“I know you and that traitorous legion of yours want my empire,” he hissed, spittle flying from his mouth and nothing but madness and paranoia in his voice. “But it’s too late. Things are in motion that cannot be undone. I havewon,Varidian. No control magic will spare you now.”
Heat and rage coalesced inside me, my chest working like a bellows as my breath turned to fire, as my shaking hands bled a darkness every bit as lethal as the wave that killed twenty clergy in the council chamber. That time was onhisorders, but this wasby my choice, and I found it made me even more powerful. There was no resistance, no pain, onlypower.
“Do not,”I hissed, advancing across the roof,“touch him.”
Varidian’s eyes were closed, I noticed, when Bakshi turned to face me. The king’s eyes widened, as if he’d been so absorbed in his hatred, he hadn’t noticed my shadows devouring the Morysen skies, hadn’t heard the screams tearing through his shining capital. The torrent of deathfyre struck him in the dead centre of his chest, honed to an edge far beyond lethal. It was sheer annihilation.
I held my breath, waiting for his death,hungryfor his death. I wanted to watch the light leave Bakshi’s eyes, wanted him to collapse onto this rooftop and never move again.
I gritted my teeth as I walked towards him, towards my husband. Unconscious—he had to be unconscious. I’d know, wouldn’t I, if he was dead? We couldn’t befinallyreunited after weeks apart, only to be separated by this most final parting. So close—we were so close. I refused to accept he was anything other than unconscious. But Bakshi’s death? A tingle ran over my skin as I anticipated his final breath, the final twisted beat of his heart, and breathless excitement cut through the rage in my chest.
But Bakshi remained standing as the deathfyre struck his chest. Where it ought to have pierced skin, prised apart his ribcage, and speared the blackened heart of him, it was instead sucked into a hammered silver medallion that hung on a thick chain around his neck. Encircling the silver, I was unsurprised to see glittering black stones had been embedded in the silver.
“Get away from Varidian,” I hissed, advancing another step, punching another stream of deathfyre at him. I liked that name. Deathfyre. It was more than shadow, more than smoke. My magic was an inferno so hot it could melt bone, and if theking hadn’t been wearing that amulet, I had no doubt he’d be screaming like the rest of the city.
Sharp canines flashed as Bakshi’s upper lip curled. “I wondered when you’d arrive. My disappointment of an heir is here too, no doubt. Or did she do me the favour of killing him?”
She. The queen. I surged forward another few steps, my fire intensifying, my hands shaking with the force of it. Bakshi didn’t even falter as the blast struck him.
“Kamaal survived,” I spat. “And he’s ten times the man you are, you piece of shit.”
I struck again, sending the next stream of dark power into his shoulder, forcing him to angle his body to deflect the blow with the medallion. Again, my magic was sucked into those dark, twinkling stones, but I expected it now. Expected it again and used it to my advantage as I drove him away from Varidian, hammering him with strike after strike of magic. I didn’t know how to wield it, had never been taught, but apparently brute strength and messy blows would do the job as well as finesse.
“Regret forcing a demonstration out of me yet?” I taunted, fire falling from my tongue in black embers. I’d never wanted this magic, had always hated and cursed it, but accepting it, welcoming it, had fused it into something new, something incandescent within me.
“I ordered your creation,” Bakshi spat, a vein bulging in his forehead. “I can just as easily take you out of this world.”
I faltered long enough for him to snatch up the harpoon and point it at my heart.
“You ordered my creation,” I repeated, the words a blur with no meaning. I knew the words separately, but together… I shook my head, staring at the king I didn't meet until my wedding day.
I ordered your creation.
“You’re lying to me again. You’re trying to manipulate me.”
“Obviously I’m manipulating you,” Bakshi laughed, angling himself to face me when I lifted my hands again, my magic weaker than before. His words were acid, eating at my strength.
I ordered your creation.It made no sense.
“But I can twist you to suit my ends just as easily with the truth as with a lie, and this is no lie. Twenty-six years ago, I gave your father a task. Not Falael, that desperate rat. He’s guarded you all these years in the hopes of earning himself a spot in my inner circle, but that snivelling excuse for a man is no more your father than I am.”
A smile, another jab at the marriage dissolved between Varidian and I. But my husband never died at Daurith, and I had to assume the sacred city survived, too. The Legion of Fyrevein werehere,filling the skies above the Morysen palace with wyvern roars and fire.Varidianwas here. Unconscious, but here. Not dead, never dead. I barely let the thought form, or I’d lose whatever dregs of strength allowed me to face his father.
“Your birth was ordained, not by god but byme,”Bakshi took great pleasure in telling me, and I stumbled back a step when he advanced.
Good, come closer, put more distance between you and Varidian.
“Why?” I spat, canines bared as I drove both hands in front of me, a force of dark flame leaving me, shoving me back another step as the air shook, as thebuildingshook beneath us. I watched some of the colour leave the king’s face.
“Your great-grandmother could turn stone to gold. Your mother could control the tides or call a great tsunami even in the desert.”
“And you wanted that power for yourself,” I guessed. Feeling sick, I breathed, “Please do not say you are my father.”
“Me? No.” Bakshi chuckled, closing another step of distance, unbothered by the blast of deathfyre I shot at him in warning.“My most trusted friends took that task, each creating a child. You’re acquainted with the one who sired you.”
I knew. The moment he said Falael wasn’t my father, I knew. Too many smug remarks, too many knowing looks and hints about my legendary mother, my family line.
“Kaazhim,” I hissed, and my magicerupted,blasting a dark wall into the space between me and the king. He went still as it passed over him, then rolled his eyes when he understood the shield had never been for me. Varidian still hadn’t awoken. What if he—
