Текст книги "Horns of Wicked Ebony"

Автор книги: Lacey Lehotzky

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 43 страниц)

24

Xannirin’s loaded threat from dinner echoed louder than my footsteps against the stone staircase. Three levels down, I paused, hand scraping against the smooth bricks until I found the nicked one. I dug the heel of my palm into it, and with a groan, a nearby slab rolled to the side, revealing a hidden passageway.

The military academy held two premier residences, one in each of the rear towers. The Kral’s was much harder to access, and this was one of two routes that led to his quarters. The primary one was more known, while the one I entered served one purpose: escape in event of attack.

It was the quickest path from my room to Xannirin’s, and the fury burning inside me needed a release.

The door slid shut behind me, bathing the passage in darkness. I strode forward with utter confidence, counting my strides until I knew I neared the hidden switch to open the other side. The rough stone gave way to a smooth spot, and again I pressed, emerging from the narrow opening into another spiral staircase.

Through clenched teeth, I forced air into my lungs, trying to rein in the wrath clawing up my throat. The beast inside me begged for a chance to punish Xannirin for his behavior since his arrival. The fear I’d carried over how my cousins would react to these proposed changes morphed into something far more dangerous.

Heat licked up my spine and steeled it for the conversation ahead.

Each step I trudged upward dredged memories from centuries before, when the three of us had begun to take the necessary actions to bring Demon society to heel. To ensure that our vision was successfully executed. To ensure the survival of our race.

Had we made the right decisions along the way? We were certainly nowhere close to the end we’d had in mind when we set out.

At the top of the staircase, a heavy wooden door stood ajar. Low voices drifted beyond as I stared at it, rubbing the sides of my jaw.

“Does the mighty Halálhívó doubt himself?” Assyria entered my mind, her tone light and teasing. Yet I knew she worried for me. With our bond, everything was shared, and hiding my anxiety about this conversation had been difficult.

“Only the ability to restrain myself,” I replied, my fingers itching to close around Xannirin’s neck.

“Save that for our real enemies. For now, be the force for change you want to be,” she said, conviction threading her tone. The ferocity of it bolstered mine.

“I love you, Assyria. I’m not only doing this for you, but also because it is the right thing to do. You’ve shown me the true path.” And with that, I rolled my shoulders back and shoved my way inside.

Much like my own chambers, the Kral’s rooms were luxuriously appointed, with an expansive sitting area, thick desk, and views of the surrounding area. Currently, though, they only displayed the thick, dark clouds rolling in off the sea.

Kiira and Xannirin were seated on either side of a round table, both with a drink in hand. In front of the soldiers, none of the officers consumed alcohol since we led by example. But there was always liquor and wine around, especially when the Kral was in residence.

“Rokath,” Kiira greeted me warmly. She’d always been the peacekeeper between the three of us, but today she looked like a loaded crossbow. Her veil was gone, and her burgundy eyes hinted at restraint as they glinted in the candlelight. Long, lacquered nails curled around the bulbous end of a wine glass. The dark circles that had claimed the space under her eyes had all but vanished since I’d left Uzhhorod months prior, but the thinness that had worried me remained.

Xannirin, on the other hand, grunted and tossed back the last of what looked like a healthy measure of scale. Kiira sliced a look in his direction as she rose. I kissed her on either cheek before settling into a chair between them.

Another memory pushed to the front of my mind. Yet in that one, I was coated in the blood of the Angels from the Battle of Kraskiv, and Xannirin and Kiira’s attitudes were very much opposite.

“Did you force Rapp to see the healer again before you left him?” I asked her, since she’d accompanied him back to his temporary accommodation after our dinner.

“He fought me for a moment, then complained the entire time,” Kiira sighed, swirling the purple wine around in the glass. “Complained about how you babied him the entire trip too.”

Rain pelted the windows, the rhythmic patter an ominous backdrop to our conversation.

I snorted and pulled the bottle of scale toward me. Xannirin slid me a thick crystal glass without a word. My gaze lingered on him for a moment longer as I poured. “He did have a punctured lung.”

