Chapter 1 #2
Those with minor injuries helped those with more serious ones as they turned down the road toward Raumandia. They didn’t make it more than a couple of hundred feet before the hair on the back of my neck rose, and I sensed danger approaching. The sinister familiarity of it had my blood running cold.
I turned to face the incoming threat, keeping my body loose and casual.
A tall, heavily built dark elf stepped out of the shadows of a narrow alley.
He defined the word “menacing.” The top half of his long, black hair was pulled back.
His face stood out in stark relief with sharp cheekbones, a square jaw, and glacial eyes, glinting with silver.
Power pulsed from him in threatening waves.
I gave him a menacing smile as he approached, grateful my friends were still invisible because this elf would kill them in an instant if he saw them.
Of this, I had no doubt. The two times I’d shown the slightest hint of affection toward anyone in Karganoth aside from my sister, he’d crushed them.
He had telekinetic powers like me, which he used ruthlessly, as well as the ability to teleport.
I positioned myself between the Raumandian soldiers and the heir to Karganoth.
“Well done, Darrow.” Radan quirked his lips, false amusement in his silver eyes. “You let the others do the dirty work and conserved your powers, just as I taught you so long ago. I had begun to think that lesson would never take hold, but you’ve surprised me.”
Only he wouldn’t seem the slightest bit bothered that I’d help slaughter his soldiers. As far as he was concerned, they shouldn’t have let themselves get caught with my magic. The only person more ruthless than him was his father—the king of Karganoth.
“I don’t need your praise, uncle,” I said, casting a disgusted look at the dead dark elves scattered on the ground before meeting Radan’s gaze again. “In case you’ve forgotten…I never did.”
Radan shook his head. “Oh, I remember. Your life would have been so much easier if you’d submitted to my will, but your stubborn pride always got in the way.”
I laughed. “Stubborn pride? I call it refusing to bow to anyone lesser than me.”
It was so easy to enrage him.
“You’ll bow when I’m the king, I assure you,” he said, a flash of anger sparking in his eyes before he hid it away. Dark elves of high rank took pride in showing little emotion, at least, in public, where others could see. What they did in private was a whole other matter.
“I do wonder if Grandfather will allow you to become king since you have no chance of producing an heir.” I paused, giving him a condescending look. “If only you hadn’t angered the wrong low-born elf and forced yourself upon her.”
A few years before I was born, he’d assaulted a female whose mother was a servant and father a lord.
She wasn’t considered legitimate, so she had no title or standing despite being gifted with strong magic.
What my uncle had failed to realize was that she’d inherited an ability similar to Aella’s uncle—the difference being her skill at laying curses lasted even after her death.
Radan’s balls had shriveled to nothing, and his cock was only an inch long.
Those details came from other witnesses, as I’d never cared to see the proof for myself.
The amount of power that the female elf had needed to place a permanent curse on a fae prince had killed her, but she’d died with a smile on her face.
After I learned the story, I began laying flowers on her unmarked grave every time I visited.
My mother had told me where to find it since she’d never been fond of her eldest brother.
“Do you really want to anger me, boy?” my uncle asked, his careful facade starting to slip as his anger rose. “The last time we fought, you only survived because the king interfered.”
He wasn’t entirely wrong on that account, though the duel had been close with Radan in poor shape as well by the end.
We were almost evenly matched at the time, but he’d had slightly more power and a lot more experience.
His father stopped him from killing me because I was one of several in line to the Karganoth throne.
Bogdan—my cousin who guarded Jolloure Island—his sister, and my twin sister, were also in line, but the king still hadn’t decided at that time who would become the next heir.
The last time I saw Radan was fifteen years ago, when the king summoned me to the royal palace in Karganoth. My mother had made it clear I must go, or there would be dire consequences. She’d also warned it would be dangerous.
The king spoke to me at length and made me choose between the dark elves and the light.
If I’d decided to stay, I could have begun preparations and training to become heir because my grandfather believed I had the most power and ruthlessness.
I’d told them “no” in less than polite terms that involved shoving crowns into tight places, and that was when my uncle attacked.
