Then she steeled her nerves and left the room, heading down corridors and hallways lined with guards until she reached the entryway to the throne room. There, she paused and listened. Footsteps made their way toward the massive double doors in front of which she stood.
She recognized the strides. One was her father’s, confident and slow. The others were his advisors. There were three men in the room. Zeta waited off to the side as the doors opened.
Oberon’s gaze fell on his daughter. “Zeta,” he addressed her. His tone was cold and his lips were tight. Clearly, he was still upset about what had transpired between her and Raven Grey.
Little does he know, Zeta thought.
Under normal circumstances, her father could have pulled those very thoughts from her mind without much effort. Lord Oberon was a very powerful man, and almost nothing remained hidden from him for long.
However, the liquid in the vial that Zeta had just emptied and absorbed was a multi-purpose brew. It not only disguised the murder weapon – it disguised the murderer.
“Father,” she returned. But in her voice, she allowed a touch of remorse. Her eyes, she widened a bit more than usual. Her practiced expression was just so. And, in the end it worked. Oberon’s features softened and the hardness in his eyes leaked slightly away. “Might I have a few minutes of your time?” she asked.
The goal was to make him believe she wanted to come clean, to apologize, and to play nice. No matter how much distance had been put between them over the years, Zeta knew well that this approach would work. Because, after all was done and said, every daughter was her father’s daughter. Every girl was daddy’s girl.
Oberon hesitated only a moment. “Of course,” he replied coolly, but she could see the emotion flicker across his blue e yes. He nodded toward his advisors, who bowed low and left the receiving room. Oberon stayed where he was and gestured back toward the massive throne room behind them. “After you.”
Zeta entered the room and heard Oberon close the doors. She didn’t stop until she’d reached the ornate crystal and marble table upon which stood various decanters of spirits and wine. Zeta’s favorite was rather biased. Elven wine possessed the unique ability to mimic the taste, texture and temperature of whatever drink its imbiber desired. She rather saw no use for the other liquids on the table top.
Without trying to hide anything from her father, Zeta took a clean, crystal goblet from the platinum serving tray on one side, picked up the bottle of elven wine, and turned to face Lord Oberon once more. She poured some of the wine into the goblet and took a drink. He watched her in silence.
When she’d finished making a show of it, she sighed softly and began her act. “Father, I’ll get right to it.” Honesty was the best cover for a lie. “I despise the way responsibility and privilege is passed from father to son in the families of our race. And this anger I harbor has admittedly caused me to make several rash decisions over the course of my life.”
Oberon lifted his chin a little and blinked. He was listening.
She poured a bit more of the wine into the goblet, set the wine bottle back down on the tray, and now slowly made her way toward her father with the refreshed glass. “I want to apologize for that behavior,” she said now as she closed the distance between them. “I mean no disrespect to you or to Astriel in particular.” So much went unsaid at the end of that sentence, the silence was filled with the virtual sound of unaired screams.
Zeta stopped before him and held the glass up. “Truce?”
Oberon waited a long moment. “You should be offering that to your brother,” he said softly.
Tell me about it, she thought wryly. “There’s enough for everyone,” she said, shrugging lightly as the king took the goblet anyway. It was ungentlemanly to leave a woman’s offered gift for long, and he had taught them nothing if he hadn’t taught his children gentility. “And anyway, I don’t know where Astriel is,” Zeta added.
Oberon raised the glass to his lips.
“He’s right here,” came a third voice.
Oberon hesitated, the glass poised at his lips as both he and his daughter turned toward the chamber’s massive double doors.
Zeta’s heart pounded out a new rhythm as Lord Astriel’s gaze landed on her, a blue brand of accusation despite the calm charisma of his handsome face. He smiled a small, undeniably cruel smile and entered the room to the sound of his boots on the polished marble. It was a hollow sound, like doom. “Did I miss something?” he asked, his smooth voice laced with sweetened acid.
“Your sister has something to say to you,” Lord Oberon said, turning to face his son.
Zeta bristled as she’d never bristled before. While it was true that both her father and her brother would believe they had good cause to be upset with her, Zeta simply couldn’t stand the denigrating manner in which they both regarded her.
“No,” she said, smiling a tight smile. “I don’t.” She cocked her head to one side, and waved her hand. She could have walked to the table to retrieve a second glass, but she was feeling too impatient for it just then, so she used magic instead.
A second crystal goblet appeared in one of Zeta’s hands, and the bottle of elven wine she’d already poured from appeared in the other. “But I’ll pour you a drink, Astriel,” she said flippantly. Half of her wished she’d taken two potions from Darken instead of one. “After all, you look as if you could use it. Woman problems?”
Astriel’s eyes flashed, but Zeta felt a strum of uneasiness when his perfect lips only turned up more. “All kinds,” he said, his tone deep and teasing. Zeta felt trapped in his blue gaze.
He knows something, she thought.
And then she handed the drink to him. He looked down at the glass, glanced at the one in his father’s hand, and then turned back to face his sister. “I accept,” he said, taking the goblet from her fingers. “Will you be joining us?”
