by Tessa Dawn
“Of course, Father,” he said, stepping forward to the base of the dais, just below the throne, and taking his rightful place at the head of his brothers. “As always, I will do whatever the Realm requires.”
King Demitri nodded, seemingly appeased. “Good.” He waved his hand to dismiss the entire subject, clearly done with it, and turned his attention to Prince Drake. “Your brother can fill you in on the details later.” Prince Drake inclined his head, and the king stood up to stretch his legs, his long purple-and-gold robe brushing against the floor at his feet. “If that is all, then you are all dismissed.”
All three Dragona sons bowed their heads, even as Mina and Tatiana curtsied, and then Cassidy Bondeville cleared her throat and took a brazen step toward the throne. “Excuse me, Your Majesty, but I have something I would like to announce.”
There was a soft collective gasp at her unadulterated gall, and Dante placed his outstretched hand between his Ahavi and the king in a mock gesture of concern in order to usher her back. The king raised his eyebrows, and Dante waited, unable to discern whether the dragon was amused or incensed, whether he would laugh at the prima donna’s antics or scorch her where she stood.
“What is it, wench?” King Demitri said with a sneer, publicly reminding her of her place.
Cassidy blanched. “Forgive me, Your Majesty: I know it is improper for a slave to speak in the presence of her king, but”—she turned to gaze at Dante, and her eyes were filled with such false worship and contrived affection that it almost made him retch—“since Prince Dante is your eldest son, I thought you would be pleased with my news.” She raised her chin and drew back her shoulders, virtually beaming with pride. “I am with child,” she said smugly.
Mina’s eyes grew wide, and Dante bit his tongue, not knowing whether to growl or chuckle. He stared at his all-powerful father, still hovering beside his throne, and swallowed his anger. He knew it was a possibility. He knew things were heading in that direction. And he had even helped them along. But, it was still jarring to know that the king held him in such little regard, that after all these years, Dante had failed to earn even a modicum of his father’s respect.
So King Demitri had bed his consort.
Unbelievable.
The king turned a pale shade of green, and his eyes darted nervously around the room like a guilty man’s: So, he wasn’t a fool, after all. The last time he had inquired about Cassidy’s condition, Dante had said she wasn’t pregnant, and the king had commanded him to take care of the matter as soon as they returned to Warlochia. Since a Sklavos Ahavi can recognize her pregnancy within a matter of hours—there was some deep intuition in their makeup—something had to have happened within the last thirty-six hours, something named King Demitri, and the monarch was just now realizing that if both he and Dante had bed her, then he might just be the father. Dante was at least appeased that the male looked sick.
Cassidy hurried to Dante’s side, ignoring his outstretched hand, and curtsied low before him. “My prince.” She offered him her cheek, ostensibly for a kiss, and he snarled.
“Are you sure?” he asked in a surly tone.
“Oh yes,” she whispered, looking curiously confused by his reaction.
Dante’s dragon reared its savage head, and for a moment, he felt the urge to scorch her right there, to burn her flesh from her bones, melt her cartilage to ash, and watch as she disintegrated into so much refuse…as a pile of waste on the floor. It had nothing to do with her as a person—or a woman—truly, he could not have cared less. As far as he was concerned, she would bear an incredibly powerful dragon, one he could now rear as a loyalist. However, his beast was not that cerebral or rational. It only knew that the female had disobeyed him, that she had strayed from her submissive role, and that she needed to be corrected. He restrained the impulse and gestured toward the throne-room doors. “Then I suggest you go to bed and get your rest.” He narrowed his eyes in command, and she quickly scurried away, darting out of the throne room.
Drake gave Dante a questioning glance, and Damian pierced the silence with derisive laughter. “Nothing better than a wayward bitch in heat,” he drawled rudely.
Dante spun around and glared at him, stunned by the unexpected outburst as well as the uncanny resemblance to the dragon he had known all his life. Prince Damian was indeed King Demitri’s son—even Mina looked taken aback. Before Dante could spit out a retort, the throne-room doors swung open once more, and the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees. For a moment, Dante thought it might be Cassidy returning to stage a scene, in which case he was going to have her head, but it wasn’t Cassidy Bondeville.
