Chapter Twelve #2
Hyrax nodded along every so often, but his gaze bounced around the room, focusing on the monarchs, then the windows, then the sculptures, then the monarchs again.
At one point, he turned back towards me, frowned unhappily, and motioned towards some servants standing in attention at the doors to the throne room.
A few moments later, one of them brought a chair for me.
“Thank you,” I muttered, unable to hide my confusion.
Moments ago, Hyrax had looked like he was ready to deem me a traitor. Now, I’ve been brought a chair at his side?
Hyrax only patted my hand affectionately before glancing out the large windows to watch the setting sun, humming a soft tune under his breath.
Kamon paused for a moment, noticing the God’s waning attention before he cleared his throat again and continued once more.
Caldrius listened with rapt attention, nodding along if he agreed with the gift, while pinching his lips and narrowing his eyes at others if he determined another offering was lacking. He gave them the kind of focus that Hyrax should have been.
Hyrax seemed remarkably bored, though.
I frowned as I watched him, staring at him while he stared at the landscape outside the windows. The lump in his throat bobbed as he swallowed and leaned his head back against the throne impatiently.
His behavior didn’t make any sense. Isn’t this what he had wanted all along? Wasn’t the point of all of this for him to be worshipped?
“And the temples?” he asked, turning his attention back to Kamon. “You have temples?”
A slow dread began itching its way up my spine, and I leaned forward in my seat, resting my palms on the tops of my knees.
“There is a small temple in your honor within our country.” Kamon cleared his throat awkwardly. “Of course, we have plans to expand it.”
Hyrax pursed his lips, seeming to consider, but after a moment his brows lowered. And as they did, so did the temperature of the room around us. Goosebumps peppered my flesh, and I felt as the shadows began rising in the corners of the room.
“And?” he purred.
On silent steps, Caldrius moved to stand behind my chair.
Emperor Kamon blanched for a moment, skin paling as he glanced towards his wife, uncertain how to respond. The Empress only smiled up at the God.
“We will construct more, of course. A dozen more.”
“Of course,” Hyrax parroted, but his tone conveyed he was still unsatisfied by their offer. Those shadows started sliding across the floor, like serpents creeping towards the dais.
I stared at them, unblinking—entirely unable to look away.
My chest seized again, and I implored myself to breathe, but this time the air wouldn’t come. The muscles refused to relax. I couldn’t possibly stay calm when those shadows were all around me, sliding forward with ominous precision. Coming closer and closer.
Hyrax lifted his hand next to me, and a shadow wound itself up his forearm, lingering between his fingertips just inches away from where I sat.
And so help me, I fucking flinched.
I didn’t want to.
But I could feel them touching me. I could feel those pinpricks against my skin so vividly that it was as if no time had passed since Camilla, using Hyrax’s stolen power, had sent those very shadows as weapons against me.
Caldrius pulled my hair back off my shoulder, letting his icy fingers trace along my collarbone. It might have been to comfort me, to remind me he was right here, with me, but it did little to bring that air back into my lungs.
The Monarchs looked to each other now, neither knowing what the God was searching for.
“And,” Rani continued. “We will commission your portrait to be hung in every temple. It will be hung throughout our palace as well.”
Even though I was still wearing the thick woolen cloak from my earlier walk outside the castle, the cold was an oppressive weight on me.
There was no emotion on Hyrax’s face.
Not a single one.
And while my stomach turned, while my heart pounded, and my intuition began screaming at me, he didn’t even blink when those shadows latched onto Damon and ripped the screaming prince into the air.
I rushed to stand, moving before thinking, but Caldrius’ hands locked around my shoulders, pushing me down and holding me in that seat while Hyrax’s power wrapped itself around Damon.
The prince’s eyes widened as his cries filled the room and his fingers tore helplessly at the dark tendrils circling his throat.
Rani stiffened, a small whimper escaping her, but otherwise both she and Kamon remained on their knees.
They sat there while their son screamed in agony.
I knew that pain. I’d felt those shadows rip me apart.
Fuck, I could almost feel them all over me again now.
“Stop it,” I begged, the sound little more than a whisper.
Caldrius’ hands tightened even further against my shoulders, thumbs kneading against my muscles as he held me firmly back in my seat.
Damon’s cries ceased, replaced by a small choking sound as the shadows around his neck continued tightening.
I had to stop this.
I didn’t care if it made Hyrax deem me a traitor. I didn’t care if Caldrius was right and Hyrax was capable of hurting me. I didn’t care if saving Damon meant sacrificing myself. I just had to stop it.