“She’s already had hers,” said Oberon, who lifted his glass for a toast.
Astriel gave Zeta a horribly knowing look. Then he raised his own glass, nodded respectfully at his father, and brought the goblet to his lips. Zeta’s entire life passed before her eyes. It was said that such a thing happened to a mortal when he or she was about to die. But for Zeta, for some reason, it happened just then.
And for the length of that life, it happened far too quickly, as if the scenes of her existence lacked substance and lay paper thin on the shelves of her mind.
But she pushed this from her thoughts as her father once more lifted his own glass to his lips.
A murderer always watches her victims die. It was something Darken had said, in passing perhaps, and now she understood because she found her gaze riveted on her father, her eyes wide, her breath caught. She held it there, unable to move as Oberon took a drink of the wine.
He swallowed.
It is done, she thought.
Oberon lowered his glass….
“Farewell, father,” said Astriel, as the prince turned to face the king. Oberon’s gaze met that of his son’s, and very slowly, his lips curled up in an identical, knowing, and altogether cruel smile. Like father, like son.
Zeta frowned, her eyes growing even wider.
“Take care of your mother,” said Oberon.
And then, without a single further word or a waste of time or energy, Oberon closed his eyes – and dissipated into the same black smoke that had lifted from Zeta’s potion. After a few seconds, the smoke thinned and drifted away until there was nothing left of the Fae king but the faint scent of black magic and an echo of his final words.
Astriel turned to his sister.
She looked up at him, feeling her entire world tilt on its axis. “You knew,” she whispered. It was all she had strength for through the weight of her shock.
Yes, said Astriel, speaking directly into her mind in a fashion that he’d never been capable of before now.
Now, she thought. Now he can do it because he’s the king.
It all made perfect sense su
ddenly. Lord Oberon had wanted to die. He’d been vying for the position of Death God. Without even realizing it, Zeta had just granted his wish – and in the process, cleared the way for her brother to claim the throne.
Astriel broke eye contact to glance at the double doors to the throne room. They opened almost at once and four guards entered the room to bow low. “Arrest the princess,” he commanded softly. “She’s to be tried for murdering the former king.”
“You’re too late, Astriel,” Zeta countered, fury heating her eyes in her face. “Drake is now king of Nisse, and Raven will almost surely be joining him there. She’ll be queen of all of Abaddon –” She broke off as the guards flanked her and two of them took her arms in their hands. She shot them deadly looks and turned back to her brother. “She will have war with our kingdom for this.”
Something untold flashed in the depths of the new king’s blue, blue eyes. “If only it were that simple,” he told her as the guards began to move her out of the room. She shot daggers at him over her shoulder and he repeated, “If only anything were as simple as war.”
*****
Astriel watched the guards haul his sister away, and absently, his fingers brushed a place on the shirt over his chest. A familiar pang shot through his skin. He looked down, recalling what was beneath the shirt. Four long, thin scars graced his chest where Raven Grey had carved into him a month earlier. These scars would remain with him forever.
Raven, on the other hand, had once more disappeared from the Terran realm. However, she had also disappeared from Abaddon. Zeta had been right about Drake’s ascension. But she’d been wrong about Raven.
Astriel frowned. He turned toward the space where his father had been standing only seconds before. The air was filled with a dwindling number of miniscule particles of dust. It was something normally not seen in Eidolon. The motes turned and twisted and caught the light as they gradually disappeared. Distractedly, Astriel raised his hand and slowly waved it through the sparkling air.
It felt warm. It felt important.
“Farewell,” he repeated, this time in a whisper. Zeta would believe that their father had gone to contest for the position of Death God. But Astriel knew that Lord Asmodeus had already claimed it. Lord Oberon’s essence would go somewhere else. No one could tell where.
It had been a cruel thing for Astriel to do. He’d allowed his sister to murder the their father. In that respect, it was no different than if he’d killed Oberon himself.
Things were changing on the Terran realm. Astriel had developed a hard streak, it would seem. He was a different man now than he’d been that morning. Two kingdoms had claimed new sovereigns in the space of the same few minutes. Drake of Tanith now ruled not only Nisse, but Phlegathos, and occupied the most powerful throne in perhaps any realm. Astriel was lord of the Fae – and the Hunt. A powerful and important Abaddonian princess had completely vanished. And the world had seen the ascension of a new god.
Astriel had no idea what the future held. He had no idea what the sun would rise over in the morning. And he had no idea what to do next.
But whatever it was, he would do it as King of the Fae.
Epilogue
A hundred realms and another dimension away….
For eons, the land of Nisse had existed as a scar of burned ground, angry air, and all-consuming fire. The clouds were choked with ash, heavy and black and dry as a bone. The chasms and canyons breathed flames that leapt to the skies, and the sound of hopelessness crackled.
But tonight, as its new king claimed his throne, sat back in his ruby power, and looked out over the realm with stark red eyes, Nisse saw something different.
For the first time in their existence, the thunderheads over Nisse carried more than the burned remnants of what their lightning had set ablaze. For once, the parched land looked up to the heavens – to feel raindrops on its face.
