Chapter 10 The Price of Revenge #2
I exhaled slowly, measuring each breath to keep from screaming.
My family knelt behind me, their fear a tangible presence pressing against my back.
I did not look at them. I did not allow myself to imagine their final moments.
Instead, I held Valen’s gaze, as if I could divine his true intentions through sheer force of will.
“Why are you doing this?” The question escaped raw and horrified, my composure fracturing for just a moment.
His laughter rang through the chamber, bouncing off stone walls and crawling down my spine like frost. It wasn’t the controlled, elegant chuckle he had employed at the wedding feast, but something older, wilder, a sound that didn’t belong in a human throat.
“That,” Valen said, pacing a slow circle around me, “is a question for your father.” He paused behind me, his breath warm against my neck as he slowly turned me to face my family. “Although, I do not think you will be getting much of an answer from him.”
Something in his tone made me turn to look at him, and what I saw froze the blood in my veins.
Valen was—changing.
The air around him rippled like heat rising from summer stones, his outline blurring and shifting.
It was as though the skin he wore was merely a costume being shed, reality peeling back to reveal something vaster, something otherworldly.
His height increased, flesh darkening to the rich color of burnished copper, veined with what looked like molten gold beneath the surface.
His features sharpened, cheekbones becoming razors, jaw a cruel line.
But it was his eyes that transformed most dramatically.
The whites disappearing, irises expanding until his entire gaze was an endless void of black, like looking into the space between stars, my lips parting in disbelief.
I hadn’t believed in the gods. Never had.
Even when the priests spoke of them in hushed, reverent tones, even when my tutors recounted the legends of their cruel games and fickle favor, I had dismissed them as stories invented to explain what people couldn’t understand and to control those too afraid to question.
The old religions, the forgotten faiths—they were remnants of a more superstitious time, nothing more.
Yet here stood proof of my arrogance, terrible and magnificent in his truth, one I recognized in texts of old.
The God of Blood and Conquest, Vharok, stood in my husband’s place.
My knees threatened to buckle, but I locked them in place, refusing to show weakness.
My mind raced, trying to reconcile what I knew with what I was seeing.
If Valen was Vharok, if the Blood God had been masquerading as the King of Nocthar, then everything I thought I understood about this world, our marriage, about the politics between our kingdoms, was a lie woven into a greater tapestry of deception.
A strangled cry tore through the chamber, dragging my attention away from the God-King before me.
My father had gone rigid, his struggles suddenly frantic, desperate.
His eyes, usually so cold and calculating, were wide with recognition and naked terror.
Not the fear of a king facing defeat, but the primal horror of a man confronting a nightmare he thought long buried.
He knew.
My father knew him.
The God descended the dais with deliberate steps, each footfall heavy enough to send subtle tremors through the stone floor.
He moved past me, his attention fixed entirely on the bound king at his feet.
The temperature in the room seemed to rise, the sweat beading on my forehead a sharp contrast to the chill I had previously experienced.
Vharok crouched before my father, tilting his head in a gesture so reminiscent of otherworldly, I could hardly believe I ever thought he was human.
“I’m glad to see you remember me. Seven years is merely too long to spend apart.
” His voice was a purr, almost amused, though something ancient lurked beneath the surface.
My father’s struggles intensified, his wrists bleeding where the ropes cut into his flesh.
He tried to speak through his gag, producing only muffled sounds of desperation.
Beside him, Ira and Cordelia exchanged confused glances through their tears, while my half-brothers huddled closer together, as if their proximity could somehow shield them from the horror unfolding.
“I told you I would return,” Vharok continued, reaching out to touch my father’s face with a tenderness that was more terrifying than violence.
“I told you there would be a reckoning for what you did. For the chains, for the altars, for the blood that never stopped.” He traced a finger down my father’s cheek, opening the flesh without seeming to cut the skin.
“Did you think I had forgotten? That gods do not keep their promises?”
The words made no sense to me. Chains? Altars? What connection could my pragmatic, skeptical father possibly have to this being of ancient power?
“I must thank you, though,” Vharok whispered, leaning closer to my father’s ear.
“If you hadn’t been so determined for power, you would never have sought me out.
You would never have dragged me into your mortal realm, bound me to your will, thinking I could help you conquer this realm.
” A smile sliced across his face. “And I would never have found your daughter.”
Vharok’s gaze flicked to me for a brief moment, something calculating in those abyssal eyes. “She has no idea, does she? You kept that from her.”