Oh great lords of fire, it was not his Sklavos Ahavi, but Wavani the witch, instead. And Rafael Bishop, the high mage of Warlochia, was close on her heels.
The couple looked incensed.
*
The witch was dressed from head to toe in deep raven black. Her stiff, five-inch-high collar was turned brusquely upward; the tails of her petticoat flapped behind her like wings; and her harsh leather boots clicked noisily across the marble floor as she strode angrily toward the throne. “Your Majesty!” she called in a shrill, witchy voice, extending a long, gnarled finger to point at his guests. “This entire visitation is a travesty, and these matings are a hoax.” She glared at Mina Louvet, and the Ahavi winced with fear.
The king looked absolutely stunned by her brazen entrance as well as her cryptic words, and in true Dragona fashion, his first and only reaction was anger. “What is the meaning of this!” He threw up his hand in an offensive gesture and sent Rafael Bishop spiraling through the air, slamming into a column, and dangling above the floor, pinned by invisible stakes. There was no way he was going to tolerate such a bold advance from an inferior male. Then he turned his attention back to Wavani. “Have you lost your mind, my counselor?” reminding her of her place.
The witch shook her head and smiled as she continued to approach the throne, and Dante’s heart constricted in his chest. “No, Your Highness,” she said with arrogant assurance, “but perhaps you have lost yours if you trust what you see.”
Dante’s dragon roared inside as his fight-or-flight instincts kicked in.
Son of a Jackal!
The sorceress knew, and she was going to tell the king!
In the space of a heartbeat, he surveyed the great hall and took inventory of all the players: Drake was standing beside Tatiana, about thirty paces from the throne, and they were in the king’s direct line of vision, but they were far enough from the dais to escape if they had to. The prince would not understand what was happening, and he would not have time to react as an ally. Hopefully, he could save his unborn child.
Damian and Mina, on the other hand, were standing to the monarch’s far right. They were at the bottom of the dais, maybe twenty paces away from the king, and he could reach them in the span of an instant. Beyond their proximity to the lethal dragon, they were three seconds too far from the doors, and two seconds too far from the nearest window, assuming that Damian could react instantly and use his preternatural strength and speed to get Mina out of the hall.
In all reality, the king’s anger and his grief might be so great that he would strike at Damian first, strike at Matthias Gentry, and if he did, Mina would be caught in the crossfire.
But Dante didn’t believe that was how things would play out.
From where he stood, he believed the monarch would eliminate any potential vulnerability, first. He would strike to his left instinctively, because that was his weak side, his blind spot, and Dante was his greatest threat. If Prince Dante wanted to derail the hazardous situation, he would have to strike at King Demitri first.
The moment he thought it, he dismissed it.
The idea was utterly ludicrous.
It was crazy and suicidal.
King Demitri was damn near a deity: all-powerful, nearly omniscient, and practically indestructible. Dante would never stand a chance. The king would shred his throat, disembowe
l his innards, and wrench out his heart in an instant, before Dante could even react. Not to mention, there would be a high mage and an angry witch at his back.
No; the only way to diffuse this situation was to go after Wavani and Rafael, to take them out before they could expose his treason. He sought Prince Damian’s eyes, knowing his brother could easily read his mind, and tried to alert him with a nod—but the witch was already speaking.
“My lord.” She bowed her head deeply, and then she snarled like a fiend. “Do not attack the messenger. The child isn’t his!” In her frenzy, her eyes darted around the room haphazardly, and she screeched, “Hell, he isn’t him! The soul! The soul is all wrong!”
Somewhere in the background, Mina let out a petrified whimper, even as Dante tried to lunge in Wavani’s direction, but his feet never left the ground. So that’s why she had brought the high mage with her. The witch and the warlock were combining their powers in order to cast a spell about the room—the air had congealed into mystical quicksand, and the only being unaffected was the king, who was much too powerful to succumb.
