Epilogue
Storm Fae Crown Prince Aleksander, Fifteen Years Old
Eight Years Ago, on the Bridge
The brick walls of the Northern Commune towered pitifully behind me. Why the Marshal was hosting peace talks in Westmere’s poorest, most barely civilized city was beyond my understanding. They are all fools.
The Draconis Empire was never going to negotiate for peace, especially not once I took the helm, but thus we pandered to their human politicians, pretending to play along.
We needed the location of the last mine, and my illustrious ancestor, the first emperor—Chriztoph the Raving—had the information, which was why the humans had been holding him hostage for centuries.
Not for long.
Military strategizing was my passion.
Everyone said youth was supposed to be glorious and free, but I was shackled by duty. Royal festivities, dragon riding, and the endless Storm Fae court politics were all of no interest to me. There was only one singular thing that mattered in my life—solving the Iron Trap Dilemma.
We were vastly outnumbered by humans, outdistanced and outclassed by technologies. There were only a few of us, but power was our birthright.
Storm Fae were magic, and all the humans had was thievery, but to beat them at their ways, I had to play their cunning little games. I’d read through every book the palace had on Westmere, but they were all poetry written in medieval dialect. It was how I’d learned their language.
If manuscripts from humanity’s modern era had ever existed, Ryzar the Flaming, who could manipulate fire, had burned them to ash in one of his infamous rages.
Typical.
Centuries of my ancestors had failed to break the Iron Trap and spring Chriztoph free. One thing they had done right: they’d carefully selected their partners with the sole purpose of bearing a child who had enough ruthlessness to solve the dilemma.
Darkness fell with the crackle of snow across ice.
My bloodline had finally succeeded. Storm Fae were immortal, and birth among my kind was a rare miracle.
We did not perish pathetically like the humans.
Instead, we followed extensive rules of power and succession.
I’d already proven smarter than Father, besting him at games of strategy and intellect. Thus it would soon be my turn to rule.
I’m going to spring the Iron Trap.
It wasn’t hubris, because I knew it in the same way that I knew the sky was violet and composed of eighty percent nitrogen. Father and Uncle were far too weak, but I was vastly different from them. I was cruel and manipulative enough to actually get the job done.
I perceived the patterns.
Everyone else thought small—a battle here, a threat there.
Their ideas were as pitiful as they were futile.
When they got angry, they lashed out. Ranting as they raged, murdering indiscriminately, and enslaving pockets of humans because it made them feel better about their failure to find the location of the last platinum mine. Our people needed it desperately.
I rubbed the royal platinum cuffs on my wrists, and a whisper of fear prickled, because without them, my magic would destroy me from the inside out. The doubt disappeared as quickly as it surfaced, and there was nothing inside me but cold determination.
My rage was silent. Calculated.
Instrumental aggression.
Useful.
To spring the Iron Trap without setting off the humans’ monstrous atomic bombs, I needed years of planning and the strategic manipulation of unwitting pawns. Humans had to work beside me. They had to help, whether they knew it or not. I’d need to curry their favor and get close to the source.
I’d need a disguise.
At the incipient age of ten years old, I’d begun laying the foundation. At eleven, before I’d yet to make a public appearance, I dyed my naturally blond hair and eyebrows pitch-black. When it was finally time to take on an alias, no one would suspect anything, because they’d never seen the real me.
At twelve, with hair as dark as my soul, I’d met and signed treaties with the fearsome dire bear shifters of the rural North. They were helping me hunt the humans in exchange for future protection, an extremely satisfying alliance.
Now, at the mature age of fifteen, it was time to make more . . . prolific moves. I needed to manipulate the humans into helping me spring the Iron Trap. Countless Emperors had failed because they all approached from the outskirts.
It needed to be an inside job.
Everything was up to me.
The pressure was as crushing as it was exhilarating.
I assumed it was, at least. I didn’t feel much of anything.
Never had. That was the problem when thou were so much better than those around thee, more intelligent, and built to dominate.
The other Royal Fae were so easily distracted, pursuing romance and carnal pleasures. Both repulsed me.
I had no urge to touch another being.
Until I dismantled the Iron Trap, secured the location of the last platinum mine, and freed my ancestors from this farce of a war, there was nothing to feel. Without the Iron Trap left to protect them, nothing would save the humans.
