7
Valine displayed her necromantic abilities over and over for Malik, subjecting Lord Bayliss to deaths upon deaths. He was begging after every time, and every repetition brought her back to the memories of her father’s end. They cried such similar sentiments. They crowed the same curses. They whimpered identical pleas. They screamed the same useless, cruel vitriol.
When it was truly done and Malik’s curiosity sated, Valine ended the performance with a swift cut, and the lord was no more. It was so simple to end him, and it was just as simple for Malik to call a guard to dispose of the body. It was clear they had heard the torture of the prisoner, but they did not know the extent or the method in which was deployed. They nodded and silently tended to their duties.
They had returned to the library, and Malik was once again in the saffron chair while Valine leaned against the hearth, staring into the eyes of a fanged daemon—Nylantia, the patroness of the night and stars. Valine favored the daemons to the saints. Their darkness answered to hers, their desires understood hers.
“Did he hurt you?” Malik asked softly.
Valine spun on her heel, and she found the king with his head bowed, crown discarded, but he was looking up at her. His hands were clutching his knees, the knuckles turning white. Beneath his short beard, his jaw was clenched, and he had difficulty swallowing. She startled because she recognized that look. He cared but was trying to contain it and whatever emotion was trying to escape.
“Did he touch you?” He paused. “Before.”
She inhaled through her nose. “No. But I know there were others.”
Relief deflated him in the slightest of shrugs. “I suspected as much. It’s why he was down there. He attempted on Freyja during a festival in the Frost Season.”
Valine calculated Lord Bayliss had been there for more than half the year. If imprisoned in the Frost Season, he’d been rotting all the way through the Blooming, Rain, Hot, and now Harvest Season. She wondered if he would have made it to the Cold Season had her necromancy not intervened. She wondered if he would have been forgotten for years in the depths of the Adraali palace.
“I’m not sorry for what I’ve done,” Valine declared, lifting her chin.
“I never want you to be sorry for your nature. You are in my service, and you are my ally. It’s what makes you irreplaceable.”
Valine’s heart raced, but she did not speak. She didn’t think her words would come without a waver. She couldn’t help but want to feel Malik’s touch on her waist again, to feel those fingertips trace her skin, to stroke and wander, to feel the shape of her breasts. Her breath became thin, and arousal surged in her core, her center aching.
“Is there anything that can harm you?”
Valine laughed. “I am mortal. I can be killed.”
“Can you?”
Valine stayed silent.
“Will poison affect you?” he questioned, pulling out a small vial and fiddling with it. It was an inky liquid, of what, Valine could not tell for certain—but she had a theory.
“No, and I can recognize any from sight, scent, or taste. I’ve studied extensively.”
“Do you know what this is?” He presented the vial, and she caught the opalescent shimmer in the dark liquid.
She did. “Nylantia’s Tears.”
“What would happen if one was to drink it?”
She licked her lips. “A drop to help sleep, three for eternal slumber.”
It was one of the gentler poisons, and it was readily used by apothecaries for sleep disturbances or merciful deaths when patients were beyond saving. A single drop in a cup of tea, and the drinker would sleep for a day and a night. Three drops spelled a silent death that painted lips black. Two drops was always an accident.
“And if you drank it?”
“Nothing.”
“Prove it.” And he tossed her the vial.
Valine caught it. It was warm from his palm, and Valine never lifted her eyes from his as she uncorked the vial and downed the contents without breaking their gaze. The taste was sweet, but the undertones were sour—just like blackberries. It was undeniably Nylantia’s Tears, and it was unmistakably useless on her.
Moments passed. The poison coursed through her, and her necromancy destroyed it. Her lips did not blacken, she did not fall. She tossed the vial into the fire, and it exploded against the hot stone.
The king got up from his perch, and strut over to her. Before her, he towered, an enigmatic, and wild light in his eyes. “What an incredible treasure I’ve discovered.” A hand came up to cup her cheek, fingers trailing her jaw, so dangerously close to her poisonous mouth. “And in such an exquisite form.”
Valine’s heart raced in her chest as his scent overwhelmed her—black orchid, tobacco, cloves. Whatever this was, it was leaving her unbalanced. She was not a lover of the king; she should not have entertained the idea of such a tryst. She was a tool, a pawn, a slave, a prisoner to the Amir throne. And yet she did not care. Her life was cut into moments and forced into cages. When one cell no longer suited her, she bent the bars and slipped to the next. This was the first time she’d been plucked from one, only to be deposited in the loosest of restraints.
It might have been an illusion.
It might have been an oubliette.
It was all she could have hoped for.
“What do you want from me?” she whispered.
“In what way?” he breathed back.
“The grand picture. I am a necromancer and an assassin. You knew this. What do you truly need from me?”
She had broken the moment, but it was deliberate and worth the flaring of his eyes. He’d been caught off guard and given her such an ability.
“You see too much.”
“No, I just see more than you like. Whatever you want, let me help you. Whatever you want to achieve, let me give it to you. If you can promise me a modicum of security as a key person within these walls and to tell me the truth, I will give you the world.”
“Oh, dear Valine, that’s exactly what I want.”
She paused, the gears turning in her head. “You want to rule the realm.”
He leaned in, a glint in his eye. “I need to rule the realm. Runell is spreading its plague of ideals, and I am the only one who can stop it. Their plans are egregious transgressions and will only put us centuries in the past. I will be a liberator, and if that makes me a tyrant to some, then I will wear the badge with honor.”
“What use will I be to you in this endeavor?”
“The most important detail. Use murder, threats, extortion. If it is within your arsenal, employ it. Eventually, every kingdom will bow to and serve me.”