Dante could still move, but it would require an enormous effort.
“What the hell are you saying, Wavani!” the king shouted, leaping down from the dais in one fell swoop. He glared at the hag with feverish eyes, his dragon riding perilously close to the surface.
The witch threw back her head in frustration and howled: “The boy is a bastard—”
“Shut your mouth!” the king shouted over her, and in the blink of an eye, he had the witch by her throat. Fuming, he hoisted her off the floor, and his enormous sculpted muscles bulged with unrestrained fury.
What the devil? Dante wondered, trying to make sense of the scene.
And then it suddenly dawned on him: Blessed goddess of mercy, the king thought Wavani was about to reveal his secret, the fact that he had impregnated Cassidy. After all, she was in charge of the Sklavos Ahavi, the mating, and the assurance of sacred offspring—and she took her role quite seriously. The matings are a hoax. The child isn’t his. The soul is all wrong…
The boy is a bastard.
At this juncture, her words could still mean anything.
They still had a narrow window of time.
For a split second, Prince Dante wondered if he should let the scene play out, stand back and watch things unfold, see if his father would kill Wavani on his own, but it was far too much to hope for…
Rafael Bishop was already clearing his throat.
“My king…” the high mage drawled, using his considerable power as a warlock to descend from the post, in spite of the telepathic restraints. His eyes glowed demonic red, and his cloak fluttered behind him as he floated to the ground like a specter. “You need to listen.” His ethereal, malevolent voice reverberated throughout the hall like a chorus of moaning ghouls. “There is an enormous deception taking place in this room.”
Dante flung a sizzling bolt of lightning at the warlock’s throat, catching him unaware, and rallied inside as it severed the warlock’s vocal cords. “Silence!” he bellowed, pretending to support the king. Then he turned to his father and baited him. “My liege,” he snarled, sounding half crazed and wholly disgusted. “Is this what the Realm has become?” He struggled to stroll toward his father, releasing his wings to propel him. “Do the slaves now command the kings? Can this hag command you to bow? Can a woman of lowly birth, a gifted seer or not, defile my father’s throne room and order him about like a common peasant? In front of his sons? In front of his unborn grandchildren? In front of a Warlochian mage! One who just happens to be the head of the illegal slave trade and sleeping with your counselor—enormous deception, indeed.”
Rafael Bishop shrank back in alarm, his mouth dropping open in shock, even as blood pooled from the corners of his mouth in response to his recent injury. He looked like he had just seen a ghost, and despite all of his considerable power, his legs began to tremble.
Prince Dante flashed a wicked smile. “Ah, so then it is true?” He glanced askance at the king and shook his head in disgust. “I didn’t know for sure, not until now, Father. It was only a suspicion, but his reaction just confirmed it.” The fool had just absolved Dante of any blame…the fact that he knew about the slave trade and kept the information from his king. He spun on his heel to glare at Wavani. Her moon-shaped pupils had just turned a vindictive shade of green, and she was trembling with rage.
“You bastard!” she choked, struggling for breath. “You clever, unholy bastard. I will see you—”
“I am your prince!” Dante thundered, drowning out her words. “How dare you.” He tried to hurl a silencing spell in her direction, but she blocked it with her eyes.
“I know what you’re doing, you traitorous fiend!” she hissed. “I saw it all in a seeking vision.”
Dante’s stomach clenched in fear, and for the briefest moment, he met Mina’s terrified gaze. The female’s eyes were as wide as saucers; she was trembling in her boots, and she looked like she might just pass out from terror, but she didn’t speak a word. She didn’t dare. She obviously understood that all their lives depended upon Dante Dragona and perhaps, his brother Damian.
Dante pushed through his fear and stepped forward with deliberate arrogance, taking three haughty strides toward the witch. He knew he was running out of time. Even if they managed to get out of this alive, they might not come back from the suspicions the witch was planting in King Demitri’s head. Dante had to strike hard…and quick. “Traitorous fiend?” he mocked. “Traitorous? Why? Because I don’t support your lover’s unlawful enterprise? Because I don’t kowtow to your visions like a superstitious little girl, like the wretch you are trying to make of my father? Your king! How dare you accuse me of being a traitor in the very castle I was born in, in the very hall that I revere.”
