The Drow Grew Stronger (Goth Drow Book 4)

by Martha Carr

  Corian rubbed his mouth, his tufted, catlike ears twitching as he shook his head. Elarit rolled her eyes and buried a smart remark in her tankard of fellwine.

  Maleshi’s chair scooted backward with a screech of metal on stone before the general stood, swinging her skull cup to the side to avoid spilling it on the line of magicals sitting at the table. Hooking her boot around the metal chair leg, she pulled out the empty chair on the other side of Ember and thumped down into it. She narrowed her eyes at the other members of the Four-Pointed Star across the table, then leaned forward to peer past Ember at Cheyenne. The silver curve of the skull-shaped cup didn’t leave her hand. “I think we should start at the beginning.”

  “For the love of everything I despise, General!” L’zar thumped back in his chair. “I didn’t come all this way to listen to how Ba’rael Verdys filled her throne room with shit.”

  Ember snorted, and when L’zar turned his golden eyes to her, she stared at the table and hid her smile with another long drink from her tankard.

  Maleshi fixed her gaze on the drow at the head of the table and cocked her head. “And I didn’t come all this way to listen to you tell me what I can and can’t say in your royal presence, Cu’ón. Keep at it, and there will be another battle tonight. And you won’t have your daughter to do the heavy lifting for you.”

  L’zar raised an eyebrow and nodded once.

  “Prince among thieves, huh?” Cheyenne muttered. “Literally.”

  Foltr hissed and raised his tankard to his lips. Only when he’d finished drinking did she realize he’d been laughing too.

  Slurping from her skull again, Maleshi met Cheyenne’s gaze. “The only true beginning to the story that has anything to do with anything these days is how the Crown turned the new Cycle herself and put all this into play.”

  “To be clear,” Corian added, “L’zar’s always been a dick. That goes all the way back to the beginning.”

  The table erupted in laughter. Foltr thumped his cane on the floor as he chuckled in grunting bursts. Maleshi and Corian raised their drinks toward L’zar in another toast and drank. The drow joined them, his golden eyes glowing as he gazed at every face at the table.

  Except mine. Cheyenne smiled with the others as they made their infuriating leader the brunt of more jokes. He hasn’t looked at me once since we sat down.

  “The drow Crown K’laht sired two offspring,” Foltr began.

  “Two fell-dawn spawn,” L’zar added quickly with another toast to no one.

  “L’zar’s the baby brother.” Maleshi swirled the dregs of her fellwine around and around in the bottom of the silver skull. “Which explains quite a bit, when you think about it.”

  “I’ve earned my titles, thank you very much.”

  “Dark Smiling Weaver.” Cheyenne stared at her father, who gave her a sidelong glance for half a second before dipping his head and taking another drink.

  “That’s one of them, sure. I was referring to Royal Bottom-feeder. The Scoundrel Prince.”

  “Endaru’s balls, L’zar. Don’t hurt yourself.” Maleshi shook her head and shot the drow’s feral, predatory look right back at him. “This conversation isn’t about you, anyway. Give it a rest.”

  “I’ve suddenly lost interest, then. Should I excuse myself?” L’zar scooted back in his chair like he meant to get up.

  Maleshi leaned sideways against the edge of the table, barely sitting in her own chair anymore. “Ask the raug. I don’t give a shit.”

  L’zar eyed Foltr and gave the old magical a mocking half-bow from his chair. “By your leave, Aged One.”

  “If you need my permission to remove yourself from that chair, you’ll be sitting here all night,” Foltr grumbled. “I’m not giving you a fell-damn thing.”

  With a low chuckle, L’zar ran a hand through his hair and sat comfortably back in the chair again. “Lovely to be surrounded by such loyal friends again.”

  The magicals around the table chuckled and raised a silent toast. Once everyone had set their cups back down on the table, expectant glances passed between L’zar’s core group of rebel leaders.

  “Don’t look at me.” Foltr set both hands on the knob of his cane again and shook his head. “I’m just here to correct the embellished carako waste bound to spill out of one of your mouths.”