The sweet cherry taste of blood flooded my mouth as my fangs accidentally lengthened, stabbing deep and automatically releasing my dark venom into my bloodstream.
Pain lanced down my spine and across my hips as I shifted my aching limbs. Puberty was my current damnation. It was no small feat for a child to become an Emperor.
If I were of any other Storm Fae lineage, I would have already been crushed by the force of what was growing inside of me. Alas, I was better than everyone else.
Howls filled the night as dire beasts prowled. Northern Westmere was reminiscent of home with its snowy mountains, but the lack of castles and dragons made it unsettling. It was foreign, just like the desert lands on this cursed continent.
These woods, Barren’s forest, had an aura of malingering menace that I’d never felt before.
These were no normal pines. They were his.
Branches rustled, and I listened intently, waiting to see if I could hear the famous elven whispers that drove shifters, witches, vampires, and Storm Fae to madness, or in rare instances—greatness.
Barren was one of the most powerful elves, an ancient people of peace, but most importantly—power. Barren had also famously chosen one of the most powerful Storm Fae ever to be a Keeper—Chriztoph the Raving, my most esteemed ancestor. He was the only fae ever chosen for the role.
A Keeper was without a doubt the greatest, most honorable title any warrior could receive. Elven power did not come easily. Constrained to their magical land, and a naturally reclusive people, they rarely walked among men or fae.
After digging a hole in the snow, I sliced my pocketknife across my palm and bled onto the frozen grass. Choose me. With my cunning and Barren’s power on my side, domination of Antichthon would be assured. I’d be the greatest, most impressive Emperor who’d ever lived.
Branches clattered loudly, the sound coldly ominous.
My blood disappeared as it was sucked into the frozen dirt. The ground shook violently—judging.
Silence.
A strange heaviness settled in my bones.
The dirt turned black, and so did the snow around where my blood had dripped. Nothing grew. No figure appeared.
Barren had rejected me.
Whatever. I don’t care what a half-witted elven thinks of me. It’s probably more of a responsibility than a help anyway.
His cursed land meant nothing to me.
Absolutely nothing.
I didn’t want his help because I could do it myself.
If it wasn’t for the old platinum mines, my ancestors never would have bothered with this land and been trapped into the Storm Wars. I spit with disgust as the unnatural Mist twined around my ankles. The humans had ruined my world with their awful technologies.
Ennui grew, cerebrum liquefying with boredom. I daydreamed of flying away on Plague with Chriztoph the Raving seated safely behind me. I fantasized about dragon fire, finding the hidden mine, and a quiet world full of peace where the Storm Fae reigned over all Antichthon.
Wind churned, a mini-tornado swirling snow at my feet.
I rested against the towering brick wall, ancient parchment fluttering in the magical wind as I read the pages for the thousandth time.
It was a first edition of A Gentleman’s Guide to Slaughtering.
The tome was priceless, less than three had been made in the entire world, hand-bound and hand-inked two centuries ago, worth more than everything within this cursed Northern Commune, including all the inhabitants.
Long-term plans required immense amounts of patience, which I had in spades, but there were still . . . consequences. Restlessness was the cause—annihilation the result.
It didn’t help that these nights I lay awake, trembling in agony as puberty kept stretching my aching bones while storm magic found a home in me. I turned the page, slowly reading text that I could recite with my eyes closed.
Crunch.
I stilled, blending in with the darkness as I tucked my treasure into my waistband.
Footsteps?
None of the bumbling human peasants in this provincial Commune ventured outside their walls. Ever. All week, I’d watched them scurry around like rats, hiding from the wilderness, struggling to walk without breathing heavily as they pretended they didn’t exist within its maw.
Crunch.
There was a figure in the dark.
It was the same one I’d glimpsed earlier hurtling down the mountain, flipping through the air on a strange wooden board.
Torches flickered against the city wall, casting light across the narrow path leading to the entrance gate.
A spotted carcass with long, curved fangs and a mutated, distended chest—a lethal dire coyote—was stretched across the person’s narrow shoulder. Its blood splattered across the snow. The board was slung across their other shoulder, almost as big as the person carrying it.