The cursed king, p.7
The Cursed King, page 7
“Currently in his lover’s chambers.”
Airk nodded. Samael’s contacts had come through with information, including the fact that Belyy kept a human lover inside his mountain. Not one who showed dragon sign, either. The human remained in a clandestine chamber, never emerging, but that’s where the white dragon spent much of his time.
Their information also told them that Belyy would return to his own suite in the middle of the night to wash away her scent before sleeping. He would not expect Airk to be waiting.
Deadly purpose settled into him, and he leaned into the emotion. He would look this traitor in the eye while he slid his dagger between his ribs, then twist and twist until Belyy was too weak from blood loss to heal himself. Then, and only then, would he snap the man’s neck.
Even dragon healing couldn’t do anything about that.
Raising a hand in farewell to both Meira and Samael, he stepped through the open mirror, then turned to face them. “I will see you in a week.”
Several corrupted leaders cowered inside this mountain, and he intended to take the life of each and every one. Enough, hopefully, to cause chaos within the ancient halls. It would be up to the three allied kings to take it while it lay exposed as soon as he gave the signal. Then he planned to move on to the next man on his list.
“Be careful,” Meira cautioned.
She lifted her hand from the mirror, and suddenly he was staring at a hideous mirror edged in gilded bones. Those of other creatures. Airk had seen enough of them in the dungeons of Everest to know, but he couldn’t do anything for those poor souls. Then or now.
He could only punish those responsible.
The first thing Airk did was check every room. He trusted Meira, but he had to be sure he was truly alone. Belyy had certainly appointed himself the best of the suites within the mountain, greedy fuck.
He frowned over the oddly familiar scent inside the common living area at the center of the suite. Who had Belyy been hosting?
Airk narrowed his focus. Based on a vague memory of visiting this mountain with his father as a boy, he was fairly certain this had been the king’s chambers when the royal family visited. Not that they did often. The Unnamed Mountain was more of an outpost…or a punishment. What did Belyy do when King Volos would come to visit this mountain? Although perhaps Volos, the recently deceased puppet king, loyal to Pytheios before his clan, hadn’t bothered to inspect his mountains or visit the people he ruled.
Did that mean Belyy’s power was even more than a typical Tribune?
Assured that he was alone and that no recording devices existed inside the suite, he determined the best place to lay his trap.
The last thing he could allow to happen was to have Belyy run to the perch outside the large window in the living area. From there, the man could shift, call for help from his guards, or fly away, and Airk would have no way to defend against shifted dragons, or even multiple in their human form, if they came to take him.
Likely, however, that the man would come in from that direction, being the fastest way to reach these levels.
With that in mind, Airk decided to tuck himself into a small room, one of several family or guest bedrooms, at the opposite end of the suite from the bedchamber Belyy used. By the stale smell, the spaces went unused. From the doorway, he had a view down a dark hallway of the living area Belyy would have to pass through to get to his bedroom on the other side, regardless of which entrance he used to access the suite. Once the man was inside and had gone to bathe, Airk would corner him there.
Likely hours from now.
Best if he spent the night in here, containing his own scent to a space that his mark shouldn’t need to visit. He took three steps toward the small hallway, then paused as a stronger, now entirely familiar perfume drifted through the open window.
One whose presence here was impossible—sunlight and summer and fresh air.
Angelika.
Was he descending into madness, scenting her everywhere now? Sheer white curtains covering the windowed door out to the dragon’s perch in the atrium suddenly blew in a wisp of breeze, and he caught the outline of a woman. She stood on the other side of the glass, looking inside. Watching him.
Airk’s dragon roared to the fore, and he clenched his jaw, holding himself together, but a spike of unaccustomed fear—for her—managed to break through. “Angelika?”
She parted the curtains and stepped through, white hair braided in a crown across the top of her head, moving cautiously, gaze wary.
Of him.
She lifted her determined little chin in the air. “Don’t be mad.”
Chapter Six
Pytheios strode at a clip his previously rotting body had not allowed. The oldest of all living dragons, his body had been deteriorating until his recent mating to Tisiphone—with the help of his witch. Perhaps he should have mated and extended his life sooner. The freedom of simple movement filled him with relish, the power coursing through his veins unstoppable. Soon he’d live forever. Though, right now, that pleasure was eclipsed by a fury he planned to take out on the traitors in his mountain.
His money was gone. All of it.
Disappeared into thin fucking air. He’d been so smart, hiding it within human banking systems behind smoke screens of human conglomerates and companies. But someone had found his secret accounts and emptied them.
He needed to take those fucking phoenixes out before he couldn’t afford this war any longer.
But first, he had to deal with a traitor.
With purpose in his stride, he made his way through one of the more populated centers of Everest, nodding at his people, who bowed and scraped as he went.
The mountain commons were unique to his mountain. The early designers had deliberately brought nature inside. Everest, usually ice and snow and cold on the outside, could have been so inside as well. But once the early dragons figured out how to bring sunlight and air to the interior and warm it, they’d constructed a flourishing garden in the center of the massive mountain.
