Kadeesha Mercier,” he told the gathered crowd of nobles, as well as prominent craftspeople and merchants who also floated among the court’s upper echelon.
“While ordinarily such actions would be below my purview, these attempts against Kadeesha’s life were made after I presented her to this court as an acquired possession.
Which means someone tried to kill, twice, an individual whom I’d formally claimed as mine. ”
He started with the lesser of offenses first because he wanted to watch Lady Remi Niyarre and Lord Voshon Tareek squirm.
He looked their way—the fuckers were seated at separate but adjacent tables, and he could almost respect their stony faces as they listened—and continued with “The first attempt on Kadeesha’s life presented as an assassin.
He wore the ink of a Stone Keep soldier in Lord Prime Niyarre’s army.
The second attempt was a poisoned gown, the same one Kadeesha wears, that was carried to her room by Lord Prime Tareek’s very own daughter.
Obviously, Stone Keep soldiers and Lady Keeya Tareek were questioned about these happenings since, as a fellow royal, Kadeesha is owed a blood debt on two accounts.
And other interesting details were unearthed amid these interrogations. ”
He looked around the room, at who was paying him rapt attention and who was squirming.
Malachi didn’t need to explain himself so fully.
But it was quite delicious seeing Niyarre and Tareek finally exchange furtive glances.
The Stone Warden cleared her throat as if parched and took a small sip of water.
She then vigorously carved into the venison on her plate, the metal knife loudly scraping against the silver dish.
Tareek, the spineless bastard, glanced at the doors to the feast hall.
“There is no escape,” Malachi imparted, gaze skewering the fool.
Splotchy red patches broke out among the lord prime’s tan face.
The whispers erupted then. Many more individuals exchanged panicked glances, catching on.
It was the exact ripple effect Malachi sought.
The most powerful players in the kingdom were gathered here; let them all understand that even suspected treachery would be addressed much differently under Malachi’s reign than the softer stance his father had adopted.
“My quarrel, to start with, is with Lady Remi Niyarre and Lord Voshon Tareek,” Malachi declared to the hall.
“Lady Niyarre’s own soldiers confessed to her having sent an assassin after Kadeesha to remove the possibility of me using the prophecy concerning the Aether queen to amass greater power.
Do you deny this charge, Lord Prime Niyarre? ”
She’d abandoned her knife and fork. She took her time sweeping her sheet of bronze hair over one shoulder.
She then angled her chin into the air. “Even if I did, it is not in any breach of Court Law. The crown and lord primes have always existed in a delicate balance of power that both sides attempt to manipulate when it suits them.”
“While that may be,” Malachi said, “treachery does violate Court Law. Actively attempting to put yourself on the Apollyon throne is treason. So was detonating a magical bomb at the palace gates and killing Apollyon fae. And so is conspiring with the Cleric’s Rebellion that has gone to ground and the fucking Hyperion king who now steers it from the shadows! ”
“You have no proof of such accusations,” the Stone Warden shouted, leaping to her feet.
“The confession came straight from Lady Keeya Tareek after Kadeesha scented Deathbane on her gown and questioned her about who’d tried to poison her,” Malachi responded.
Lord Prime Tareek stood up with hands fisted at his sides.
“Where is my daughter?” the old fool shouted.
“What have you done with Keeya? She is missing, and this spectacle,” he spat out as if he was in the right to be repulsed, “tells me you had everything to do with Keeya not being present at the challenge or this feast tonight!”
“You’ll be reunited with her soon,” Malachi assured the lord prime.
“So, you admit that you killed her prior to formally accusing her of any crime before the gathered court,” Tareek charged.
“That is a violation of Court Law too, and I am owed justice and a debt of my own,” the bastard declared, desperately and pathetically trying to save his own skin by invoking the very laws he’d violated.
“Malachi didn’t touch your daughter. She was killed by my hand,” Kadeesha cut in. “And I had every right to do so. Just as I have every right to the life of the individual who ordered her to poison me.” Purple flames silhouetted Kadeesha’s frame by the time she finished.
The lord prime screeched. “You filthy Aether whore! How dare you—”
Malachi and Kadeesha struck at the same time.
A dozen void daggers flew toward Tareek alongside a column of purple flames that blasted heat around the room.
Malachi’s daggers skewered the lord prime from his neck down to his gut a hairsbreadth before Kadeesha’s flames encircled him.
Tareek screamed as he collapsed to his knees.
It was bloodcurdling—and Malachi hoped it rang out as a warning to everyone else.
Kadeesha dropped Malachi’s arm and strode down the dais steps.
She took her time descending each one while she dragged Tareek’s penalty out, the lord prime’s skin becoming a scorched, blackened, and cracked landscape.
The flames ensconcing Tareek vanished when she stood over him, although his wails didn’t stop.
They dragged on as the acrid smell of burnt flesh mixed with piss and feces rent the air.
“How dare I? I dare because I am a queen and you are a mere lord,” Kadeesha reminded Tareek in an icy voice that made a flush of pleasure course through him, “and you fucked up the moment you decided to drag me into your treason.” It was an impressive thing to witness when Kadeesha’s hand blazed with brilliant purple fire as she raised it in the air and flames roared down at the lord prime.
She relit him ablaze. However, this time it wasn’t a slow, deliberate burn.
Making good on her earlier promise, she reduced Tareek to ash, wiping his existence from the realm between one breath and the next.
He could have watched her wield her power—both her aether and the aura her presence commanded—forever. So it pissed him off when his enjoyment of the show Kadeesha was putting on got cut short by Lady Niyarre’s desperate attempt to mount an assault.