Chapter 27 #2
"What is it?" Azul responded quickly, staring blankly into space as she stood.
"The Okpalaeze is here to see you."
The door opened before she could answer the guard. Somadina filled the frame, then stepped inside, water cascading down the hard lines of his exposed chest. His wrapper, slung across his left shoulder, was thoroughly soaked, clinging to his skin.
Dark, hollow eyes locked onto hers.
In return, a grin stretched on her face.
“My mother is dead.”
Azul said nothing.
“Are you happy now?” His voice was raw, as though he’d been screaming. “Your great enemy brought low. The Second wife you detest is gone by her own hand. Does it taste sweet?”
He closed the distance between them with the inevitability of the tide. The scent of rain, cold stone, and his own sharp sweat filled the space. Azul didn’t flinch; she was not one to retreat. She held her ground, her golden eyes reflecting the frantic lightning in his.
He stopped inches from her. His gaze searched her face, looking for triumph, finding only that infuriating, impenetrable calm.
“I will allow you to win,” he whispered, the admission torn from him.
He sank to his knees before her, the proud prince brought low in the grave of his own making.
His mother was dead, and though she left a suicide note to console the council, the man that might be his true father was nowhere to be found.
And something deep inside him knew that Azul had already hidden him; it was a knife to his throat at all times, waiting to decapitate him.
The wet linen of his trousers clung to the floor. His hands, trembling slightly, came up and found the hem of her blood-red dress.
“If you insist on being angry, be angry at me,” he pleaded, his gaze fixed on the fabric as his fingers crept upward, skimming the outside of her thighs.
The touch was intimate and possessive; he pushed her to see just how much she would allow him.
“Hate me. Curse me. But direct it here. At me. I cannot… I will not allow you to choose another king. Not as long as I live.”
So this is why you’re here. She found him pathetic, desiring to the point of begging.
His hands slid higher, his thumbs pressing into the softness of her inner thighs.
He was offering himself—not as a contender, but as a vassal, a receptacle for her wrath, a creature of her making.
He was begging her, in this twisted way, to take him back.
To see him as the only viable instrument of her will.
Azul looked down at the crown of his head, at the powerful hands mapping a claim on her body, digging into her skin, unwilling to let go.
She leaned down, bringing her lips close to his ear.
How beautiful would it be if he drowned with her?
Amadioha breathed thunder and lightning across the sky that morning.
Rain fell in sheets, soaking the world, drowning sound and sight in a relentless grey curtain. Water rose around the shrine’s stone steps, reflecting the occasional glare of lightning.
Azul knelt at the centre, her feet muddied and her robes soaked through, her hair plastered to her face and neck.
Something writhed in her lap, and by her side was a silver dagger.
Before her, the weathered pillar loomed, its inscriptions to Ukhel barely visible in the darkness.
The words were carved into her memory, written in her own malice.
Ukhel, Lord of the Seven Gates. Keeper of the dead. Giver of life.
She pressed her palm to the cold stone.
God of the Valthorne, leader of their conquest.
"Ukhel." Her voice was barely a whisper, lost in the roar of the storm. "I am not your servant, nor am I your follower. This prayer is not mine, but a request on behalf of a man who dares love you."
Lightning split the sky. In its flash, her eyes blazed gold.
"Your servant, your penitent, your punishment made flesh." Her voice remained steady. Thunder rolled, shaking the very stones.
"I cannot protect him. So I beseech you, all who stand in his way, destroy."
In her lap, she held a small, terrified creature. A bunny with its feet tied.
“I call upon your name; should his life end, I will call you into questioning. " With that, she picked up the blade and slit the throat of her sacrifice.
Azul raised her head; she could hear footsteps, many, approaching her shrine.
She heard the occasional spear hitting the ground and realised those were guards surrounding her.
“Akwaugo!” Nkiru called from the distance, but her voice was quickly silenced.
Taking a deep breath, she stood.
She turned to guards all around the entrance to the shrine—a dozen of them, maybe more, their faces shadowed by the harsh light. At their head stood a man she did not recognise, his robes marking him as an Elder of rank.
"Akwaugo." His voice was flat. "You will come with us."
"On whose authority?" she asked.
"The Dowager."
She did not fight. Asking where she was being taken would also be meaningless. As they led her away, she watched as Nkiru was gagged and dragged away; Azul couldn’t tell if she was crying or if it was just the rain.
The Grand Council chamber was chaos as usual when the Elder of Justice entered.
He was soaked through, his robes dripping water onto the polished floor, his expression so foul that men actually stepped back to let him pass. The room, which had been a frenzy of argument and accusation, fell silent at the sight of him.
"Elder." General Ekwueme stepped forward. "What news?"
The Elder of Justice did not answer immediately. He walked to the center of the room, turning slowly, letting every face see what was in his eyes.
"The Igwe is dead."
Her cell was small—barely large enough to lie down in—with walls of cold stone and a floor of packed earth that smelled of damp and rot. A single barred window let in the sound of rain and the occasional flash of lightning.
Azul sat against the wall, her knees drawn up; she had been here for hours, maybe longer. Time moved strangely in places like this.
The guards who had brought her had spoken little, but they had spoken enough. The Iyom's suicide and the Igwe's death. The chaos engulfing the palace. It was all falling into place, exactly as she knew it would.
She laughed, the sound crescendoing and echoing off the stone walls.
"The devil must die," she mused, her smile widening. Since this was the game board the Dowager set, it would be rude if she didn't play along. "But which devil?"