Chapter 42: Forty Two
Valka
He looks different.
Standing in the centre of a vast chamber, back hunched over a table wrecked in half with pieces of a shredded map and broken figurine, Prince--No. The King of Silvermoor sighs. "Have you come to torment me again, Val?"
My throat tightens. For a moment something stupid and dangerous stirs inside me. The memory of his mouth against mine. I hate myself for that memory, for still feeling a punch in my gut whenever I look at him.
Rafe raises his gaze and fixes them directly to where I stand. His stormy gray eyes are bruised underneath from lack of sleep and there is a thick beard growing under his chin. A crown rests on his hair of burnished copper, overgrown now falls down to his chin.
He turns his back to me, gazing out the window. "It’s only been a few weeks since the coronation but they’ve already begun to call me mad," he says in a conservatory manner, like we’re the closest of friends. "It is understandable, though. That they do not share my visions for Silvermoor. Some dream too small. Others too big. They claim I seek the impossible."
I pull away from the wall. Or try to. But discover that I am not corporeal. My hands glide through stone, the edges of my body fraying subtly. I peer down at my fingers and find them to be translucent and it dawns on me with shock that Rafe isn’t speaking to me. He doesn’t even know I’m here, because in truth, I’m not really here.
My feet thread through the chamber lightly and when I come around to stand in front of Rafe, I shiver at the sight of something in his eyes. Or the lack of it. Sanity. He looks over his shoulder, to an empty chamber and speaks to it like I am there.
His voice is soft, almost wistful, and somehow that makes it worse. "If you had been here, you would have tried to stay my hand. You would have lectured me about mercy." His breath fogs the glass in front of him. "And treason is a disease. Left unchecked, it spreads. They should have known better."
A chill spiders down my spine. I blink, trying to catch up, to understand what he’s talking about.
And then, slowly, I follow his gaze to the window.
At first, I think the shapes on the battlements are nothing more than broken banners, fluttering stiff in the wind.
Then, the breeze shifts. My stomach lurches, a soundless scram peeling from my lips. Not banners. People. Or what remains of them.
Row upon row of severed heads impaled on black iron spikes line the great walls of the castle, mouths frozen in silent screams as crows and gulls fight over their strips of dead flesh, their blood dried and blackened.
The reek of death so thick it clings to the back of my throat like oil. Tears blur my vision and my legs give way.
Gods above...
Rafe moves, his robes sweeping smoothly across the floors and he halts by a table packed with books and scrolls, and I stiffen as he raises one in particular. "I found your father’s letter amongst your things."
I’m on my feet, snarling, trying to rip it from his hands, but my hands won’t close around it, going right through it instead. "Give it to me! It isn’t yours!" I cry, but I how can he hear me when I can’t even hear myself? It is like being stuck in a reality where no one sees or hears you, where you can’t touch a single thing. Where you are nonexistent.
"Not one of my best scholars in Silvermoor has been able to decode it. The same miserable language caught with the spies and the long buried tomes." He sucks in a tired breath, tossing the scroll aside. "I sent men to retrieve your mother, but the house was burned down to cinders, the woman long gone. Even in your death, you elude me."
He lifts his hand to his chest, the claws of his fingers shredding the fabric of his shirt as he grips tightly. "You haunt every court, every thought. It doesn’t matter how many times I mark my own bride to forget you. You still cling. I remain bound to you, even in death. I fucking smell you everywhere. I see you in a hundred women and it sickens me." His lips peel back from his gritted teeth. "I am losing my damned mind, Valka. Even now, I speak to an empty room to a ghost of you.
"Mate or not, you were an abomination. Beautiful, loud, impossible to hide. I should’ve killed you sooner, would’ve, if I didn’t let you get under my skin."
He laughs. The sound is delighted and small. It makes bile rise in my throat. "So I will cleanse it," he says. "I’ll rid the world of your kind before the spread further like a viral illness. And when the war finally ends because there is not one of you left, they will understand that your life, those lives outside were but a small sacrifice to pay to ensure eternal peace."
I stare at the man I’d wanted to trust. The first man whose hands knew my skin, and lips kissed mine. The man I’d felt such deep things for and would have stuck my neck out and died for. This is the man who now plans slaughter of an entire race and names it peace.
The King of Silvermoor straightens, grey eyes gleaming. "When this is done, the kingdom will be clean of every last Lycan. If they ask how I did it, I’d say I curbed a growing infection."
He sounds every bit like a king, but in truth, he is the monster he claimed me to be.
****
I’m not what wakes me up first. The still in the cave, the chill that chases me from the dream or the pained grunt that echoes in the dim lighting. But the second my eyes snap open, I am meet with dark green orbs, peering down at me with a malicious glint.
Something sharp presses into my neck, sharp as a knife, causing me to freeze.
"Why, hello there, leech," Lilith Blackspire croons.