THE ROYAL TRIALS: HEIR

by James Tate

A captain's influence only extended so far, though, and several of his men cracked under the fear of reprisal. A handful of them drew their weapons and started toward Savannah and me—only to find themselves at blade point themselves.

  "Treason!" Titus shrieked, looking a bit like his head might explode. "Dirty, scheming treachery! How dare you bring soldiers into my court?" His glare and accusations were aimed at Prince Heruko and General Kaiten, who just grinned back with malice.

  "Your court?" Heruko replied with heavy sarcasm. "That's funny. I see only one ruler of Teich here, and she was the one who invited us." He gave a respectful nod in my direction as he and Kaiten came to stand near me. Sagen followed close behind, showing her allegiance to my crown.

  "This is…" Titus spluttered, his panicked gaze shooting around the room seeking supporters. But without Lord Taipanus, he was a man alone. Not even his wife, the duplicitous Filamina, was jumping to his defense. "This is a declaration of war! King Aiko would never declare war on Teich; it would be madness! Suicide. We control the Seven Kingdoms and all the magic that remains!"

  Another man, a handsome man with perfectly combed chestnut hair and a princely crown, cleared his throat. "Do you, though? Because all we've seen is the steady decline of that magic, which Teich is supposed to nurture and support."

  "Niklaus, my nephew, don't you dare presume to challenge me in my own court," Titus snarled, clutching a hand to a small pendant clipped to his breast. At his words, I saw the familial resemblance and placed the new speaker as Crown Prince Niklaus of Verrater—eldest son to Titus's brother, King Gregoric. Even with my severe lack of knowledge on court politics, I knew there was no love lost between Titus and the monarch of Verrater.

  This had to be what Zan and Ty had been working on all week—gathering our mysterious supporters.

  Prince Niklaus looked around him with fake confusion. "Funny, I don't see your court here, Uncle. All I see is a lazy old man sitting on a stolen throne."

  I could hardly believe Titus's face was capable of turning any more red, but the day had been full of surprises and this was no exception. Although, to be fair, it was heading more into an angry shade of purple, and the vein in his head pulsed like it was preparing to burst.

  His scathing glare shot back to me as I stood there in the middle of the ballroom feeling a bit stunned at the supporters who'd just spoken up on my behalf. I'd known that the guys had been ensuring the overall vibe of the room would be in my favor, but I certainly hadn't expected such high-profile guests to speak out in what could—should the support sway in Titus's direction—be tantamount to declarations of war.

  "You," he accused, his voice dripping acid and venom. "You've ruined everything. Years of work." He didn't elaborate any further, just grasped his amulet tighter and raised his other hand in my direction to use whatever stolen magic he must have stored in that necklace.

  I braced myself, wrapping an invisible wall of my own pure power around my body as though I'd been wielding magic my entire life.

  It wasn't needed, though.

  Before he could cast any of his vile, corrupted magic in my direction, a glistening blade protruded from the middle of his chest, splattering blood all over the pearly marble floor at his feet.

  Several women in the crowd cried out in horror and the noises of many voices grew louder, but I only had eyes for Titus as he looked down in disbelief.

  Sure enough, three inches of steel stuck out of his chest, gleaming under the lights and slick with his blood. There was barely enough time for his gaze to return to mine, horrified and accusing, before he dropped to the ground in a heap.

  As he fell, his body slid off the blade with a sickening sound, turning my stomach even as the false king’s killer held his weapon up and nodded to me.

  "Master Bloodeye?" I exclaimed in utter shock. "What— How—?"

  "He had it coming," the crime lord replied before he spit on Titus's bleeding corpse, then cleaned off his bloody blade on the dead man’s cloak.

  A shrill laugh echoed through the ballroom, and all eyes turned to the woman who had been all too quiet throughout this coup. Queen Filamina. Traitor. Murderer.

  "Oh dear," she chuckled, her shoulders shaking as she looked down on the body of her husband. "That was wildly poetic. He died just the same way as Ophelia did. With a blade through the back." Her gaze lifted, meeting mine with a cruel delight. "She never even saw it coming. Murdered by her best friend. Poor, poor Ophelia." Laughter continued to bubble out of her, giving her whole appearance a twisted, deranged edge.