“And how exactly did that happen?” Xannirin finally snapped. He offered me ostensible anger now that we had no audience to judge him. I speared him with a hateful glare. For my entire life, Xannirin and I had been like brothers, and yet with the way he looked at me from across the table, I felt like anything but.

And how he’d treated my mate upon arriving? Fuck, even before that?

Unacceptable.

I pressed my drink to my lips and tipped it back. The alcohol burned my throat all the way to my belly. The pain was a welcome distraction from my thinning self-control.

“Do you want me to start at the end or at the beginning?” I wasn’t going to refuse them an explanation, not when it might smother whatever was sparking between us.

“Start at the beginning, please. I want to understand how all of this unfolded,” Kiira requested, her tone soft. She reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Your letter didn’t say much, and I want more detail, especially as it concerns Assyria.”

Thunder rumbled, momentarily stealing my attention. Past the window, three black birds swept, their caws slicing the air.

Shaking off the feeling of being watched, I recounted the events of the past few months. The rumors that had swept through the camp at Assyria’s presence. How she’d tried to run from me and been bitten by a cobra. How hard I’d fought the bond’s insistence to be near her. How I’d cared for her injury, taught her to scout, and begun showing her how to fight. How Rapp and I had split up to pin the Angels on all sides and force them to retreat. How I’d been winning handily, battle after battle, for weeks, until we reached a difficult piece of terrain.

Neither interrupted me as I recounted it all. Yet I slowed to a crawl when I finally came to the point in my story where I had to admit exactly why I’d lost all those soldiers. I hadn’t put it in my letter, simply that the Angels had beaten us badly, and that was why we needed to change the army rules to allow females to fight too.

The scale seared me again as I drank the last of it. I set the glass down with a heavy thud. Let the words land with the same force. “The Angels took Assyria.”

Kiira gasped, hand flying to her chest. Xannirin’s mouth flattened, and his fingers tightened over his drink. “How did they know about her?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute.”

Lightning flashed, illuminating the dark corners of the room. A moment later, thunder crashed. I waited until it ceased before continuing.

“They offered to parlay with us, so long as we met them on the salt flat unarmed. So we went, both armies facing off. I figured they would want my life for hers, which I could have easily gotten out of.” Rage rose like a tidal wave inside me as I recalled how they’d hurt Assyria. “As it turned out, the Padisa who ambushed my battalion a decade ago was one of the superior officers leading that section of the Angel army.”

“The one whose face you carved up?” Xannirin clarified. He was as well-versed as I was with that particular incident and that particular insect.

I nodded. “Instead of my life for hers, he wanted all my soldier’s lives for hers.”

More thunder boomed, shaking the room. But not nearly as hard as the muscles in Xannirin’s neck.

“What the fuck, Rokath?” Xannirin snarled, his lips curling back from his teeth. His pointed canines flashed. “Fifty thousand males? Just like that? After we had to conscript and risk the people turning on us?”

Xannirin surged upright and hurled his glass against the wall, shattering it. The tinkle of the shards hitting the floor filled the space between his angered breaths. He planted his hands on the table, attempting to tower over me and intimidate me like I’d seen him do so many times to the nobles who wouldn’t fall in line.

He didn’t scare me.

I stood, slowly, showing him that as much as he thought us equals, my power was greater than his. The tension in the room was thick enough to carve with a blade.

“She is my mate,” I growled, my tone laced with violence. The tips of my fingers dug into the table as I attempted to rein in the fury filling my veins.

“You didn’t even want her,” he sneered, rings flashing in the light as he fisted his hands.

His words stung like a well-timed slap. He was right and I hated myself for it. How many times had I wished I could turn back the clock and accept what the Fates had so generously given me?

Xannirin wouldn’t knock me off the path of this conversation so easily. I volleyed back with equal animosity, if not more, for how he continued to disrespect Assyria. “Well now I do. Now, I fucking love her, Xannirin. I couldn’t give her up for anything. Nor should I have to. The Fates wove us together for a reason.”