  “You’ve made your point, Grandfather.” Maleshi turned in her chair and thrust her silver skull in the air. “Dahal’s thirsty again. Don’t make my predecessor come after you. Where’s the fellwine?”

  Lumil turned from the group of magicals swapping battle stories and raised another cheer when she hoisted a sloshing green bottle in her fist. She trudged toward Maleshi’s outstretched empty skull and poured the fellwine from so high, it spilled over the edge of the skull and splattered to the floor in a glowing green fizz. “For the general. And the general.” The goblin woman gave Maleshi a mocking bow, then thumped the bottle onto the table and spun. “Where were we? Oh, yeah. Blood and glory!”

  The magicals cheered as Lumil returned to the small group, one of many around the chamber.

  With a self-important smirk, Maleshi took a sip from her skull, smacked her lips, and turned toward Cheyenne again. “It’s our lucky night, kid. While they talk about blood and glory, we get patricide and shitty life skills.”

  The halfling sputtered into her goblet, then forced herself to swallow the small bit of Bloodshine left in her mouth. “Sounds like fun.”

  L’zar grinned and lifted his tankard. “You have no idea.”

  Chapter Six

  “As the oldest, Ba’rael was next in line for the Crown’s new Cycle,” Maleshi continued. “If your Weaver father ever had plans of ruling, those plans were screwed from the moment he entered this world.”

  L’zar thumped a fist against his chest. “With a full head of hair and an already honed sense of how to take what’s mine.”

  “You mean, how to take what’s everyone else’s,” Corian corrected, raising an eyebrow.

  The drow shrugged. “Same thing.”

  Maleshi snorted. “Knowing he was born with that sense of entitlement, kid, I’m sure you can imagine your father as the little shit he was in his formative years so very long ago.”

  “Yes, General. Because you spent so much time studying me in my formative years.”

  “I did,” Foltr grumbled. “She’s not far off the mark.”

  Another round of laughter rose at that, and L’zar dipped his head toward the raug. “Well-played.”

  “K’laht Verdys served as the O’gúl Crown for centuries,” Corian added. “As far as drow go, he had a good head on his shoulders. To this day, I still can’t fathom how he sired two of drowkind’s most disappointing specimens.”

  “I blame our mother.” L’zar raised his tankard. “To Ulahel and her final journey through the deathflame.”

  The magicals around the table ignored the drow’s spiteful comment. Corian’s smile faded somewhat, but he looked at Cheyenne with his silver nightstalker eyes and nodded. “Ba’rael always knew she would turn the new Cycle as the next Crown. It was her right from the beginning, and there is little that can stand in the way of a rightful heir claiming what’s theirs. Or at least there was, back when Ambar’ogúl was a world I recognized.”

  “Save the self-pity for after the real party.” L’zar stared at his Nós Aní, and Corian’s upper lip twitched in irritation.

  “So.” Maleshi thumped a hand on the table and raised her skull, fellwine spilling over her hand in streams. “While L’zar was off screwing over every poor bastard who crossed his path, Ba’rael grew impatient. It’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? To have absolutely everything at your fingertips, nothing withheld, and still want more.”

  “The bitch will stay true to her nature ‘til the very end.” L’zar shook his head. “I remember it like yesterday. The day my rotting sister told me she didn’t intend to wait for the Cycle to turn on its own. As many times as I’ve tried to drink myself into oblivion
, hoping that memory would be the one siphoned out of my head by morning, I’ve apparently been cursed into never forgetting that excellent gem.”

  Cheyenne glanced quickly around the table. “You think you should be joking about curses right now?”

  L’zar fixed her with his golden eyes, which were narrowed in warning. “It was a figure of speech in this instance, Cheyenne.”

  Corian leaned away from the drow at the head of the table and eyed L’zar. “But in another instance?”

  “We can talk about that later.”

  The nightstalker looked at Cheyenne next, who gave him a small shrug and barely shook her head. She didn’t miss it when Corian and Maleshi shared concerned gazes as well. Right. It’s all fun and games in the rebel bunker until somebody brings up the literal curse L’zar failed to mention. That’ll be a fun conversation.