  "Mother, how could you?" Lee demanded from where Titus had stationed his sons to the left of the thrones. They'd stayed quiet up until now, watching and waiting while all the pieces of our plan clicked into place. But Filamina being the mastermind behind Ophelia's murder wasn't something any of us had seen coming.

  Filamina curled her lip at her youngest son, and the look in her eyes held no love. "That bitch got what she deserved." She stood from her throne, taking a few steps toward me, and I caught the faintest hint of a glow over her skin as she moved. "She needed to be punished."

  She wove closer to me, and my hands balled into fists at my sides. Fury rose up inside me as Filamina spoke ill of my mother—a woman I’d never had the chance to know.

  "Why?" I demanded, anger and pain both choking me and spilling out with my words. "Why would you do such a thing? She was your friend."

  Filamina's grin widened into something feral. "No, she was her friend. Ophelia was just too consumed with her pointless quest to avoid marriage to see what was right in front of her—that her friend was gone and I was in charge."

  Confusion stunned me for a moment, but it didn't last long.

  "I knew it!" a man exclaimed from the crowd. "I knew it was you. You were too damn quiet those years before Ophelia died. What happened, Nache? You possessed her friend, then got stuck?"

  Filamina's sharp eyes darted to the side, finding the speaker before I did. "I knew you'd show up sooner or later, husband."

  Holy. Shit.

  If I was following this correctly—and it was a whole crazy mindfuck, so maybe I wasn't—this wasn't Filamina at all, but the vengeful goddess herself inside a human form. Since when could gods possess human bodies? Why did no one know this was a thing?

  Which meant the man who'd just spoken...

  "Sal?" I whispered, eyeing the tall, dark-haired man who'd just stepped into view. He peered back at me with blue eyes that seemed so familiar. But of course they were. They were the same eyes that I saw every time I looked in a mirror.

  Sal—King of the Gods and Fate—gave me a crooked, apologetic smile. "Sorry it took me so long to get back here. I went looking for my devious ex-wife and got trapped when the pass-through collapsed."

  I sucked in a breath, the pieces clicking together in my head. When Aana had tried to drown me, she’d mentioned the barrier between realms being lifted. That must have meant that when Ophelia died and the magic of our land imploded, any gods on our side, such as Barmzig and Nache—in Filamina's body—became trapped here while everyone else had been locked in their own realm.

  "Darling," Filamina—or Nache—cooed, sidling up to Sal and patting his chest affectionately, "I've missed you so much. We've been fighting too long. How about we destroy all these pathetic mortals and go back to the way things were?"

  The way she spoke she might as well have been proposing to crack open a bottle of Scarletberry wine. Not planning a massacre.

  "General Kaiten," I spoke softly, not wanting to draw the gods’ attention too soon. "Start getting people out of here. This could turn ugly."

  The dark-eyed general gave me a sharp nod and melted back into the crowd to whisper with several of his men. Beside the thrones and Titus's dead body, Ty seemed to have had a similar idea. He and Captain Jefferson spoke quietly while he gestured to the exits, undoubtedly ordering his own men to do the same: clear all the guests out before they became collateral damage in a battle between gods.

/>   "This took an unexpected turn," Sagen commented from beside me with a blade by her side in each hand, ready to fight anyone who looked at us twice. "Who knew that a crazy goddess had been lurking in Filamina's body all these years?"

  "Sage," Kaiten said, returning to us and placing a hand on her arm. "You need to leave."

  My friend snorted a laugh. "In your dreams, Kai."

  "Don't be a moron, Sage," Prince Heruko snarled. "Get out of here before you get killed."

  Clearly Sagen's older stepbrother had zero idea how to handle her because all his comment did was enrage her, making her more stubborn.

  "Run away and save your own skin, Hero. I owe Zarina a life debt and won't leave her side until it's repaid." She delivered the words with a smug smile, but they clearly meant more than I realized, if the shocked gasp from both men were any indication.

  Any further arguments were cut short, though, when Filamina was hurtled through the freaking air past us and landed with a dramatic crash on a table of drinks and canapés.

