The Halfling Prince (The Covenants of Velora #2)

Prologue

GARRICK

Before

I knew from a young age that one day I would kill my father.

My own pain I could have withstood. But I’d never forgive him for what he did to my mother. At least, that’s what I’d always told myself.

A rare blue sky shone overhead. Snow was still piled against the edges of the courtyard, blocking most of the colonnade, but the center bricks were a sharp, unadulterated orange. Slick with melting ice. The perfect place for sparring.

The boy swung his sword, but the weight of it carried him too far to the left.

He tried to compensate, throwing his weight to the right.

But once his foot hit the patch of ice, he had no chance.

He was lucky that it was his bottom that collided with the ground, rather than his face.

About time. The hard ground was a more efficient teacher than I’d ever be.

One of the guards lining the colonnade rushed forward. He had the prince by the underarms and back on his feet before the moisture from the ice could soak into the bottom of the boy’s trousers. So much for a lesson learned.

I folded my arms over my chest as the guard fussed over the young prince’s nonexistent injuries.

“That sword is too heavy for you,” I said for what must have been the hundredth time.

Edmund glared at me. When I was unmoved, he turned the scowl on the guard. Immediate retreat.

“I slipped on the ice,” Edmund insisted, rubbing his elbow surreptitiously. It must have hit the ground as well. Too bad it would heal too quickly for him to take the error to heart.

“There is always ice in Velora.” It was one reason I insisted on sparring outside, no matter the weather.

“There won’t be when I break the curse,” said a smug female voice.

Just what this cold afternoon needed. Another member of the royal family.

Alize stalked out from between two columns, jumping over the bank of snow, wielding the wind to help her.

Another hour, maybe, and the sun would dip behind the mountains.

It would be too cold for the precious Crown Prince to be outside, and I would be excused from the farcical training session.

I thanked the gods again that I’d been born a bastard.

No one gave a damn whether I was cold or not.

I’d actually learned to wield a sword—and a half dozen other deadly weapons—without coddling.

An hour, I promised myself, and then Alair would be back in my arms. He’d be done in the stables for the night. A quick visit down to my mother, and then we’d be tucked up in Alair’s room above the stable by supper.

On days like this, it was almost possible to forget that I hated Balar Shan. But my siblings seemed determined to remind me. Edmund blasted fire at Alize. She diverted it with a strong wind.

I crossed the courtyard in three long strides, inserting myself between them. The flames winked out immediately. Neither of them would risk hitting me. I was the bastard brother. But I was stronger than both of them. For now.

“No magic,” I said.

“Why not? Fire melts ice,” Edmund pointed out.

I pointed Alize out of the courtyard. If the king found her down here, we would all be in trouble. If the king found his way down here at all, the thin veneer of civility would shatter. Balar Shan was the Court of Lies. When we all did our part, the lie was believable.

I motioned the guard who’d picked up Edmund’s weapon forward.

“Because magic is dying.” I should not have had to remind the future king of that fact. “You need to know how to fight without it.”

The guardsman held out two weapons. The greatsword that had sent him tumbling before, and a more modest shortsword used for close quarters. Edmund’s eyes flashed with defiance.

The next hour was going to be torture. Unless.

Young minds were the easiest. They were already given to quick changes, and they did not know themselves well enough to recognize that a thought was not their own. I slipped in between breaths. Edmund’s hand did not even waver. It passed over the bigger weapon and swiped up the shortsword.

Thank the gods.

“Get into position again,” I ordered, starting my advance even before he was in place. Assailants rarely waited for you to be ready before they attacked.

Edmund dropped the sword. His mouth fell open, every muscle in his body suddenly going slack. My sword was already in position as I spun, ready to face the oncoming attack.

But it was not an attack at all. A knot of men clambered into the courtyard. The thick piles of snow had deadened the sound of their approach.

I recognized faces. Two guardsmen. A fae trapper who sometimes passed a night or two in the castle’s kitchen after selling game to the cooks. The lithe body strung between them was more than familiar. I knew it as well as my own.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded as my mind tried to make sense of what I saw.