The heavy clouds wept, their deep black depths releasing an unprecedented warm and wet storm upon all of the ninth circle. The land below drank. Devils stopped and stared upward. The damned exhaled.
And the Dark Lord on his red throne closed his eyes.
Raven….
Stay tuned for book three in the Chosen Soul series, release date to be determined….
Please read on for an excerpt from Always Angel, the introductory novella to the Lost Angels series by Heather Killough-Walden….
It actually hurt when the little girl landed. Angel could feel the impact as if she’d suffered the fall herself. It was always like that for her. If she tried hard enough, concentrated deeply enough, she could sometimes pull away from the pain, separate herself from the suffering. But not always. Especially with children.
It was something about their innocence, the fact that they weren’t expecting it, and the fact that they couldn’t comprehend it that made their pain so much worse. But Angel gritted her straight white teeth, swallowed hard, and forced the discomfort to a dark corner of her consciousness. It wasn’t as easy as it should have been. She was distracted.
As the little girl who had fallen rolled to a stop, a second female child dismounted gracefully from the swing upon which she’d been seated. She was a beautiful girl, her skin porcelain, her features perfect and fine, her hair raven-dark and shimmering blue in the sunlight. Angel watched as this second girl ran to meet up with the first child and then kneeled beside her. Without a word, she placed her small hands upon the fallen girl’s chest. A second later, a bright white light began to emanate from beneath her palms.
And this was why Angel was here. But she wasn’t alone. There were others there watching the children. Two others – two men.
The Adarian was a bit of a surprise. Their kind had more or less laid low for centuries, having given up in their battles against the other supernatural creatures on Earth. The tall, strong archangels had turned in upon themselves and, for the most part, disappeared, leaving mortals and immortals alike to their own fates.
And this particular Adarian was the most impressive of the bunch. He wasn’t only an ancient and powerful soldier, long since forgotten by the powers that had created him. He was the leader of the Adarians – the Adarian general. Abraxos.
He watched the little girl from where he stood in the shadows between two buildings across the street from the park. His keen blue-eyed gaze missed nothing. Angel knew that he was well aware of who the black-haired girl was.
She was Eleanore Granger, an archess. She was the first of four. And she was still a child.
However, despite her tender age, she was both powerful and priceless. A fact she proceeded to prove when the light beneath her palms spread until it engulfed the fallen child’s unmoving body. A few moments later, the light once more disappeared and little Eleanore rocked back on her heels, clearly spent. Her hair hung around her lovely face, wisps of it moving with every soft exhale.
Beside her, the fallen girl shifted where she’d landed in the dirt. After opening her eyes and looking around, she sat up. A quiet exchange passed between the two children. Eleanore Granger shook her head. The little girl who had been mortally injured felt her cheek with dusty fingers and then smiled. Her laughter drifted across the dried grass and dirt of the playground to where Angel stood beneath a willow tree near the parking lot.
From where he had been watching in the shadows, the Adarian general smiled as well. Angel watched as he then turned toward the darkness behind him and slipped into it, vanishing from sight.
Angel let him go. She was under no misconceptions that Abraxos intended to pursue the archess. As a child, Eleanore wasn’t nearly as powerful as she would be once her powers had been given a chance to grow, so most likely he would be back later – in the years to come – to make his move. The archess had something he desperately wanted. In fact, she had just demonstrated it in healing her young friend. That healing power was something Abraxos had desired for a long time. Angel was also well aware of the fact that the Adarian general was strong enough, powerful enough, and resourcef
ul enough that there was a good chance he might succeed in whatever plan he hatched between now and then. However, Angel didn’t intend to try and stop him.
She couldn’t – for so many reasons. And, at that very moment, she had more immediate fish to fry.
The Adarian hadn’t been the only one watching Eleanore heal her playmate. Angel could feel the second creature’s essence like a kind of thick, sluggish slime in the air. She wondered whether the Adarian had noticed it as well. Probably not. He’d been rapt with Eleanore, caught in the pull of her like a moth to a flame.
The Icaran had more than likely gone utterly unnoticed by Abraxos. But not by Angel.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she whispered into the breeze, her eyes scanning the sky and tree tops for any physical sign of the supernatural creature. Icarans were notorious for being found lurking, slinking and sulking anywhere that magic was being used. The fresher the magic, the newer the user, the hungrier and more eager the Icaran. Also known simply and rather derogatorily as Leeches, Icarans fed off of magic, absorbing the essence of a magical being to the point of death – either the victim’s death or the Icaran’s. A Leech often couldn’t prevent itself from continuing to feed, caught in the frenzy of orgasmic pleasure the magic afforded, until finally he exploded.
It was never a pretty sight. Luckily, they were relatively incorporeal creatures, existing on the outskirts of human dimension, and when they went pop, the mess they left behind went unnoticed by all but those with supernatural abilities of their own.
Angel went still as the air around her shifted and something unpleasant brushed the edges of her consciousness. The Icaran had been closer than she’d thought.
Drake of Tanith (Chosen Soul) Page 21