  An enraged shriek rose from the possessed queen as she picked herself up. Wine and bits of food dripped from her clothes, and the side of her hair was full of thick, white cream from a cake.

  She raised her hands and shot bolts of pure power back at her estranged husband, but he just swatted them aside, squashing them like bothersome insects.

  "Hah!" He laughed. "Is that the best you've got? Of course it is. Otherwise you wouldn't have cooked up this plan to siphon off the natural magic of this realm."

  Nache was past words, balling up her fists and drawing together all the magic she had—which wasn't much. Even I could see that. Her goddess powers must have been so greatly diminished when she’d possessed Filamina that she'd lost the ability to un-possess her. She'd clearly retained enough that she’d passed some power along to her sons—children that Titus had probably demanded of his young and beautiful wife—but not enough that she could do much herself.

  "Luckily she isn't alone," another voice added, and that evil bitch Aana stepped out of the mayhem of hundreds of party guests scattering and scrambling to exit the ballroom. "Sister, I stand with you."

  Aana brought her own hands up, her palms glowing as she gathered a whole lot more magic than Nache had wielded, then shot it not at Sal, but at me.

  "Shit!" I squeaked, throwing up a defensive shield. At the same time, Sagen leapt in front of me with her knives raised and all three of my princes screamed in horror. They were all too far away to do anything more, trying to keep the guests calm as they hurried them out of the room and out of the gods’ warpath.

  The partygoers didn’t clear out quick enough, though.

  The power from Aana's attack deflected off the shield I'd created, but my inexperience showed when instead of being safely redirected like Sal had done to Nache's shots, my shield caused Aana's power to ricochet straight into a portly man in a dinner suit.

  He was killed instantly as a huge hole ripped through the center of him. Chunks of gore splattered all the screaming guests behind where he'd stood.

  "Brutal," Aana commented with a snicker, and my stomach rolled with bile.

  These gods were fucking monsters.

  A prickle ran down my spine, and my mother’s mark burned with warning on my back. This was all about to get so much worse before it got better... unless I could do something to stop it. Fast.

  In the wake of the innocent bystander being blasted, the rest of the guests cleared out of the hall a whole lot faster. Within moments, the only people who remained were those invested in this fight.

  Nache—covered in food—and Aana with her knee-length hair billowing and her red lips curved in a wide smile.

  Sal, the debonair, poised King of the Gods.

  Sagen, who refused to leave my side, as well as Kaiten and Heruko, who clearly refused to leave hers.

  My princes, Zan, Ty and Lee, who moved closer to me as though they could provide a physical barrier to keep me from harm.

  But there were several more who stayed, too, and fear pooled in my stomach as I looked around. There was Barmzig, who I was pleased to see, but there was also Rayventh and Gewalt, who'd played with us in the meadow outside Ironforge. Whose side were they on?

  Two other men that I didn't recognize had stayed, also, and based on the glow to their skin, I'd assume they, too, were gods.

  "Well, isn't this quite the reunion," Sal murmured, looking around at everyone himself. He held a palm up, shimmering with power, and it seemed to be acting as a threat to keep Aana or Nache or whoever else was on their side from making any other hasty moves. "Reichan." He nodded to the first man I didn't recognize, who had silver-platinum hair and practically dripped precious stones. "Zryn, my friend. I had no idea you were over on this side, too."

  The second man, with obsidian dark skin and mercury eyes, grinned, showing sharp white teeth. "I wasn't. But when the pass-through reopened, I thought I'd come check what was new. Glad I did." His liquid metal eyes darted to Nache and Aana, and he clicked his tongue. "Bad girls. You should be careful, lest you catch the attention of Seth."

  Aana sneered, and Nache barked a laugh. "Seth is nothing but a boogeyman," Nache replied, folding her arms over her chest with confidence.

  "Who's Seth?" I asked, and all eyes turned on me. "Ah crap, that was meant to be in my head," I muttered under my breath, but it was too late.

  Sal gave me a pitying smile. "No one you ever want to meet, daughter."

  Nache snorted an ugly sound. "Seth would have struck you down the moment you were conceived, little abomination."