Alair’s arms were bound, as were his legs. The guardsman dragged him, but he wasn’t making it easy on them. He thrashed violently back and forth, and his skin was coated with thick black fluid. The guards were coated with it, too.

“Edmund, go,” I ordered over my shoulder. Whatever this was, he did not need to see it. But I did not look over my shoulder to check that he’d actually listened, and I didn’t spare the energy to compel him.

A wave of putrid decay assaulted my senses as the cold wind shifted. Gods, was that coming from Alair?

I reached for him, trying to catch his shoulder, but he thrashed away.

“Alair? Alair, hold still.” I shoved my sword into my belt, trying to catch his face between my hands. But he twisted, his entire body contorting. The guard on his left stumbled, the trapper catching him and pulling them both up. “What is happening?”

“He went feral. He killed one of the stallions.”

I wasn’t sure who spoke. I wasn’t sure I could believe his words.

Alair would never… not for a hundred different reasons.

He loved his posting in the stables. He was proud of the work he did, caring for the horseflesh, the only beasts of their kind left in Velora.

He understood that his position here in Balar Shan was predicated on his usefulness.

“Alair,” I said again.

But he did not seem to hear me. He did not respond to the pressure of the men holding him, or their words of threat.

He thrashed and fought, his hair falling forward over his eyes.

The black bile that coated his body leaked from his mouth.

Was it coming from his eyes, too, or had it smeared all over him? He was sick; he had to be sick.

I checked his body for wounds as best I could, but found nothing. “What is wrong with him?”

“I don’t know. We heard the horse squealing,” the trapper said. The guards were too busy restraining him to speak. I did not know the man well, but it didn’t take much skill to read the grimness in his heavily lined face. “He was eating it alive.”

It couldn’t be true.

I finally caught his face between my hands.

“Alair,” I said. His eyes were black. That was wrong. The laughing light was subsumed by darkness. The black bile was leaking from his eyes. His nose, too. This was not an illness. This was… I did not even have the words for it. Fear uncoiled itself in my stomach. “Alair, please.”

But his eyes did not see me. I was not sure they saw anything.

I tried to suck in a breath, only to choke on the thick, vile scent of the bile that poured from Alair’s orifices. I had to step back, pounding my own fist against my chest. By the time I straightened, out of breath, panic had shifted to something sharper.

The king had arrived.

My father stood with arms crossed over his chest, a pose so similar to the one I’d taken earlier that my stomach revolted for a wholly new reason. The arch of Balar Shan’s central tower framed him, adding a gravitas that was not necessary.

We all understood that his power here was absolute.

“Killing one of the king’s horses is tantamount to thievery,” he said. He looked over Alair and the men holding him, but he came no closer. Another guard stood panting at his side. He must have run ahead to apprise the king of what had happened. “What is the punishment for stealing from the Crown?”

No one spoke. They all knew the question was for me.

I had tried so hard to keep Alair to myself. To protect him. But Balar Shan was too small to keep anything secret for long. I straightened to my full height, the equal of my father. Alair was in my keeping.

“He is not well,” I said. There was no point in arguing the law.

There was no point in arguing at all. There was a commotion behind the king, in the base of the tower. He stepped aside to reveal my mother, a guard dragging her upward from her room in the bowels of Balar Shan.

She did not fight the guard, but he still dragged her. Her human legs did not move fast enough to suit him. I was halfway to her when one of the guards holding Alair screamed. He’d bitten the guardsman’s shoulder.

I stood in the middle of the courtyard as my heart began to shred.

“Mother.” My tone was flat, but it was a question. I checked her over myself. She inclined her head the barest, tiniest fraction of an inch. She was unharmed. I turned to my father. “She has done nothing.”

He waved a dismissive hand—as if the idea of him using her against me was nonsense. As if he had not been doing it since the first day I arrived in this corner of hell nestled in the armpit of Velora.

