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“It is as likely to work as anything else.”
“Perhaps I’ll take it. Perhaps the love story this kingdom will cherish is yours and mine. Is that the threat that will bend you to me?”
Cold that had nothing to do with the temperature gripped her spine. “You can force my hand in marriage, but you cannot force my smiles or my song. A marriage is nothing to people if a woman does not sell it for you.”
“I thought you might say something like that. You told me, before, to find something better than Renault County to threaten you with. I should warn you, not to challenge a man like me to do so. I will succeed and you will not like the results.”
“There is nothing you can take from me that has not already been taken.”
“Is that so?” Three words, spoken with derision. Three words that indicated she was wrong.
The weight of Numair’s pendant burned against her skin.
“I want to show you something.” He turned, leading her out of the gardens and back to the palace, to a wing she’d never entered. On the upper floor he opened a door and led her into a room. It was a suite much like the Arrendons, and a man stood on the other side of the entry room, his back to them.
His build was similar to Alaric’s, his hair the same shade of brown. He turned at their entrance, revealing a man closer to Numair’s age. Bloody gashes raked over his face, down his neck, and she realized, from the red covering the tips of his fingers, that he’d caused the damage to himself. He saw Alaric and a manic light came into his eyes. When he launched himself across the room at the king there was no finesse, no subtlety. It was like a wild animal driven to savagery.
Clare took multiple steps back. Alaric simply stood there, his hands clasped behind his back, as the man ran at him and drove what looked to be a piece of sharpened cutlery deep into the king’s chest. Alaric didn’t so much as flinch. His power unfurled almost casually, gripping the man and dragging him back a step.
Clare was not in the slightest bit confused about the message being sent as Alaric calmly gripped the shaft of metal embedded in his heart and pulled it free: See how little I fear death. And why should he, when she felt one of the many souls clinging to his frame extinguish as the wound closed in his chest, not a single drop of blood on his shirt, the hole in the fabric mending itself.
“Allow me to introduce you to my other nephew,” Alaric said lightly. “Brennan Tolvannen, the first prince of Faelhorn.”
Brennan dropped to his knees. For a moment, Clare thought Alaric had driven him there, but then she realized he had collapsed all on his own, sobbing. He crawled to Alaric’s feet, holding the king’s ankle and resting his face on his boot. “Please,” he said. “Please please please. Give it back. Or kill me. I’ll do anything. Anything you want.” It went on, the same words repeated over and over again, and Clare understood she was looking at what happened to a mage who had had his magic Reaped.
“What did he do?” Clare made herself ask.
“Attempted to usurp me,” Alaric said in a confiding voice. “It was a shame. He had his uses.”
“Why leave him like this?” she asked, trying not to show the horror she felt. “Why not kill him?”
Alaric shrugged. “He’s the heir to the throne. As you have pointed out, I have no wife, no children. Besides, I had to put too many of my court down after his little insurrection. And then Verol had to work for months to make everyone forget it had ever happened, because I don’t want to deal with the number of them I’d have to destroy if a succession war occurs.
“I do adore my other nephew, but no one in their right mind would think Numair could lead this kingdom. So I kept this one.” Alaric raised his hand, power flooding from him and lifting Brennan to his feet. The gashes on his cheeks healed over as if they had never been. “He’s convalescing from an unspecified illness, at the moment, but I bring him out on the necessary occasions. It keeps things from getting too…messy.”
Clare swallowed the bile rising up her throat. “You mean to tell me your court hasn’t figured it out?”
“Figured what out?”
“That there will never be a succession to the throne of Veralna. You look a decade younger than you did when you left. What is your true age?”
He sighed. “I see Verol hasn’t monitored you as he ought. Of course they haven’t figured it out. It’s one of those facts that simply…slips from their minds as it needs to. As for the other, it’s quite impolite to ask.”
“Are they even your nephews?” Part of her strongly did not want for Numair to be related to this man.
“Great nephews, technically, though you’d be one of the few now that can remember the fact.”
She swallowed. “Why are you showing me this?”
“Because I wish you to understand something, Miss Brighton. There are things worse than death. I am one of them. And for you to choose death over service to me, I would first have to allow you to die.
“Think on that. Mull it over. This does not have to be like it was for you before. Simian was always short-sighted, ruled by baser desires. It’s why he always broke everything. I would not do the same, can assure you I have no interest in you in that manner. You are little more than a child compared to me.
“I will force your hand on this matter if I must, but this would be easier for us both if you would simply come to reason. I’ll give you some time to consider it.”
He walked out, leaving her with the raving husk that was the first prince of Faelhorn, and the question of why? Why not simply force her hand? Why give her time at all?
She couldn’t come up with an answer, and the failure made her suspect she wouldn’t like it once she did.
