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“Yes, your divineness,” the young god said as he quickly jerked upright. He tried to gather the scrolls set out before him, but he was a bit of a bumbling mess, and in his haste, he dropped one. The wooden ends clattered against the floor, and the scroll rolled under the table.
“Just leave them,” Aurelius sighed.
The young god nodded quickly, dropped the scrolls, and then briskly walked past me and out the door. The torrent of air that followed his fast-paced wake brushed across my skin—stirring that ominous feeling once more. My skin prickled.
“Sit, wife,” Aurelius commanded, his eyes still not meeting mine.
I did as he asked.
“Now, what is it that you wish to speak of?” He didn’t look at me.
I lowered my voice. “Aurelius, not here. Please, can we speak in private?”
“This ismycouncil, and they are privy to all matters, toallthreats that might impact my leadership.” His eyes, cold as the dead of winter, slid to mine. “So we will discuss the matters between us, right here and right now. The most pressing of them all, my dear wife, is the allegations of your infidelity. You see, before you walked through that door, it was brought to my attention that you danced with the God of Death in frontof everyone. And as I’ve been told, it seemed to be a rather personal affair between the two of you.”
“That’s not fair,” I said softly. “I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”
“And yet everyone at this table would attest that choice or not, you clearly enjoyed it. That it seemed . . . intimate. Like you had both done it hundreds of times before.”
“No, that’s ridiculous.” I looked to Arkyn, my eyes pleading with him to say something, to tell Aurelius that what he had heard simply was not true . . .
But how could he? The God of Truth could not produce a lie. And to say that there was no passion in the way the God of Death had danced with me, the way I had danced with him—well, that would be a lie, wouldn’t it?
“That is what I thought,” Aurelius said, his eyes fixed on me, reading the redness in my cheeks as I recalled the memory of the God of Death stretching my body before him, of his gaze raking across my skin, stirring the embers within my flesh. “I have been too lenient with you and the way that I lead. I see that now. I will rectify that. Starting today.” His eyes drifted from my face to the pile of scrolls sitting in front of me. “Take a look.”
Dread filled my belly as I reached for one of the scrolls. Slowly, I unraveled it, and read the document.
I gasped and snapped the scroll shut, slamming it back down on the table, horrified at what I had just read. My gaze flickered to Arkyn’s, looking for any sign of remorse in his eyes, but I found none. I looked to Aurelius’s two brothers, who both looked a great deal like him, but again—nothing. Were they all truly going to allow this genocide to happen?
I turned to Aurelius, my eyes pleading. “You cannot do this.”
“Oh, dear wife, how wrong you are. I am king and I can do whatever I want. In case you might have forgotten.” Althoughhe did not raise his voice at me, it was impossible not to notice the venom he stitched into each word.
I shook my head, unable to believe that this is what we had come to. “We have lived peacefully with the children of the Old Gods for centuries. You simply cannot just wipe out an entire civilization.”
“I can. And I will,” Aurelius stated, his mind clearly already made up on the matter. “I listened to you before, and I let them live amongst us. But who took up arms against us in the war? They did.”
“Yes, some of them did, but not all of them.” I rose from my chair and moved to his side, falling to my knees, my hands held in prayer before me. “Please do not extinguish an entire race because some of them fought against us. Please, Aurelius, it’s not right.”
His eyes regarded me with little care as I knelt before him. “You have always had such a bleeding heart.”
I wished I could take his hand and place it over my chest and remind him that— “It’s your heart too,” I finished out loud. “Please, don’t do this. Some are just children.”
And for the briefest of moments, I thought that perhaps my words had gotten through to him, but it was fleeting because his expression turned to stone. “Yes, some of them are children, but they will grow up. And when they do, what will stop them from taking arms against me once more? It is a risk I cannot take—Iwillnot take. As we speak, my sentries are collecting anyone who possesses a droplet of Old God blood from this realm. There are already thousands in my dungeons. I will wipe the board clean of the Old God’s descendants—I willcleansethe realms.”
“No!” I shot to my feet, rearing away from him. I hardly recognized the male sitting before me.
“No?” he repeated, as if he had never heard the word before. He stood up, shoving the chair back with the backs of his legs—it screeched in protest. He turned towards me, his head cocked to the side. “Tell me, wife, do you know how you kill the descendants of an immortal?”
I shook my head, not because I was answering his question, but because I could not believe what I was hearing.
“Iron and flame. The iron nullifies their powers, and the fire destroys them. I’m sure you are wondering where am I going to get all that wood to create hundreds of pyres?” He nodded to one of the arched windows. “Take a look outside and you will have your answer, dearest.”
I didn’t need to look to know what was beyond the window. Tears welled in my eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
A sadistic smile. “It’s already begun.”
“No!” I yelled as I rushed over to the window.