Green rolling hills were dotted with lush trees with pops of color thanks to beds of flowers. The landscape spread up the sides of the cave walls, like a valley. They’d even designed it to rain. The mountain was eternally spring with a stone ceiling for the sky, illuminated by strips of lighting that reflected the daylight outside. This was usually a place of peace inside Everest—one where his people came together. But with a single order, Pytheios was about to turn a corner of this untouchable land into a warning to all.
He nodded at the two guards standing shoulder to shoulder, keeping the gathering crowd at bay, and the rumble of angry voices dimmed as they realized who was in their midst.
Pytheios knew exactly who waited behind the guards. He’d left the fucker here for several days, both as part of the warning and because in his own initial anger he would have killed the man too quickly. He needed information. After that, the traitor could suffer.
One of the guards stepped aside, almost like a living door swinging open, and Pytheios’s gaze landed on the captive chained to a chair. Not any chair. Humans were rarely good for anything, but during the years of their so-called Middle Ages, they’d shown some imagination when it came to torture. This particular device he’d had modeled after one of those.
Made of dragonsteel, it included a stiff seat with the back that didn’t come up to the captive’s neck. Spikes were placed to stick onto the flesh along the spine, at the back of the knees, and along the undersides of the arms.
The mistaken soul who deserved this punishment was chained—naked, of course—not only by wrists and ankles. A collar had been locked around his neck, and another larger one around his middle. If Jakkobah dared to shift forms, the dragonsteel metal wouldn’t break. Instead, it would decapitate him, as well as slicing the man in half and severing his hands and feet.
Blood dripped over the edges of the chair’s arms and seat, pooling in the lush green grass beneath. His pale red hair, typically pulled back in a neat ponytail, hung around his face in greasy strands, and his previously perfectly manicured nails were missing entirely, only bloody, raw sockets where they had been until recently. Jakkobah’s head lolled forward, hanging between his shoulders limply, as though he were either asleep or could no longer hold it up. But his heartbeat told Pytheios the man was awake.
“Look at me,” Pytheios commanded quietly.
Jakkobah slowly lifted his head. For once, his pale eyes didn’t seem to take in the room or even Pytheios himself. Almost as though he was no longer aware of what was being done to him.
Perhaps I have left him too long.
Pytheios waited.
As he did, he allowed his gaze to skate over the liar he had considered his most loyal advisor until a few days ago. Bony to the point of being emaciated, the man was all angles. Unusually pale for a dragon shifter, Jakkobah’s only nod to the fact that he came from the Red Clan was his hair, technically red but really more orange. Even his eyes were milky imitations of what they should be.
I should have known the man they call the Stoat was not to be trusted.
Everyone knew weasels were liars. Thieves, all of them. Jakkobah had proved this truth when he’d stolen from Pytheios. Stolen his secrets and his trust. Caught passing information to Ladon Ormarr. This man had taken from Pytheios more than anyone except Serefina Amon and now her fucking phoenix daughters.
“Ah.” Jakkobah blinked and seemed to return to the here and now, his gaze suddenly sharpening, focusing on Pytheios. “Our ever benevolent, ever wise, ever true High King,” he croaked in that nasal voice that had always been an irritant to Pytheios.
“Take his head!” someone from the crowd held at bay by the guards shouted.
Loyal dogs. Pytheios allowed himself a satisfied smile. “More true, it seems, than you.”
“You lost your way long ago,” Jakkobah stated, almost unhurried.
All reports indicated he’d taken his punishment thus far with not a word or sound. Not for much longer, though. Usually, this man loved to play to the crowd, but he wasn’t doing so now, only addressing Pytheios. Perhaps the urge for those mind games had been beaten out of him.
Good.
“My loyalty is to dragon shifters,” Jakkobah said. “You’ll ruin us all if left to rule.”
Pytheios examined the backs of his hands. He found himself looking at his unmarred, youthful hands often lately. So strange to look down and see young skin rather than age spots, gaping sores, and the flesh falling away from his bones.
He fisted his hands, reveling in the energy, the capability, then bent a bored look on Jakkobah. “Before we get started…a small demonstration.”
A nod over his shoulder, and two of his men escorted Nathair up to where they stood together.
His younger brother—a late-in-life oops on his parents’ part—did not meet his eyes. Not from guilt. Nathair had difficulty looking anyone in the eyes, a condition of his brilliant mind. His dark hair flopped over his forehead and into his eyes, and despite the hold the two guards had on his elbows, his brother’s fingers moved in midair in unison, as though he still held the cube toy puzzle that usually kept his mind from overwhelming him with information.
A toy that had disappeared the same day Airk Azdajah and Skylar Amon had escaped Everest.
Turning to the crowd, Pytheios shared a little story…
“When Skylar Amon escaped, at first I assumed she’d had help or somehow had a power that aided her.” After all, he’d figured out centuries ago how to contain Airk. “But then my own brother’s behavior drew suspicion.”
Nathair’s fingers didn’t pause in their movement over an invisible cube he no longer held. If anything, they sped up in a sign of agitation.