I’d scarcely finished speaking when Xannirin tossed his threat onto the table. “If that’s how you feel, she’ll be returning to Uzhhorod with us, where we can keep her safe since clearly you cannot. And I cannot have you sacrificing more males for your own selfish desires.”

My self control shattered. “Selfish desires? My selfish desires? Who do you think all of this is fucking for?” I took a menacing step around the table. The strike of my boot against the ground was louder than the storm outside.

Xannirin stood his ground and didn’t relent in his contempt. “If your focus is on her, you won’t win. You said so yourself before you left. It’s because of her that we’re losing. Again.”

“Watch your mouth,” I snarled, attempting to restrain myself from pummeling him into the ground. This discussion was going nowhere good with how he kept pushing me with Assyria.

“What happened to you, Rokath? Clearly sinking your cock into the cunt of your mate has made you weak and thrown you off your game.” Xannirin laughed, but it was a dry, jaded sound that scraped at the primal beast inside me.

Red coated my vision as I swung. Xannirin ducked to dodge the blow, but I was prepared for his counter. With my left hand, I uppercut, landing squarely on his jaw. The blow knocked him backward, and the air whooshed from his lungs as he thudded against the ground. I stalked forward and drove my heavy boot into his chest. From my thigh, I unsheathed a dagger and flipped it end over end, not caring which side I caught.

Xannirin coughed, his eyes widening. Lightning cracked again, highlighting his fear in sharp relief.

“Who the fuck do you think this Fates damned war is for?” I repeated my earlier question, pressing more of my weight down. Trust in our alliance had clouded my judgment too long. I needed to hear his true answer to confirm what I already suspected.

“The Demon race–” Xanirin started, but I cut him off with the force of my boot.

“Do not give me that horseshit, Xannirin.” Shadows unfurled from my fingertips, swirling around my arms in a violent frenzy. If he wouldn’t confess, I would make him. He’d always broken when army tactics had been used on us as younglings.

“I am your Kral,” Xannirin snarled, eyeing my magic like he too recalled our fathers’ abuse from this very room. “You will respect that, Rokath.”

“I’m not one of your precious nobles,” I spat. “You do not command me. You do not compel me.”

“Oh, but I do,” he snapped. “And if I say jump, you fucking jump. If I say we’re not having females in the fucking army, then we’re not having females in the fucking army.”

Too late, I noticed the dark tendrils gathered in his hands. With a jerk, he flung them at me, knocking me off balance. In seconds, he was on his feet, dipping into a fighting stance.

“Like you would know anything about winning a battle,” I bit out, sliding my foot back and tensing my muscles in anticipation of the fight.

“So what, I’m supposed to return to Uzhhorod lauding your new strategy after you lost fifty thousand soldiers? Oh, and that strategy now involves allowing females to volunteer for the cause? The noble houses will riot. They were already on edge before you left, and after this, they’ll mutiny. How am I supposed to spin this so I stay on the throne?” With each word, his face turned a deeper shade of red.

“Yes, because that’s all you care about, Xannirin. That’s all you’ve ever cared about.” Darkness expanded as I allowed myself to feel everything I’d smothered for so long. “All of this has always been for you. Your vision for ruling all of Keleti, inspired by your talks with monarchs from other worlds. Saving the Demon race was always the mask for your true ambitions, and you’ve sacrificed nothing to get it.”

A cold, furious expression slid over Xannirin’s face. Obsidian spilled on the floor as his own magic rose to meet mine.

“Stop it, both of you!” Kiira screeched, stepping between us. Without even looking, I flung onyx threads in her direction and pinned her to a plush chair. My entire focus was on my cousin, the Kral, who had sucked everything from me and deigned to tell me that I could not protect my mate.

“I am the Fates-given leader of all the Demons. Not you,” he boomed, ropes of pitch sweeping toward my feet. But he was sloppy from years of disuse, and I was fresh off the battlefield. Wielding my magic like whips, I snapped them away.

