AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You are nothing,” Vorian snarled between his teeth.
His broad hand curled around the back of Crux’s neck, his fingers dug in, and he flung his father toward the shaft of light cutting through the center of the room.
It only took a second, a flicker of blood sprayed across the leaves from the force of Vorian’s throw, for the deadly gardens to come to life.
Vines sprang out. Beautiful flowers opened wide. And the sound of Crux’s scream was cut off immediately. An aleri flower had torn out his throat, vines burying deep into the gouges in his chest.
Vipha fell. He attempted to scramble back, but Vorian caught him with a foot on his shin. When Vipha cried out, staring in horror as the plants destroyed what remained of his master, Vorian hauled him to his feet.
He looked at me, the emotion in his eyes unclear, and even with my hand still slick with his father’s blood, all he did was nod.
“The king will have to settle for this traitor instead.”
CHAPTER32
VORIAN
Three things kept racing through my mind as I hauled Vipha onto the lift, one arm around Beau to guide him safely away from the murderous garden.
Beau put himself between me and a knife.
Beau was a mage.
My father was dead.
In precisely that order of importance.
It surprised me less than it should, that Crux had tried to kill me. His death, if anything, was a freedom I had never expected to survive long enough to see.
Much more important, Beau loved me. One didn’t jump in front of a knife for a person they didn’t love, did they?
And a mage. I’d felt the moment my plasma spikes had flowed into him, like it had been the most natural thing in the universe. Not strange or magical, but as simple as summoning the spikes to my own hands.
Beau loved me, and now we were bonded. No one could press him to take another warrior, because warrior-mage bondings were for life.
The lift opened on the main floor of the house, the servant standing there wringing his hands. When he saw his bloody master in my grip, he took a step forward as though to help, but I stopped him with a look.
“Your traitorous master is going to find justice with the king. Unless you wish to stand with him in that, move aside.”
And just like my father’s servants would have done, he took a step back, hands and head going down. Vipha spit and cursed and insisted that I was the villain, not he, and that I’d attacked him in his home, and the council would make the king see reason, but he was forgetting something important.
Or maybe he hadn’t noticed, or simply didn’t know how the Mark of Sight worked.
He’d learn soon enough.
It took no time at all to find a terrapad back to the palace, and as we marched toward the throne room, everyone scattered out of our way, staring in shock. They likely hadn’t expected me to ever return, let alone with Beau and Vipha, andnotmy father.
The king didn’t look impressed when I shoved past the warriors guarding the door, ignoring their protests as Beau once again put himself between danger and me. Of course, he didn’t realize the palace guards would never hurt him, but I wasn’t above letting him cut them off. If anything, it would improve his belief in himself.
Sure enough, when we arrived in the middle of the room, he stepped up next to me, drawing himself up to his full height, like any mage should. Like anyone should be able to do.
I tossed Vipha down on the stone floor in front of the king’s dais.
“This is not the criminal I asked for,” was the king’s only comment, uninterested in Vipha’s distress.
I ignored him and looked to where my mother was climbing the dais to join him, watching me with what seemed to be interest for the first time in my life. It was to her that I spoke.
“Crux is dead. Stabbed by my mate—mymage—in defense of my life. I fed him to his co-conspirator’s aleri. It seemed a fitting end to such a worm of a Thorzi.” I shoved Vipha with my foot. “This one was hiding him.”