“Let him go!” I leveled my glare on Hyrax, my voice echoing with the demand.
He turned to me, his expression icy. “You would have me cease defending your honor?”
I choked. My honor? What did any of this have to do with me?
“I don’t want this!” I insisted, reaching up to peel Caldrius’ fingers off me. His touch was insistent, not wanting to release me until I reached behind me and shoved him back.
“They have disrespected you, and thereby me,” Hyrax hissed, rising to his feet. “You suggest that I should allow this?”
Me.
He was doing this because of me. He was doing this because they weren’t worshipping me.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t let this happen because of me.
Finally, free of Caldrius’ grip, I surged to my feet, feeling him reach for me once more as I rushed off the dais and towards the prince. Those inky shadows covered the floor now, killing Damon even as they crept towards his parents and the others.
The second my feet stepped into the shadows lingering underneath where Damon hung suspended in the air, they kissed against the skin of my ankles with their needle-like teeth, and I hissed through my locked jaw.
“Theadora!” Hyrax bellowed, pulling back his dark power instantly.
Damon crashed onto the ground, free of Hyrax’s grasp and struggling to breathe again. I fell to my knees with him, pulling his head into my lap.
“Take him to the healers!” I commanded the servants at the doors, my voice firm.
And they blinked, but they didn’t move.
Not a single one moved.
They didn’t even look at me as I decreed my order. The room was still. Not even the monarchs made a move to help their son, who lay helplessly before me, minutes away from passing out.
“Now!” I screamed.
Still, they remained still.
I was the Crown Princess. Hyrax had forced that damned crown on my head, and I couldn’t even use it to command them to help a dying man.
Their gazes locked above me, and I followed their line of sight, feeling something shatter inside of me as I met Caldrius’ eyes.
He stepped forward, tucking his hands into his pockets and placing his focus on me. There was nothing readable on his expression, no sign of what thoughts lingered in his mind as he stared me down.
“Caldrius,” I whispered, begging him to do something.
Because, as much as it pained me to realize it, he was the only one who could.
His gaze was heavy on mine, a million unspoken words passing between us as everyone else in the throne room seemed to fade away from existence.
Then, he nodded.
The servants moved immediately, one scurrying out of the hall to fetch the healers while the other rushed to my side to aid the now unconscious prince, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t look away from the man standing before me.
Hyrax has asked him how to deal with Veric.
The servants had responded to him when he gave permission to fetch the healers.
I was supposed to be a Goddess and Caldrius had far more influence in this castle than I could ever hope to.
“Please,” Rani said a bit breathlessly. “How can we honor you?”
The spell that kept me focused on Caldrius broke as Hyrax lurched forward, composure cracking and face reddening as he yelled, “It is not my honor in question!”
Once again, I flinched, a memory forcing itself upon me.
“This is how you speak of your Gods?”
Shattering bone.
The Dragon’s screams.
The metallic smell of blood was all around me.
I swallowed down the rising bile in my throat. He was doing this for me. He was torturing them for me.
“I don’t want this, Hyrax.”
He was out of his mind. He was going to kill them for not realizing he wanted a temple built for me. As if I even cared about that at all! As if I valued a building more than the lives that now hung in the balance.
His gaze locked on mine. “As my true-born daughter, you deserve it. It is not just I who they should be worshipping.”
Kamon turned, understanding dawning on his features. He stared at my chest, the unmarked skin free of the Bident we’d once painted there to mark me as a Descendant of Hyrax.
Only I wasn’t simply a Descendant of Hyrax.
“Of course,” Kamon agreed a bit breathlessly. “We will build temples to you as well, Your Holiness. Temples to worship the Goddess Theadora.”
Hyrax grinned, a slow, insidious kind of expression that made my blood run cold.
“Good,” he turned, climbing back towards his throne and sitting himself upon it. He stretched out his arms, resting one on each side and looking far taller than was natural for any man.
He wasn’t a man.
He wasn’t just any God either.
Hyrax was a High God, and I’d been foolish to think that being his daughter meant I would be safe from him.
“Theadora.” Steely eyes, mirrors to my own, bore down upon me. “Don’t you think it would be polite to thank me for ensuring that you receive proper adoration?”
Damon was shaking in my lap.
No.
Damon wasn’t shaking; I was.
“Y-yes,” I stuttered, sounding as hollow as I felt. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, what?” Shadows danced in the planes of his face.
“Thank you, father.”