  "I'm confused," I admitted, but no one really cared. Our plans to remove Titus from power had devolved into a eons old fight among the gods, and if I didn't act quickly, my newly healed kingdom would suffer in the crossfire.

  Aana and Rayventh traded some catty remarks, making me think that despite her meddling with Ty and I in the meadow, the goddess of love was Team Sal.

  Steeling myself, I took a deep breath.

  "You've got this," Zan murmured, ghosting a light touch over my lower back.

  Ty nodded sharply, a movement I caught from the corner of my eye. "We have your back."

  Lee shot me a quick, encouraging smile, silently echoing his brothers’ words and making me feel more at ease with what needed to be done.

  "Stop it!" I pushed a boom of magic into my voice as I issued the command, then shivered as it reverberated through the room.

  All of the gods turned to peer at me with varying degrees of curiosity, but none looked particularly inclined to follow my orders.

  "Stay out of this," Aana—that bitch—sneered at me. "You're nothing but a byproduct of an old disagreement. This has nothing to do with you."

  She may as well have just told me hush while mother and father are talking.

  "This has everything to do with me," I disagreed, my skin rippling as pure magic seeped out of my crown and into my skin, boosting what was already there. "This is my land. My home. Not yours. If the lot of you have a battle to fight, you need to take it elsewhere because I won't tolerate a single day more of your damaging influence." I speared Nache with an accusing glare, aware now that she was responsible for all of it. Not just my mother’s murder, but all the abuse and injury dealt out to our realm’s magic. It was all because of her.

  "What do you plan to do about it, child?" Nache snickered, curling her lip at me in a severely condescending way. "We're gods to your people. You're just a girl in a crown, playing with magic she doesn't understand."

  Well. We'd see about that.

  Reaching back inside myself, I grasped a firm hold of that glowing power at my core, and with the pure intuition that had helped me to kill Taipanus and to shield myself from Aana's attack, I whipped the power out at every godly being in the room.

  A deafening crack sounded, forcing everyone to cover their ears, followed by a blinding light, which took its sweet time fading.

  But when it did...

  "How did you... Th
is isn't possible!" a blonde woman exclaimed, patting herself all over with a startled expression. At her feet, the lifeless form of Queen Filamina lay crumpled, like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. "You can't do this! You don't have the power!"

  Unnoticed by the raging goddess, Lee rushed forward to check on his mother—a woman he’d never really known—and dragged her away from all the conflict. Judging by how he pressed a gentle hand to her forehead, I suspected she might not be as dead as she looked.

  "Apparently she does," Barmzig, one of the few remaining gods in the room, replied to Nache’s outrage, then gave me a small smile. "I think I'll take my leave before your favor wears off." She shot me a wink, then disappeared in a flash.

  I smiled at her comment. It hadn't been a conscious decision to exclude her from my attack, but deep down I must have known she wouldn’t be a threat if she remained here. Everyone else, though, I’d banished back to their own realm.

  And I’d succeed, with the exception of the two I simply wasn't strong enough to force against their wills. Nache and Sal. King and queen of the gods, the most powerful of their kind.

  My magic had been strong enough to rip Nache out of Filamina's body, though, which was what she was babbling about.

  Abruptly, before either Sal or I could act further, Nache's whole demeanor changed. Instead of shocked and outraged, she turned gloating.

  "However you did it, stupid girl, you made a mistake. By freeing me of that mortal flesh, you've restored me to my full powers." The goddess held both hands out to her sides, glowing as she gathered her magic in staggering quantities.

  "That's enough of that," a familiar, yet still terrifying voice snapped just moments before my scary, red-loving friend appeared and closed twin bands of metal around Nache's wrists—totally cutting her off from magic. "I've been looking for you for a long time, my dear." He tsked the queen of the gods like a naughty child, then shot me a sly grin. "I appreciate your help in drawing her out. This has been amusing."

  Nache's jaw flapped, and her face drained of all color as she stared down at the bands circling her wrists. "No. No, no, no, this can't be... you..." She stared in horror at the mysterious god who kept creeping around at the strangest times. "You're not real. You're a myth."