“It won’t be as easy to defeat me now,” I said, loosening my shoulders.
“Perhaps.” His gaze shifted to the soldiers behind me. “Or perhaps not. Do you truly think you can stop me from killing them first?”
I cocked my head and gave my uncle a wicked grin. “Do you think you can get through me to reach them?”
“Someone is rather confident despite not having his wife here to blow his enemies into the sea,” Radan said, taking a step closer. He stood twenty feet from me now.
Rage simmered inside me at his audacity to mention Aella, even if it wasn’t surprising that he knew of her.
Survivors would have seen her on the cliff five nights ago during the battle at Radoumar.
I’d begun spreading the word about our marriage soon after that.
Anyone with a spy in Porrine would have caught wind of it and pieced it together.
I knew that, but I didn’t like the idea of my uncle thinking about my wife or her powers.
“Does she frighten you?” I asked, keeping my voice calm. “Because I assure you, you’ll find me even more difficult to defeat—or do you still prefer easy prey?”
Radan’s eyes flashed. “You’re going to regret your words, nephew.”
He yanked a dagger from its sheath and slashed it across his arm deeply enough for his blood to spill to the ground before the skin began knitting back together.
I cursed inwardly as he muttered a short oath, and power crackled in the air.
My uncle wasn’t taking any chances with me today.
I had reminded him how close it came to him losing last time.
What he’d just done was where the dark and light elves diverged—blood magic. He’d given himself over to a power that would all but consume him, rendering him colder and more ruthless than before. A god fueled his strength now.
Only one of them had any sort of name I knew about, and he was known as the “God of Wrath.” It wasn’t his actual title, but it was how we referred to him, and he encouraged the practice.
Long ago, he’d made a deal with the most ruthless elves.
They could use blood magic in his name for magnified power, and many had accepted after a series of tests and rituals they had to pass first.
It was at this time that their ears turned black as a sign of their devout worship of him. Their descendants inherited the physical trait, but we still had to undergo similar trials to gain full access to the god’s power. Those brutal rites ran every winter during my youth.
My mother’s family ensured that my sister and I followed the same steps, making it part of the wedding bargain when she married my light elf father as part of a truce that lasted until my mid-twenties.
Our other option was death because they didn’t tolerate weakness in Karganoth, so we’d done what we must to survive.
My uncle flung his hands outward. The brute force of his telekinetic attack struck me like a high-speed boulder, and though I braced myself to fight it, the waves of his power kept coming.
Each pulse hit more relentlessly than the last, until my skin stretched taut and my muscles trembled from the effort of resisting.
The immense pressure on my eyes dimmed my vision.
With a shout of frustration, I lost the fight and flew through the air until I crashed into the side of an inn.
My body hit the wall so hard that I smashed straight through the stones, landing next to a dead leprechaun whose sightless eyes stared at me.
He’d likely been dead for hours, and I had no desire to join him in that state. I needed to get up quickly.
Pain radiated throughout my back, and shards of broken stone cut through my skin.
I gritted my teeth as I rose to my feet and stumbled through the rubble, reminding myself I’d suffered far worse.
A thick cloud of dust obscured my view until I made it back onto the street.
I focused all my attention on my uncle’s head.
If I wanted to defeat him, I needed to concentrate on where I could hurt him the most.
Radan’s face twisted in pain as I put pressure on his skull, squeezing it tighter.
If he’d been anyone else, it would have exploded like a rockmelon already, but he had considerable power to fight it.
I pushed harder, pleased as blood began leaking from his eyes, ears, and nose.
He’d reveled in making me miserable while I was growing up. It was easy to have no mercy for him.
“Ahhh,” he screamed, gripping his head.
I pushed harder, sure that I almost had him, but then he calmed and dropped his arms to his sides. My powers were at their limit. He had the God of Wrath’s magic to boost him, though.
I didn’t see the dagger until it was too late, barely having time to dodge before it embedded just above my hip. Sharp pain shot through me. My uncle could always throw knives with impressive speed and skill. If I hadn’t injured his eyes, it would have struck my heart.