  L’zar took a long drink of his fellwine and sucked in a hissing breath, cocking his head as the strong liquor burned down his throat and swam up into his head at the same time. “We were talking about me. Briefly. And my rot-hearted sister coming to me personally to try to draw me into her secret and highly unnecessary plan.”

  At those words, the multiple prophecies Cheyenne had heard from Oracles and in her own dreams came back to her. Cut out the heart. Cut out the rot. Christ, it’s all tied together even as we sit here telling stories.

  “What did she say?” Ember asked, her luminous violet eyes fixed intently on the drow.

  “She wanted to challenge our father before her time,” L’zar replied simply, “Ba’rael had convinced herself she could do much better than the unprecedented era of peace under his Cycle.”

  “She thought K’laht was too soft on our people.” Maleshi snorted. “Too content to let Ambar’ogúl run itself unless the Crown’s intervention was absolutely necessary. Hell, that’s how I got my job.”

  “You served under L’zar’s father.” Cheyenne gazed at the war general. “For how long?”

  “Longer than any of us care to think about right now.” Corian raised his tankard toward Maleshi and drank.

  “Wait, wait.” Ember pressed both hands on the table and glanced for a second at the silver skull in Maleshi’s hand before looking back up at L’zar. “I still wanna hear about this plan of hers. She told you she was going to overthrow your dad?”

  “No.” A thin smile tugged at the corners of L’zar’s lips. “She told me she meant to challenge him. By the old laws, of course. Her marandúr hadn’t yet been returned to the Rahalma altar, and, I suppose, she wanted my full support.”

  Elarit snorted, the thin silver chains draping across the bridge of her nose jingling when she shook her head. “It worked out so well for her.”

  Sitting beside her, Jara’ak chuckled and widened his eyes at the troll woman’s rare facetious comment. “You have a way with words, Lady Masharun.”

  “Don’t call me that.” Elarit buried her face in her goblet but looked up at Cheyenne.

  “She’s not wrong.” L’zar sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling of the bunker. “It didn’t work out anything like what she’d planned.”

  Ember nodded. “Because you didn’t support her.”

  “Ha.” Corian waved his hand over the table, shaking his head. “Ba’rael didn’t give a shit whether or not she had L’zar’s support. She assumed giving him that information would goad him into making a fool of himself.”

  “Which I’d already done a thousand times over at that point,” L’zar added dryly.

  The magicals chuckled and kept drinking like their cups would never empty.

  “She goaded him all right.” Maleshi raised her silver skull toward L’zar. “Right into making herself look like an idiot.”

  Cheyenne frowned at her father. “What did you do to her?”

  L’zar rolled his eyes. “Trust me, Cheyenne, if I’d wanted to physically hurt my sister, I would have done it centuries ago. Psychological damage, on the other hand, is a different game, at which I naturally excel.”

  Jara’ak thumped a fist on the table. “You’ve been building up for centuries is what you’ve been doing. Give the damn punchline.”

  Ember’s eyes widened as she gazed from one magical around the table to the next. “This is a joke?”

  “Only in the sense that I still find it highly amusing,” L’zar replied blankly.

  Corian blinked, swaying forward in his chair before turning toward the drow and pointing a fur-tipped finger at L’zar. “If you don’t tell her, I will.”

  “Everyone’s in such a hurry.” L’zar set his drink on the table and tipped his chair backward on two legs, smoothing his long white hair away from his face. “I ruined all her plans, Cheyenne, by returning my marandúr to that altar before she grew enough of a spine to do it herself.”

  Ember shook her head in disbelief. “Why?”

  L’zar grinned. “Because I could.”

  Jara’ak barked out a laugh. “Just to fuck with her head. She should’ve been used to it at that point, eh?”

  Maleshi took another long drink. “It gave L’zar first right to challenge K’laht for the throne and turn the new Cycle for himself if he so chose.”

  L’zar pointed at her. “That was never my intention.”

  “Anyone with half a brain knows that,” Foltr added with a grunt.

  Cheyenne narrowed her eyes at Maleshi. “You said patricide.”

  “I did.” The general gestured toward L’zar and raised an eyebrow. “I’ll leave that elaboration to your royal drow ass.”

