by Meg Xuemei X
Rage burned in me, yet I put a cold mask in place.
The angels’ wings stretched high, a terrifying sight.
Their king, who indeed had a sadistic sense of humor, had selected only those of his soldiers who had massive, black wings to greet me, or more accurately, to intimidate me.
I wouldn’t give my enemies the satisfaction. I did not give those wings a second glance, and I treated the soldiers as non-existent. Angels were known to understand only arrogance and power.
I looked straight ahead, letting my peripheral sight pick up the rest of the details.
The long swords the angels held high suddenly came down over my head when I reached the first row of the soldiers. Were they going to behead me right here? My heart jerked violently in my rib cage, and fear rammed into me like a cold ice-pack.
My face drained of blood.
Fortunately, I’d prepared. I’d brushed the powder of rouge on my cheeks in case my face paled in a situation like this, or worse.
Roaring, my royal guards lunged forward with their swords. Lexa, my disguised lady-in-waiting, pushed me backwards. Souline, my true lady-in-waiting, threw her hands at the angels with a string of curses, but there was no offensive magic coming out of her. She was a healer.
I shrugged free of Lexa and raised a hand to stop my guards, then I kept walking.
My people hesitated for a second, and Hector, the captain of my guards, gestured for them to fall back. He stayed closer to me.
My companions held back their wrath and moved forward as if accompanying me to my funeral.
The angels’ swords didn’t descend but crossed with the ones from the opposite side, forming an arch of blades over my head as my team and I marched under it.
All this was meant to terrorize me, yet disguised as the angel king’s stately greeting to a foreign princess.
I was more worried that the angels could hear my thundering heartbeat.
Relief washed over me as the deafening sound of waterfalls under the bridge returned. I’d blocked all environmental noises when I’d fixed my attention on the angels.
As my heartbeat resumed to normal, I wearily regarded the angels’ city in front of me.
It was a great work of engineering—wild nature seamlessly immersed into the polished, modern high buildings. Atlantis seemed to float in the air, much to the taste of the sky beings.
That was why they’d taken this city from the Dragonian when they’d first landed on Earth.
The Dragonian had been our rival before the arrival of the angels. The race of engineers had been busy inventing weapons to break into our magical realm, the land of dreams. Ironically, they’d focused on the wrong target; and look where it had gotten them. The majority of the Dragonian were now the angels’ labor force, and the remnants had gone into hiding, gathering around their rebel leader, North, while vigilant angels constantly hunted them down.
I sighed. We weren’t doing any better. My emperor father had had to whore his only heir to preserve Mysth.
Only I had a different plan than being a whore.
I’d vowed on my mother, the late empress regnant, who had died at my birth, that I, Rose Jekaterina Faylinn, would destroy the angels.
My wedding to King Agro was set for two months’ time, on my twentieth birthday. I had to find the angel’s power source, their ultimate weapon, before then.
“Princess,” Hector warned beside me.
I nodded slightly. The captain must have had the same doubt as I. Could we—the ten of us—succeed in Atlantis?
We had to.
We were the last line of defense against the angels.
My eyes turned harder.
Earth belonged to us, and no one would take my inheritance from me. I raised my chin higher, then I realized that Hector was alerting me to an angel approaching from the air at high speed.
The spy had left his post at the top of the tower. His wings stretched, glinting in the sun and vibrating with power.
In a blur, he was on us.
The king’s soldiers on the bridge withdrew their swords to pay him respect. So this angel wasn’t just a spy, he was high-ranking, but he couldn’t be the king. King Agro was said to have one black wing and one red, a lesser line from the angel royal house, born by one of the concubines to the Lord of All Angels.
In a blink I knew who this angel was: King Agro’s half-brother, the formidable High Prince of Angels.
The prince pivoted around me and my ladies-in-waiting above us, sniffing at us in turn like a dog sniffing the scent of his playthings.
A barbarian! But what more could I expect from an angel?
I maintained my cold composure.
Then he fixed his attention on me.
I couldn’t ignore him at such a close range, so I stared up and met his confused, icy gaze. Despite my loathing toward his race, my heart lurched at his glacial, lethal beauty.
His hard, muscled long body was clad in black leather. His golden wings extended full, blocking the sunlight. High cheekbones settled proudly on his sun-kissed yet arctic marble face. His eyes that had been piercing ice grey an instant ago now were a bright silver. He looked at me like a big, nasty cat that had just spotted a squirming mouse.
Only I wouldn’t be a mouse.
I did not fear this big predator, or any of his kind.
My heart brimmed with hatred. The High Prince of Angels was a battle-breed. He had probably led the legion to bleed my people and root out the whole village, just to show off their merciless power.
I would return such a favor. I’d bleed them, soon and profusely. This angel and his brother king would be among the first to suffer my wrath.
My glare didn’t leave his eyes as I glided on the long bridge toward Atlantis’s gate.
The angel’s firm, sensual lips twitched at the corner, as if he was amused that I showed no intention of backing down from his bullying. For sure there might not be too many who wanted to stand up to him when he emitted such pure menace.