“Have you really come to believe all the stories we spun? When did our propaganda become your reality?” I demanded, my voice crackling with more energy than the storm outside. We’d crafted these stories to save the Demons. Not for his fucking ambition alone.

“There was never a question of its truth,” Xannirin snarled, twisting his fingers and enshrouding himself in onyx. “We were simply informing the populace of it. Me, the Fates-given leader. You, the Fates-given hero. Kiira, the Fates-chosen Seer. What else is our magic for if not for me to rule for millennia to come?” His words were smooth as glass, exactly how he talked circles around the nobles to compel their compliance.

Yet they also gave me pause. Because I realized then that the narrative had become part of my story too. But I distinctly remembered its origins, and while his words held a semblance of truth, I was still humble enough to admit I was fallible.

“Before we walked down this path, we decided we were equals. Or have you forgotten in all your years of living in luxury and peace?” I asked, the words bitter. My neck muscles bulged for how hard I forced restraint upon myself. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—let his mastery of cunning and manipulation distract me from the task at hand: fixing what we broke.

“Yet the people listen to me above all others,” he snapped back.

I was getting fucking tired of his delusion. Kiira and I had destroyed ourselves for his ambition, and he couldn’t see that. With a growl, I reminded him exactly how much power I wielded. “I control the fucking army. Do not press me, Xannirin. As much as I loathe the idea of ruling, I could kill you and take your throne within a second of making that decision. After all, look how easily I slaughtered our fathers.”

His teeth flashed, and he threw more magic at me. But I was fucking ready as years of resentment boiled to the surface. Dodging his attack, I leaped, catching him around the middle and sending us careening to the floor. We landed with a heavy thud, my dagger clattering away. I wasted no time in rearing back and cocking my fist. With an animalistic snarl, I slammed it down. At the last second, he whipped his head to the side, and I collided with the hard stone.

The pain didn’t even phase me. I struck again while Kiira screamed at me not to kill him. Xannirin grabbed my arm before I could bloody his lip further and rolled me off him. We squared off, shadows disappearing as we prepared to fight bare-knuckled.

“Assyria has shown me the ways we need to change,” I snapped at him. “That’s why she is essential. Because we were walking the wrong path.”

“Assyria is nothing more than a murderous fallen. She should have been burned for her crimes the moment you discovered them.” Xannirin swung, but I caught his fist and twisted his arm around his back, pinning him to my chest. He struggled for a moment before relenting. Otherwise, I would have had no qualms about tearing up his shoulder.

“Rokath, stop!” Kiira screeched, thrashing against my magic restraints. “Assyria is the best thing to happen to you. You deserve her. You deserve happiness. You are not alone in your grievances with Xannirin!”

Her last statement, more than any other, made me pause. The beast thrashing inside me, begging me to make Xannirin pay for claiming to be able to protect my mate better than me, for saying she should have been killed, still fought for me to continue.

Dragging in a breath, I smacked it like an errant soldier into submission. I tore my attention to my female cousin. “What did you say?”

“I resent Xannirin too,” she repeated, her lower lip trembling. A tear spilled over and clawed down her cheek. Xannirin attempted to shift in front of me, but I tightened my grip on his arm.

Kiira swiped at her eyes. “When I got your letter, or I should say, intercepted it, I felt relief like I’d never known. I felt like I could breathe again. Xannirin wasn’t the one who brought the females here without question. It was me.”

The air fled my lungs as I beheld my cousin. At the time, a hint of suspicion had curled in my gut when the only reply I received was a confirmation of their imminent departure. I’d been relieved, believing they both trusted my decision. Yet as the image of it appeared in my mind again, I realized the note was written in Kiira’s handwriting.

I snarled in Xannirin’s ear. “Is this true?”

Xannirin nodded, ruby spilling from his nose and onto his tunic. “That’s why they’re all priestesses. She didn’t even tell me until the day before she was set to leave.”

With their statements, composure slipped within my reach. My racing heart slowed and clarity returned to my thoughts. With a wave of my hand, I released the onyx binding Kiira to the chair.