He turned back to my father, leaning even closer, his lips nearly touching my father’s ear, and whispered something I couldn’t catch—something meant only for him. Whatever it was made my father’s eyes widen further, a sound like a wounded animal escaping from behind his gag.
Vharok continued, louder now so that all could hear, “I will do everything you did to me—to her.” He pulled back slightly, his cruel smile widening as he looked over his shoulder to meet my gaze.
“Fortunately for us, you will witness every moment of my revenge, as I do not believe your soul will be collected any time soon.”
My father’s muffled screams tore through the room, a sound beyond fear, beyond desperation. The sound of a man who suddenly understood that death would not be his escape, but only the beginning of his suffering.
How was this happening? What was happening?
Vharok straightened, his form rippling again until he appeared once more as Valen, the mask he had chosen to wear in this world of mortals. The transition was so smooth, so complete, that had I not seen his true form with my own eyes, I might have doubted it had happened at all.
Without warning, without ceremony, Valen drew his sword, a blade of strange, dark metal that seemed to drink in the light. The sound it made as it cleared its scabbard was like a sigh, almost sensual in its anticipation.
And with one fluid motion, the blade descended in a perfect arc.
The strike was so swift, so precise, that for a heartbeat nothing happened.
Then, as if time had caught up to the act, blood fountained from my father’s severed neck, his head toppling to the stone floor with a wet thud that, I knew, would haunt my dreams forever.
My father’s eyes still open, still aware, lips still moving in what might have been my name, or a curse, or a plea for forgiveness. I would never know.
The throne room erupted into screams.
Ira’s composure shattered completely, her shriek piercing the air as she lunged toward my father’s body, heedless of her bonds.
Cordelia crumpled forward, retching around her gag, while my half-brothers wailed and thrashed, trying to scramble away from the spreading pool of blood that reached for them like grasping fingers.
I stood frozen, unable to move, unable to look away.
This was my father—the distant king who had never shown me affection, hadn’t even allowed me his last name.
Who had placed my mother’s crown on my head before giving me away to a monster who had apparently been his enemy all along.
He had not been a good father, nor even a particularly good man, but his blood now stained the throne room floor, and soon, I knew, the rest of my family would join him.
As if responding to some silent command, the Nocthari guards moved with terrible efficiency.
Steel flashed in the torchlight, and one by one, my family crumpled to the stone in lifeless heaps.
Ira first, then Cordelia, then my brothers in order of age—the youngest last, his small body falling atop his siblings in a grotesque pile of limbs and blood.
It was over in moments. Six lives ended between one breath and the next.
I didn’t scream. Didn’t faint. Didn’t fall to my knees in despair.
I stood, rooted to the spot, as the scent of blood filled the air, thick and coppery on my tongue.
Something inside me had gone very quiet, very still.
A space beyond shock or grief where a cold, clear certainty took root.
I would remember this. I would carry this moment with me like a blade against my heart, and one day, somehow, I would make Valen—Vharok—pay for every drop of blood spilled this night.
Amidst the carnage, Valen turned back to me, his face betraying nothing of what had just occurred. He might have been inspecting a mildly interesting painting or considering what wine to serve with dinner, rather than standing in a lake of my family’s blood.
“Reunions can be so tedious,” he remarked, cleaning his blade on what had once been Cordelia’s most intricate finery.
“But necessary, I think. Closure, before we begin our life together.” He sheathed his sword and approached me, stopping just short of where I stood.
“It seems we are due for an unpleasant honeymoon, my queen. There is so much to tell you, so much to show you.” He reached out, tracing the curve of my cheek with a finger that left wetness in its wake.
“But first, I must make good on my promises to your father.”
At some unseen signal, guards seized me from behind, rough hands gripping my arms with bruising force.
I did not resist as they began dragging me backward toward the doors, away from the throne room that had become a house of charnel.
What would be the point? I was outnumbered, outmatched—a mortal in the grip of powers I was only beginning to comprehend.
But I did not lower my gaze. Did not bow my head. As they pulled me into the darkness of the corridor, my eyes remained locked with Valen’s, a silent promise passing between us.
This was not over.
The throne room doors slammed behind me, and the guards continued their grim procession through corridors that had once been my home.
Where they were taking me, I could only guess.
The dungeons, perhaps, or some specially prepared chamber where Valen could continue whatever twisted game he had begun.
Then something struck the back of my head, hard enough to send stars bursting across my vision. I stumbled, my knees finally giving way beneath me. As consciousness slipped from my grasp, my last thought was of my mother’s crown, still perched upon my head.
Then everything went dark.