“After reviewing footage of the cameras in the room, I now have proof that Nathair Chandali is directly responsible for her escape.”
And Airk’s. But that wasn’t for his people to know.
“You wouldn’t dare execute your own brother,” Jakkobah sneered behind him. “His mind is too valuable to you.”
True. But then again, he could no longer trust that mind to work for his good. Jakkobah’s betrayal, while a surprise, hadn’t hurt, only enraged. But his own brother…
Even now, the razor’s lance of pain ate at him.
Pytheios slowly turned to face the Stoat, cocking his head in curiosity. At the same time, the guards backed away from his brother on cue. “All traitors are subject to judgment,” he said to Jakkobah.
Before anyone could so much as take a breath, Pytheios shifted a single part of his body. His dragon’s tail whipped out and slammed down on his brother, the mace-like spike driving through bone and flesh with a slurping crunch and a finality no one could deny.
In fact, Pytheios had to shake the corpse off himself before reversing the shift and tucking the tail away.
Jakkobah’s pale skin turned a sickly green as he stared at Nathair’s pulverized body, horror more than evident in his usually blank gaze.
“If you tell me what I need to know,” Pytheios said, not even bothering to glance over as the guards dragged his brother’s body away—Nathair was nothing to him now. “I will make your death as quick. But if not…” He shrugged.
Jakkobah’s horror remained etched in his eyes as he turned them away from the bloody trail the body left behind. “You are so hungry for power, you’d murder your own kin—”
“I judged a traitor. And my rule is not about my power. It never was.”
Jakkobah shook his head, unbelieving.
Pytheios stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I am the only one ensuring that we don’t have to rely on mating some flaming bird to move forward as a species.”
The Stoat scoffed, though the noise brought on a fit of coughing. “By creating a false phoenix and mating her instead?”
At the murmur from those nearest them in the crowd, Jakkobah came as close to a smirk as anything. “Will you tell that to all of our kind after you take out the Amon sisters the same way you did your own brother?”
“A desperate man spreading lies,” Pytheios dismissed with a wave. And silence descended behind him.
What his witch had done…Tisiphone was no longer false. Created, not birthed, she wielded the powers many phoenixes before her had. A weapon he intended to unleash at the right moment. He didn’t need to explain his actions to this man, this betrayer who clearly could not see the future Pytheios pictured. “Now…what did you tell that bastard on the blue throne?”
Jakkobah’s mouth thinned. Weaselly fucker.
Nothing from his former advisor, despite the continued green cast to his pallor. Still…the man had never been privy, until this moment, to the way Pytheios interrogated traitors.
Anticipation welled inside him, fizzing in his blood. He’d make this pale excuse for a dragon shifter break. And he’d enjoy doing so.
…
“What the fuck, Angelika?” Airk said, sounding more like Brand suddenly. Coldly in control as always, but his anger—the first time she’d witnessed that strong of an emotion from him—edged his reaction like embers eating away at a forest floor during a controlled burn.
She held up her hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Hear me out.”
“Nothing you can say could possibly make this right.” He didn’t move closer as he stared at her. “Have you taken leave of your wits?”
Oh, hells no. That question was always a sore spot for her. Forget convincing him. She dropped her hands, eyes narrowed. “No more than you,” she snapped.
He straightened at that, holding himself almost painfully stiff. “You think me a fool?”
So that was his Achilles’ heel? Others thinking that his long imprisonment had broken his mind?
“No more than I,” she said. And maybe the adamant tone in her voice convinced him, because his stance eased marginally.
“I can help you here,” she insisted.
There went any give in him. “I cannot do what I need to if I am worrying about you.”
“I can handle myself. My mother trained us all to fight.” She drew her gun from her holster, careful to keep her finger off the trigger and aiming at the floor as she showed him the weapon. “I’m not defenseless.”
He passed a hand over his face. “Go back to your sisters, Angelika. Pytheios is after you.”
“This is the last place he’d look.”
“You only put both of us in more danger being here.”
She crossed her arms. “People like me.”
He snorted. “What does that indicate? That they would hesitate to kill you because you make them smile?”
She cocked her head, sizing him up. “Do I make you smile?”
“Do not change the subject.”
“I’m not.” She was perfectly solemn, eager, even. “I meant it. If I can make you smile, feel a pleasant emotion, even if only every once in a while, then I can definitely convince others to join us. Or, at the very least, keep them from killing us first and asking questions later.”
“They are going to take one whiff of you and assume you are—”
“Not a phoenix,” she broke in. “Exactly.” She couldn’t help herself, adding a teasing, “Although if we want to fool them into thinking I’m a dragon, it might be best if you rub up against me.”
Yes, she was in the midst of trying to convince him to let her try this. Despite that, her lips twitched at his sour expression, and at the same time her body tightened at the mere thought, blood heating. What an inconvenient moment for awareness to strike like a hot poker.
He crossed his arms. “I am not here to negotiate,” he said, expression going flat. “I am here to kill.”
Angelika’s jaw dropped. Killing people was not part of her plan. “Since when? Meira would have said—”