“She is here as a witness,” the king said. “She has seen this before.”

My gaze snapped back to her. “Mother?”

Her dark eyes were full of pain. No. She was shaking. It was the cold. It could not be because—

“Is it as you saw, before?” the king demanded.

She pressed her eyes closed, as if she could not bear to look at me as she said it. “Yes.”

I did not even understand what was happening.

What is like before—this illness? If Alair was sick, then surely there was a cure.

The fae here didn’t have much magic left, but there were a few healers.

Given enough time, his body would heal itself.

He was only half fae, but that was enough. It always had been before.

“Take off his coat,” the king ordered. “Prepare him.”

I’d heard those orders before. I knew what they meant.

No.

My sword was back in my hand. Drawing it had not been conscious. Drawing it in the presence of the King was a capital crime.

My mother broke free of the guard who held her. She stumbled across the icy courtyard, losing her footing. Her chest heaved as she fought for breath. I caught her with my free arm, steadying her on her feet.

“Garrick, my darling, please,” my mother begged. She curled a hand around my face, her thumb grasping at my jaw. “You cannot save him.”

No.

I’d never compelled Alair before. He’d suggested it once from beneath a raised eyebrow, as a form of bed play.

I’d balked. It felt like a violation. But I did not hesitate now.

I reached into his mind, that joyful, happy place that belonged to the man I loved, to compel him to stand. I told him to stop fighting.

But there was nothing left of Alair to compel. Where it should have been lively and bright, I felt nothing but dark. A primordial, clawing darkness that speared outward, reaching for me, instead. I recoiled.

I slipped on the ice.

“Alair,” I rasped. It could not—no. How? No.

“Deliver the king’s justice.”

The words sliced through my grief. My heart could not process them, but my mind knew they came from the king.

Alair was on his knees, all the layers removed from the top half of his body.

The lean muscles of his chest, the tapered waist, the trail of dark hair that led downward…

the man I loved, reduced to a thrashing monster of darkness.

My father wanted me to be the one to kill him.

“No.”

My mother made a low, keening sound at my side.

My father could not compel minds, like me. He could compel bodies. He could make me do it, and even as I screamed inside at my limbs, they would obey his commands. He would break me, and my mother knew it.

But even she underestimated his cruelty.

I did not feel the horrific disconnect as my mind lost control of my body.

My father did not use his magic against me.

Instead, he met my gaze, his turquoise eyes a mirror of my own.

A broken mirror. Then, with deliberate slowness, he dragged his eyes to my mother.

He would not compel or kill me. He knew I did not fear for my own life. He would torture and kill her.

“You are the Duke of Sein Talam,” the King said. “Do your duty.”

The guards grunted as Alair thrashed harder than before. Whatever had taken over his body, it seemed to sense that the end was near.

I did not believe in heaven or hell. But I could not stop myself from appealing to his soul, if it still lingered, if any piece of him could still hear me.

Forgive me, my love.

One step. Two. I lifted my sword.

At least I could give him a quick death. Forgive me.

The trapper appeared behind him, forcing his head down while the guards held his arms, revealing his bare neck.

I swung my greatsword down in one powerful motion.

There was no snow on the bricks to muffle the sound of Alair’s head hitting the ground. Only ice. I did not slip.

The spectators retreated. The king and his guards. Edmund and Alize, if they had been foolish enough to stay. My mother did not touch me, but I knew she lingered nearby. She was all I had left now.

Alair’s clothing lay in a ripped heap, wet from the snow. Atop it was the bow, the one inheritance from his human mother. I had not even noticed him wearing it. He must have been heading out to hunt before… Before.

I forced myself to keep breathing through my nose as I retrieved the bow, even as the putrid scent of the black bile threatened to make me ill. I would remember every detail of this day. Forever.

The fae had stolen from me for the last time. I would have revenge on my father, no matter the cost. I would free my mother—and then leave this cursed continent to the death it deserved.