Page 85 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

“Mmm,” the King mused, curling his hand into a fist. “Pity.”

38

Maren

Brido coughed.

Emilius still held only my hand, and we watched as Brido barked a gasp low in his throat, as though he’d inhaled dust or flakes of pepper. I pulled away, and Emilius’s grip closed like a vice, the sharp jolt of pain flying to my elbow.

“Let go of me,” I hissed. But the King wasn’t looking at me. He was still absorbed in the footman, who had taken a long, shaking breath and began coughing again. Brido gulped, his hand flying to his mouth, eyes unfocused like he was alone in the dark. He took a step and fell to one knee, rasping and rattling.

“No,” the man moaned, fingers splayed between the long fibers of the carpet. “No!” Black liquid dripped from his mouth as he said it, from his nose and eyes a moment later, heavy and viscous like sludge or oil, until it flowed thick enough to drown out his voice.

I gritted my teeth, knowing Emilius waited for my reaction. “You’re killing him.”

Emilius didn’t blink. “Indeed.”

I’d hoped to avoid singing, but I didn’t enjoy watching innocent men die, especially one with young children. Mouth parted, I sang a whispered tune, not wishing to incant Kye all the way across the King’s quarters and through that stupid, monstrous door.

Emilius yanked my arm, forcing me to face him. The cool humor laced across his mouth eroded into something dark. “Lady Selena used to do that to me. Long ago. I suggest you don’t.”

My eyes widened as I stared at him in shock. I’d always assumed Thaan incanted the King to control him. Could I not?

He smiled as if he understood, pulling me into his side and angling my head back toward the footman. The man sputtered and spat. He began to crawl, belly flat against the floor, but with no sense of the room he simply curled into the wall and writhed like a fountain of tar. Until he lay completely still, eyes wide and unmoving. Black liquid covered his chin and chest, staining his skin like blood, his hair a dark, stringy tributary over his motionless face.

My fingers curled into my palm, revulsion thick in my belly. “I suppose you killed your own servant to impress me?”

From the corner of my eye, Emilius’s mouth curved. “Right now, off the western coast of Leihani, nine of my armada sit poised to launch their trebuchets at the great lord of the island’s estate: a little dirt-soaked shack housing one little fisherman who eats, sleeps, and breathes all alone.”

“You dare—” I wrenched out of his grasp, stealing a step away from him, the corner of the table a blunt stab against my hip. I’d spent the last few minutes tempering disgust and annoyance, but rage leapt against my walls like climbing fire, slamming flame and light and reckless heat from the depths of my chest. “Touch my islands and it will be the last thing you do.”

Emilius didn’t chase me. His voice lowered, calm and controlled, though something vibrated within it, a monster lurking beneath a still surface. He leaned forward. “There were, for a brief few weeks before you married Nikolaos, reports that you were a witch. Let’s not pretend he’d marry so far beneath him out of affection. Out of love. So let me say this once and let me say this very clearly.”

He licked his shiny lips. “If anything happens to me, Thaan will give the order, and your father will be buried under a river of iron so deep and fast he’ll never even miss the light as it extinguishes from above.”

My vision vibrated like waves of heat over burning sand, the room torched with the color red. A vein pulsed angrily in my forehead, aching under the sudden rush of blood, the bitter tang of silver washing over my tongue.

Emilius stepped closer. “You will go to Leihani, and you will convince no less than one thousand islanders to join my armies.”

I bared my teeth at him, thoroughly finished with the one meal I’d ever share with the King of Calder. “Convince your own people.” The table lurched as I shoved myself away from it.

“Open that door”—Emilius’s voice followed me across the room—“and I’ll kill him.”

My hand had already landed on the door latch, already rotated the bolt to unlock it. I froze.

He hadn’t moved. I’d thought he meant Ano. But I turned slowly to look at him, exactly where I’d left him. Emilius’s arm casually draped across the back of my chair, he slid his black diamond back and forth over his finger, gaze slanted at the door to my right. Cold water dumped into my belly, heavy and sick.

“You’d stoop low enough to threaten your own son?” I asked, the hair at the nape of my neck lifting.

The King’s eyes met mine. “He’s not my son,” he replied, the words quiet but hard.

I stared at him, unbelieving, unwilling to believe, pressure building in my chest like a river against a dam. Vast and wide and unforgiving, pummeling against my walls with a sudden wrath I couldn’t unleash fast enough.

Wrath like smoke and stone and molten fire, the taste of it hot on my tongue.

I didn’t count my steps. One moment I was almost out the door.

The next, Kye’s knife was in my fist. My fingers wrapped over Emilius’s wrist, slamming it to the table. The blade severed it with a single slice.