Immediately, she rose, coming to my side. With gentle care, she wrapped her hands around my arm and tugged. Surrendering to her request, I eased off Xannirin.

He stepped away and spun, backing into a nearby couch for protection.

My attention never left him. “To win, we need females to fight too. We need them to help in other ways. They can help in other ways.”

“How will we control the people then?” Xannirin snapped, using the hem of his tunic to clean off the blood on his face. “With the females subservient, we only needed to convince the males.”

“I think we’ve got the populace well in hand,” Kiira said, crossing her arms and glaring at him. “The stories we spun have most believing that we’re essentially Gods who walk the earth. Those who do not, you can deal with as you always have. Rokath and I have done plenty of work to ensure we are venerated like the Fates themselves.”

“Aye,” I agreed, cracking my neck to relieve some tension. Xannirin didn’t move, and I sensed we were finally getting somewhere. “Not only that, but now we have Assyria too. Her magic is powerful and useful. It is because of her we rescued Banand.”

Xannirin sucked in a sharp breath. “He’s alive?”

“Yes, and we can use him, just as we can use other females, to turn the tide back in our favor once more. He insisted he remain at the front to help Trol rather than return here to recuperate. There are people who want to fight, Assyria included, because they believe in saving the Demons too. We are going to let them.”

The storm raged outside, rain pounding harder against the windows as if to further my point.

“Perhaps we should call it a night and meet again in the morning when we’ve all had time to think on what’s been said tonight,” Kiira suggested, her posture softening. “Tempers have run hot, and I know the two of you well enough to know neither of you will yield anything else until you’ve had time to calm down.”

A muscle feathered in my jaw as Xannirin and I glared at one another. She was, unfortunately, right.

“Besides, what we built over centuries will not tumble down in a single night. This will all take time. And we will do it,” Kiira said, offering Xannirin a look hot enough to burn.

Our cousin pressed his bloody lips together like he was attempting to refrain from disagreeing.

I gave him my back and poured myself another measure of scale. One shot, then another, seared my gut. Kiira joined me, downing the last of her wine.

“Where are you staying?” I asked her when Xannirin made no move to join us.

She shrugged. “I have my own room just below, but I figured I would call for a cot to be brought to Rapp’s, just in case he needed tending in the night.”

“He’s lucky to have a friend like you.” I dropped my voice and angled myself so Xannirin couldn’t overhear my next words. “As I am blessed by the Weaver to have a cousin like you.”

She offered me a soft smile. “And I you. We’ll convince him. Together.”

Squeezing my hands, she backed away and fetched her veil. After settling it and the circlet over her head, she paused. Then, she took them both off again and tucked them into a pocket in her dress. “Starting tomorrow, no more veils for me. Or any of the priestesses here. Assyria has already made her stance on it, and I will not allow her to receive the stares of everyone for it. The first step for females being seen as equal is to remove the very thing keeping us hidden.”

Silence lingered for a moment. Then, Xannirin blew out a long breath. “Whatever you wish, Kiira.”

“Exactly,” she said, her words harsher than the lightning arcing through the sky. “Now, I will retire for the evening as I know exactly how early that gong rings.”

“Good night,” Xannirin and I said simultaneously as she swept out of the room.

Then, the two of us were alone. After another shot of the spicy alcohol, I offered him a final threat. “You will treat Assyria as an equal to us, as you treat Rapp. No more attitude or threats like you offered her at dinner. Am I clear?”

“Abundantly,” he replied, though I didn’t miss the sarcasm in his tone. He shifted from foot to foot, and I waited for what he would say next. “I can’t imagine how you felt once you realized the Angels had her. It’s not a situation I would ever wish upon anyone, let alone the one person who has been by my side since we were younglings.”

His words dulled the edge of my anger toward him, but I didn’t trust that they weren’t carefully chosen to do just that. “Actions speak louder than words,” I reminded him. Then, I grabbed my shirt and left him standing in the middle of a storm of his own making.

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