  Cheyenne’s father gazed around the table, then rolled his eyes. “Ba’rael doesn’t have half a brain, and she never did. To keep me from the throne I never wanted, she snuck into the Heart like a coward in the middle of the night and returned her marandúr, then slit our father’s throat in his sleep and turned the Cycle by force.”

  “Jesus.” Cheyenne slumped in her chair and grimaced at the Bloodshine in her goblet. “And that was it? No one tried to stop her?”

  “There was no one to stop her. I certainly wasn’t going to.”

  She looked quickly at L’zar again. “But it was your fault.”

  “Oh.” He feigned surprise and gazed around the table, chuckling. “I didn’t realize you had any interest in defending the Crown’s actions, especially not after you defied all the odds stacked against you in the very fabric of fate by challenging her yourself.”

  “I’m not defending her.” Cheyenne’s fingers tightened around the black metal stem of the goblet. “I’m saying you should have taken responsibility.”

  Elarit’s high laughter filled the bunker. “That ship sailed long before the last Cycle ended, Cheyenne.”

  “And it doesn’t weigh on you even a little?” The halfling’s hands slid off the edge of the table into her lap as she stared at her father. “That your own father died because you wanted to screw with your sister’s head?”

  “In a perfect world, that would seem abhorrent, wouldn’t it?” L’zar grinned back at her and spread his arms. “As you so aptly put it about a week ago, Cheyenne, I dropped a coin on a table. Ba’rael did the rest. I didn’t challenge the Cycle, and I most certainly didn’t guide her hand when the tip of the blade it held pierced K’laht’s throat. I have my own crimes to pay for if the day ever catches up with me, but that is not one of them.”

  Cheyenne clenched her jaw and couldn’t bring herself to say anything else about it. L’zar’s always looking out for number one, and that’s it. He seriously doesn’t care what he’s done.

  “What about, like, trying to get vengeance or something?” Ember asked, staring blankly at the table as she tried to make sense of the situation. “For your dad. You didn’t even try to step in and fight against that?”

  “It comes down to their respective feelings about me, little fae.”

  “Watch it.” She pointed at him, the tip of her pink-tinged finger glowing with violet light.

  “I’d listen to her, L’zar,” Maleshi said throu
gh a full-throated laugh. “Every magical in this room has seen what that one can do.”

  The rebel leaders gathered around the table fell into another fit of laughter, raising their glasses toward Ember this time both in jest and as a sign of respect.

  “Look at that,” Jara’ak roared. “A Nós Aní who has no issues taking a bite out of L’zar Verdys if she has to!”

  “I’m assuming that’s meant to be an affront to my honor,” Corian muttered as the orc howled with renewed laughter. “Nice try.”

  L’zar leaned toward Corian and clapped a hand on the nightstalker’s shoulder. “This one only bites in private.”

  Corian scowled at the drow and shrugged L’zar’s hand away.

  “And I’m pushing all the wrong buttons today. Damn, this does feel like home.” Chuckling, L’zar smoothed his hair away from his face again and turned back to Ember. “As I was saying, the rest of my royally obnoxious family did have one thing in common. They were finished with me long before I ever returned my marandúr to the Rahalma altar. The only difference is that my father never made his lack of love for me anywhere near concrete with an official banishment.”

  “You banished yourself,” Foltr grunted.

  “Yes, it was all voluntary. Until a few hours ago.” L’zar’s wide golden eyes roamed around the table, drinking in the reactions of his loyal followers as each of them realized what he was saying.

  Cheyenne didn’t look away from him. He’s loving watching the truth sink in and ruining the mood for everyone. Dude’s got serious issues.

  “L’zar.” Corian set down his tankard and shifted in his chair to face the drow squarely. “Did she really?”

  “Cheyenne was there too, you know. This is her party, after all.”

  The halfling closed her eyes in irritation. “I wouldn’t want to steal your spotlight.”

  L’zar threw his head back and roared with laughter. “You are my daughter. Yes. Yes! Ba’rael banished me from Ambar’ogúl and made it official with her fancy little curse. That’s neither here nor there.”