“You know—”
“I know what!” He hurled his voice as thunder, shaking the rafters and trailing the words with flames. “What is it that you wish to tell me, witch? Please, by all means, say it! What did you see in your vision? What do you know about my unborn son?” He hoped to incite his father’s fear of discovery—and his rage—by inciting his paranoia. “What about this mating is so wrong?”
The king roared like the Keeper of the Forgotten Realm himself had just possessed his body and clasped his hand even tighter over her throat.
And that’s when Damian chimed in. “Dear lords, Father: I’m almost ashamed. Kill this insolent bitch before I have to do it myself.”
This pushed King Demitri over the edge. He tightened his fist into an iron grasp, crushed the witch’s throat, and then tossed her limp body to the ground and stomped on her head in order to annihilate her skull, before sending her body up in flames.
And then he turned to glare at Damian, took two humongous strides in the prince’s direction, and backhanded him across the room. “You are ashamed, son? Of me!?” He sounded utterly insane.
Mina and Tatiana gasped as Damian’s jawbone audibly cracked, and two bloodstained teeth ricocheted across the clean marble floors.
Dante and Drake winced and turned away.
Prince Damian stood up slowly, staggered like he was drunk, and rubbed his jaw in a lazy caress. He spit out another tooth and began to laugh in a deep, exuberant voice, his massive shoulders shaking from the mirth. “Not of you, Father,” he mumbled, slurring all three of his words. “Never of you.” He bowed low and groaned. “Your Majesty—Father— I was ashamed of my brothers, Prince Dante and Prince Drake, for forcing you to do the dirty work in your own throne room. The witch was beneath you. I meant no offense.” Considering the circumstances, it was probably the best lie he could come up with, especially in light of the fact that he had just prodded the king to kill the witch himself. He stood up straight, or at least as straight as he could, turned toward Rafael, who was still trembling in the corner, unable to speak, and cocked an arrogant shoulder. “Shall I?” He inclined his head with reverence. “The bastard disobeyed your laws. He is the
head of the illegal slave trade. Your will is my command.”
The king took a tentative step back, visibly relaxed, and rubbed his furrowed brow. He seemed momentarily confused, like he couldn’t remember Damian’s original words—thank the gods—and then he quickly found his voice. “Did you lose a lot of teeth?”
Damian responded with more than a little swagger. “Enough.” He flashed a bloody, toothless grin, and the king joined in on the banter. “You’re lucky I didn’t break your neck.”
Damian nodded. “Indeed, Father; my apologies.”
The king nodded and turned to Dante. “Why didn’t you intervene?”
Dante bit down on his bottom lip, trying not to show his irritation. “I was so…stunned…by the witch’s disrespect that I couldn’t think clearly. Forgive me.”
The king nodded his head and harrumphed. He was obviously tired. “Very well.” Then he turned to glare at the quivering warlock. “The mage is your subject, Dante. Whip him until he’s dead.”
Dante smiled at Damian, and the two exchanged a knowing glance. Well played, Damian. Dante projected the thought. Well played.
And then he turned to wink at Mina, glanced over his shoulder at the twelve-feet-high chest, situated in the throne-room’s corner, and smirked. “Damian, go pick out a lash.”
Epilogue
Ten years later
Mina Louvet propped herself up in bed and held the sleeping infant close to her heart, glad to finally see the high priest go. The labor and delivery had taken ten long hours; she had kept the baby awake for all the necessary visitations and initiations; and now, all she wanted to do was sleep for a while, along with her newborn son.
A ruckus outside the bedchamber door jolted her back to full attention: It was her youngest two sons clamoring for another visitor’s attention. “Uncle Dante! Uncle Dante!” her middle son, Azor, squealed in delight, his high-pitched voice teeming with excitement.
