“Okay,” she murmured as she reached the fireplace and turned to walk toward the chairs. “I’ll be here.”
“I love you, Lexi.”
She paused before walking over to hug him. “I love you too, Dad.”
Chapter Sixty-Four
It was wellpast midnight by the time Cole returned to the library. The Lord had been good and drunk when he left Dragonia, but Cole had mostly pretended to drink while sipping his goblet.
He’d “accidentally” knocked one goblet over on the table and another into the deadened plant next to his chair while sitting in the Lord’s private solar. The Lord laughed and immediately ordered that Cole’s goblet be refilled.
Like the rest of the palace, Cole imagined that the solar was once full of beauty; there was none now. Instead, dead potted plants and one barren tree sat in the corners of the vast room.
A portrait of the Lord hung above the fireplace that took up the entire far wall. In the painting, the Lord glared down at him from vivid red eyes, and it was still the nicest thing in the room.
The heads of far too many immortal creatures decorated the rest of the room. Unicorns, sasquatches, pegasusses, dark and light fae, and many others hung in the room. He even had the head of a giant, which took up most of the right wall.
Cole wasn’t a fan of giants; not many who valued their lives were, but seeing one’s head, along with so many others, mounted to the walls made his stomach churn. Cole didn’t examine it too closely, but it looked like the giant’s head had been scalped to get it to fit beneath the wooden beams crisscrossing the ceiling.
And nailed to those beams were the bodies of countless pixies. Their tiny bodies contributed to the stench of rot that permeated the room. From the looks of the nails holding them in place, they were silver.
Pixies couldn’t tolerate silver. For however long the tiny immortals survived up there, it was a painful, agonizing existence until they finally died.
Most were dead, but a couple remained alive. Their tiny voices and incessant pleas for mercy filled the room. Pixie music was some of his favorite in all the realms, but this was far from the beautiful songs the creatures could weave. This was utter misery and grated like nails on a chalkboard against his skin.
“I do so love their song,” the Lord said.
Cole didn’t respond.
A rectangular table with ten chairs around it took up the center of the room. Though the chairs were comfortable, the room was not. Or at least, it wasn’t anything that anyone else enjoyed.
The Lord had himself a grand old time as he drank goblet after goblet of wine. He slapped his hand on the table and laughed loudly while he celebrated the deaths of Orin and Varo.
Cole played the game too. He smiled and sipped his wine, but all the while, he plotted how he was going to destroy this man.
As he played the game, it took everything he had not to leap onto the table, race across it, and beat this piece of shit to death. His father was dead because of this man. And this douchebag was celebrating what he believed were the deaths of Cole’s brothers.
Cole would never make it to the Lord before the twenty-five guards crammed into the room intercepted him. And then the Lord would kill him and throw Lexi to Malakai.
Since she couldn’t keep her powers hidden anymore, it would only be a matter of time before Malakai turned her over to the Lord or figured out some other way to use her to his advantage.
He wouldnotlet that happen.
Shadows danced in the corners of the room and crept through his system. They beckoned to him with their power, but he had no idea what that power was or how to use it.
If he unleashed the shadows here on the Lord, as he had on Orin, then the Lord would know there was something more to him. And if he failed to bring the Lord down, then his surprise would be gone, and he would end up dead.
Still, he grated his teeth and twirled his goblet between his fingers as he labored to keep the power of the shadows suppressed while listening to the fucker go on about himself. He contented himself with the knowledge the Lord was so sure of himself that he’d never see his death coming.
By the time the Lord called it a night, his eyes were bloodshot and his words slurred, but he walked out of the room on his own. “Come with me,” he slurred to his guards. “Get out of my home, Cole.”
Glad to have finally been dismissed, Cole rose as the Lord’s men fell into step behind him. They all filtered out the door.
When the door shut behind them and he found himself alone in the room, Cole’s attention shifted to the pixies in the rafters. He couldn’t leave them to such a horrible fate.
He climbed onto the table and located the two who’d cried all night. One was a male completely drained of color. By the time Cole got to him, the pixie was dead.
The other was a female so weakened that almost nothing of her orange color remained. When she lifted her head to look at him, he saw the truth in her nearly translucent eyes… it was too late to save her.