If I had had the slightest offensive magic the prophecy promised, I would have blasted him with waves and waves of it and see who would be more amused.
My guards and lady-in-waiting tensed like bowstrings behind me, but I didn’t break my gait, and telepathically I commanded them to stay put.
The high prince grinned, evidently sensing my royal warriors’ fury, but he didn’t glance at them again.
You’ll pay for your arrogance, angel.
He fixed his attention on me completely, the silver glint in his eyes turning darker. He looked hungry now, like I was his last dessert on Earth.
I expected to feel nausea and prayed my breakfast would stay in my stomach, but the repulsion didn’t come. Instead, a sensual delight fluttered in my stomach, as if a coming-of-age girl had just met her first crush.
I blinked, appalled by my physical reaction. How could I feel an instant attraction toward an angel, an enemy I had vowed to destroy at the first opportunity?
His good looks shouldn’t have touched me.
Mysthians outshone all races in beauty, and even the angels weren’t above us.
I glared at the High Prince of Angels. I’d spit at his face if I weren’t a princess.
Then he soared into the air and left me alone.
Just as I’d thought I could finish the parade toward the king’s palace relatively serenely, he howled. The bridge and the mountains behind us echoed, and the air rippled with his formidable power.
I shivered and was furious at once.
Uncivilized creature!
My guards pressed their hands tightly on the hilts of their swords. My lady-in-waiting quivered, becoming even more fearful for me.
The angels on the bridge shifted uncomfortably. Everyone could feel the high prince’s power—ancient, potent, and violent.
The barbarian soared higher and flew back to the golden tower. A second later, he dove through the ceiling of the tower and disappeared from sight.
His roar stuck in m
y mind. If this one was so wild, what kind of beast was the king, his brother? What kind of monster was I going to face?
Anxiety boiled in me. Fortunately, the sound of the waterfalls covered my deafening heartbeat.
When I stood in front of the angel king, I couldn’t afford to show dread. I couldn’t afford to sweat, go pale, or have such a racing heartbeat.
Earth Mother, I lowered my head slightly and said a silent prayer, if you indeed favor your child, then protect me. Do not let me fall. Do not let me fail.
I crossed the bridge with my companions and halted before Atlantis’ cold, massive gate. Portraits of little fat children with wings crawled on its metal.
They were the Dragonian work as well. Wasn’t it enough for them to invite the angels to take their capital city?
“We’re here,” Hector said softly, trying to lend me his warrior’s strength. “Are you ready to enter, Your Highness?”
Was I ready? Could I ever be?
The gate that couldn’t keep the monsters inside swung open before me.
Chapter 3
PRINCE SETH
I stood beside my brother, who sat on the vast throne and waited for the Princess of Mysth.
“What did you see?” King Agro asked me.
“Not too much,” I said without showing the slightest interest.
“Did you see her?” my brother pursued.
“Yeah.” I yawned.
Agro frowned. “The Princess of Mysth is that boring?”
Fiery and spiteful. But I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“She’s a pretty little thing,” I said.
My brother’s face broke into an evil smirk. “Then I’m on board.”
I fought back the urge to maul his face.
Instantly I was taken aback. Where had this violent urge come from? My brother and I hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye, but we’d tolerated each other for centuries and wouldn’t be killing each other too soon, since neither of us wanted to be the first to piss off our lord father.
“Did you smell her fear?” Agro asked.
Making the princess and her companions walk under the crossed blades was my brother’s idea. That was his first test for her. He wanted to intimidate her and joke about it later. I didn’t even bother to tell him there was no glory in frightening a nineteen-year-old girl.
The little princess hadn’t feared the black-winged angels or me. I felt a ghost of a smile touching my eyes briefly as I recalled how she’d glared at me in all her indignant fieriness when I’d hovered above her.
All races on Earth had bowed to the angels, except for the Mysthians.
Though their emperor was weak and soft, the tribe had put up resistance against our invasion. The king’s mistress/general had eradicated a whole Mysthian village at the far edge of the twilight realm of Mysth. When we had shown the Emperor of Mysth that we’d taken down the magic barrier of his realm, he agreed to send his only heir and daughter to be my brother’s bride to broker a truce, instead of facing war against us.
The princess’s first, undisguised look had offered me pure hatred. Yet that little creature had evoked lust in me that had been dormant for two thousand years.
That was unimaginable.
Even more inconvenient was that she was going to share my brother’s bed.
“I can’t stand a weak queen,” my brother said.
“Then send her back home,” I said. “You don’t even need to see her.”
My brother gave me a thoughtful, suspicious look.
“Though she’s a princess,” I said with a shrug, “she’s but an Earth native without much personality.” I wanted my brother to lose interest in that female—the faster, the better—so I could scoop her up to satisfy my lust, if it remained.
My brother’s eyes sharpened as an annoyed edge formed all around him. “Yet,” he drawled, “you watched her for a long time.”
“I didn’t watch her,” I said in a bored tone. “I was merely not fond of being inside the cage of this tower.”