A gear clicked. “You cannot outright attack because of your alliances in the east; they won’t allow you without breaking off. That’s why you need me.”
Malik nods. “Precisely. So, until I can overpower or sway them, I need you.”
Self-preservation flared within Valine. “What about after? When you don’t need me?”
Malik sighed. “Oh, I think I’ll need you very much.”
Heat squirmed in her belly, and she felt the fire of his gaze burning through her, burning through the clothes that Diana selected for her, burning into her core and seeing into the depths of her. Of her want.
“Having an assassin nearby is the best threat and security I could imagine. If there’s something I want dealt with under the table then you will serve those duties as needed. As you know, running a kingdom requires much more underhanded deals than those written in the ledgers.”
Valine brushed aside her growing sensations. The king had to marry a royal for appearances and alliances, fooling around with her would not be wise. Unfortunately, her latest dry spell had her toes curling in her boots.
“I want to be on more than a need-to-know basis. I know I cannot be in the council chambers due to my false position as the bridal companion, but I would like to be informed the night a meeting has concluded and filled in.”
Malik acquiesced. “Acceptable.”
She paused, weighing what she wanted and what she could viably ask of the king. She sought an ending. “And I want Runell to burn. I want that saints-damned kingdom destroyed.”
“Once I have my empire, we will raze the ground on which it stood.”
“Good.” Valine grinned and it was a feral thing.
A glint of gold on the wall caught Valine’s attention, and before she could spare a thought, she’d taken a step towards it. It was a solid gold pistol; the grip had a snake winding around it, and its eyes were rubies. Rose thorns wrapped the barrel, and the flower was embossed on the chamber. Below it were three ruined bullets.
“Do you have any talent for marksmanship, or are you just admiring the craftsmanship?" Malik inquired, sidling up to her.
“Both,” she answered swiftly, a hand lifting towards it. A hand that she quickly dropped.
Malik seemed to have none of her reservations, and he picked up the gun, and handed it to her. She took it gingerly as he shuffled through a small box with pearl inlay nearby, from it he produced two whole bullets. He gave them to her. Tentatively, she plucked them from his palm, and slowly loaded them.
“This was my great-grandmother’s pistol,” Malik told her, crossing his arms behind his back. “Back when Adraali was ruled by sets of siblings, my great-grandmother was the prospective bride for my great-grandfather, and she used this gun—those bullets—to kill his three brothers. They did not want to share the throne or crown with anyone but the other.”
Valine stared at the piece of history in her hands and the markers of death displayed on the wall. Bullets that had lodged inside bodies and stripped souls from their hosts. How quickly lives were snuffed out with the pulling of a golden trigger. How quickly Valine was the same.
“I’ve heard stories of her, Aaliyah Amir. She was a poisoner before she was queen, was she not?”
“She was. She was also a divinamancer.”
Valine quirked a brow. “You have clairvoyant blood in your veins?”
“Among others.” He smirked as he slid behind her, skirting his fingers along the underside of her arms, gently prodding them upward to aim. “You see the map of the continent across the room?”
She squinted until she made out the horseshoe shape on the parchment, stretching the length of a wall between two stained glass windows. It was artfully done with phoenixes, arachne, kraken, basilisks, and sand serpents bordering the edges, hemmed in with stars and flora. Parts of it were gilt, and others were touched with watercolors. It was a hundred feet away.
“I do.”
His breath feathered against her hair, tickling her throat. “I want you to shoot Cydra on that map.”
Valine pulled in a breath, steadying herself as she removed the safety. With Malik’s long fingers still upon her, she took aim, zeroing in on the lower left quadrant of the map. She breathed again, and then she fired.
The gunshot was a crack in the air, the scent of powder sharp in her nose. Smoke coiled from the end of the ornate barrel. Two guards leaped from their posts but backed down after a wave from Malik. She didn’t have to approach the map to know that she hit the mark, but Malik crossed the room and leaned down, tracing over a hole exactly where Cydra sat. She had not failed.
Malik returned and took the golden weapon from her, staring at her in wonder.
“Does anyone rival you?”
She laughed. “I must admit, my closest brother, Acanthus, is the only marksman to ever beat me. He is accurate with a pistol at two hundred yards and even more deadly with a rifle. But in other matters? No, I’ve not tested myself against another.”
Memories of Acanthus punched her heart, the loss of that connection a physical ache. She hadn’t seen her older brother in more than six years, but prior to that, not much more than a year of age had separated them. When they were children, they had raced in the Runellian fields together, ate wild blackberries till their mouths and fingers were dyed, and their bellies ached. When they were older, they practiced marksmanship together, gaining proficiency with bow and firearm. They taught each other how to fight with a blade—even though she was forbidden to do so. When they were forced to attend balls and galas, they disappeared from the courtiers with a bottle of wine and got drunk with the servants. None of her brothers had understood her like him.
“Where is he now?”
Valine pulled herself from the recesses of her memory. “Last I’d heard, he was serving as captain of the guard in Gallae.”
“A prestigious position.”
“Yes, it truly is.” She inhaled sharply and changed the subject. “When do your prospective brides arrive?”
Malik seemed to understand immediately, and something about it nudged a feathering sensation in her chest. “Not until the Blooming Season, though we have no confirmed date. But first, I’m sending you and Sarim to Talloh ahead of our retinue. We’ve been invited to their blessed Tri-Moon Festival.”
Valine crossed her wrists behind her back, rocking carefully on her heels. “And just why must I depart beforehand?”
Malik’s stunning eyes turned hard, and a wicked smile twisted his lips.
“Because you are going to kill a king.”
And without removing his gaze from hers, he lifted the gun behind him and shot Talloh on the map.