“Huh, my cage,” he said. “Isn’t this a new role Father assigned you—to watch me in my cage? You can complain to Father and leave Earth.”
“You think you can goad me to displease Father and suffer the consequence alone?” I snorted. “Thanks, Brother, but no. Plus—” I let a laziness sink into my voice that always irritated him. “I enjoy watching you being a great king on this planet.”
Agro bit his fingernail, eyes darkening and flicking sideways at me. He knew and I knew that he was a king only in title. It had always been, and would always be, our father, the Lord of All Angels, who would rule the empire across the universe.
My father had many sons, so many that he didn’t mind getting rid of a few if he must. His sons were scattered across galaxies and ruled in his name, and he ruled them all.
He sent Agro to take over Earth and me to see if this planet had a reservoir of power that he could reap the same way as he had harvested and drained many other planets. Agro had no idea that was my true purpose on this planet. I did not tag along after him for the sake of envying him to death.
Earth, where time rippled differently, was a newborn baby in the universe. Everything growing here was fresh and lush; vibrant colors flowing through its continents, the sunlight hovering on my wings, and the bright, wild wind addictive for high-speed skydiving.
Yet best of all was the earth magic, like the finest wine in the air.
I’d reported back to my lord father that Forbidden Glory, the angels’ power source, had detected a great magic running deep in the core of Earth, and that magic was what the Lord of All Angels most coveted.
My duty as his most trusted son was to harvest that power into Forbidden Glory and bring back the Glory to him, so he could absorb more power from the Glory into himself.
That was why the Lord of All Angels remained one of the most powerful beings in the universe.
Agro would stay on the resource-exhausted Earth as a king, and I would leave for the next star system outside this one.
But there was an impediment when it came to gleaning the elemental magic: Earth had hidden it before Forbidden Glory could send out its flame, and now the Glory couldn’t locate it.
As I’d investigated further, I’d discovered the Mysthian prophecy. It predicted our destruction at the hands of the Earth Mother’s favorite child.
In the beginning, I’d thought the Mysthians spread this bullshit out of desperation, but as I’d studied it further and traced its origin, I’d realized its inscriptions had been written before our arrival, before the prophets had known of our existence on the other side of the universe.
It had foretold that winged beings from another world would sweep the Earth with their mighty force and become an empire like none had seen before.
I might have been arrogant, but I was also a strategic warrior.
Earthly weapons were useless against angels, but if this earth elemental force could harm us, then I needed to pay close attention to anything and anyone related to it.
I’d informed my lord father that the elemental magic he coveted might reside in the Princess of Mysth since her people called her the Morning Star of Mysth and Earth Mother’s favorite child.
The Lord of All Angels wouldn’t pass on any opportunity to get his hands on the earth magic. So when Agro had requested the Mysthian princess for his future queen, and so lay a claim on the Mysth empire, my father had approved it instantly and instructed Agro to bring the girl to Atlantis as soon as possible.
The moment she had stepped on the bridge, she had aroused me and broken the seal on my millennia of sexual apathy.
Yet she was off-limits to me.
This started feeling like a very bad dream.
At that thought, my father’s astral self materialized on the dais in the throne room.
All the angels in the court dropped their voices to a hush and knelt before my father. Even his phantom self was a force of nature.
Under my father’s ha
rd stare, my brother moved his lazy ass from the throne. The Lord of All Angels patted the seat as if to sweep off the heat left by my brother’s butt before he sat down.
My father’s phantom had come to examine the Mysthian princess, even though he was busy quenching the angelic rebellion in our homeland seven thousand light years away. He’d come to see for himself if she was the Earth Mother’s magical vessel.
An archangel outside the throne door announced, “Princess Rose Jekaterina Faylinn, heir to Emperor Oberon, the Morning Star of Mysth, the future Empress of Mysth, and bride to King Agro of Angels on Earth, has arrived.”
Chapter 4
PRINCESS ROSE
As soon as I stepped into the king’s throne room, I spotted the high prince. He was more beautiful and lethal than any other angel in the room. The king paled in his brother’s presence.
The high prince locked his glacial gaze on me.
Even from this distance I sensed once again his thick, dangerous power. It vibrated with a demand, drawing me to him. I put up my shield and brushed aside his silent command.
I skimmed my gaze over him.
The high prince arched his wings, like a peacock displaying its magnificent feathers.
I insisted on ignoring him and turned to the one on the throne.
Chapter 5
PRINCE SETH
The court sucked in a collective breath. All had heard of the legendary beauty of the Princess of Mysth, but nothing compared to seeing her in the flesh.
In her white, flowing gown, she looked more stunning in the splendid throne hall where there were no armed angels wielding swords over her head and no howling winds.
With every step, her youthful beauty radiated off her and brightened the room.
My brother’s eyes sparked. He leaned forward to drink in his future trophy queen as his black and red wings furled and unfurled in delight.
He had the beauty of the Earth.
I kept my mask of indifference in place, yet braced for the assault of her scent. For a second, I couldn’t tell if I eagerly anticipated it, or wished it was gone.
