Page 1 of Merciless Is My Crown

PROLOGUE

RAZIEL, 100 YEARS AGO

The crowd’s savage screaming faded to roaring silence when I was shoved to my knees in front of the Keep’s enormous gates, blood dripping from my nose and mouth, my body too brutalized to fight any longer.

The hot sun beat down mercilessly, the boiling heat a shock after being imprisoned in the cold, damp cell for so long I’d forgotten what fresh air smelled like.

Days or weeks, I’d lost track of time.

Weeks, I decided, going by how rotted the soldiers’ bodies were, still spiked to the high stone wall behind me, a stark warning of what happened to traitors to the crown.

I forced myself to look at the long line of broken males I’d led into battle.

To see what the Shadow King had done to these good, decent men I’d failed in every way, our glorious uprising over after a few short months of fighting.

Three fucking months. We’d planned our revolt carefully for a century, assembled allies and weapons for damn near fifty years, and after all that preparation…we’d been routed embarrassingly fast.

Almost as if we had a traitor in our ranks.

I watched blood drip from my broken nose into the dirt beneath me, trying to shut out the jeering crowd, the sickening stench of putrefaction, this crushing sense of failure. Not that our failure mattered now. Not in the face of what was coming.

The handful of soldiers who hadn’t been immediately executed were, like me, kneeling with their heads down, wishing they were dead. The Shadow King had carefully chosen every last survivor himself. He’d kept only the deadliest fighters, the most cunning assassins, the Fae with the strongest magic.

The pragmatic part of me admired his restraint, when it must have been tempting to just kill us all.

Foolish, really, to waste good talent.

The stench of forged iron and burning flesh coated the inside of my mouth like metallic ash as the king came closer and closer. My chest heaved from panic, the words Serpens had warned me to never forget looming in my mind, the threat etched onto my bones, more enduring than the Keep itself.

“From this moment on, you are nothing unless I will it. Every breath you draw, every beat of your traitorous, worthless heart belongs to me.”

The king’s dark magic crackled like lightning when he forged the iron collar onto the helpless male beside me, his anguished grunts of pain turning animalistic, as if the nulling magic penetrated deeper than skin.

As if the king forged that collar to his very soul.

Another minute and I’d be like that poor sot. Powerless. Enslaved.

My chest heaving in wild panic, my pride in tatters, I made a vow.

If I survived this, if I ever managed to claw myself out of slavery, I’d overthrow this soulless bastard and free this realm. I didn’t care who I’d have to kill, who I’d have to betray, I would not stop until Serpens Centaria lay dead at my feet, my knife buried in his chest.

A pair of shiny black boots stopped in my vision, the tips coated with vomit and dust.

“Raziel. My once-great commander turned traitor. How the mighty have fallen.” I managed to lift my head, squinting through swollen eyelids enough to bring the bastard into focus.

The Shadow King was a brute of a male, thinning black hair gathered back from a cruel face with eyes that were a shade too small, lips that were too big. He’d overseen my torture personally, had taken perverse pleasure in breaking my body.

I would heal, eventually, though some parts would never work quite right again.

“I have brought someone to help collar you, boy. Your replacement, so to speak. Zorander Vayle. I believe you two are acquainted.”

My heart stopped beating. If he realized who Zorander was…No, if the king knew Zor was involved in the uprising, he’d be right here beside me or spiked to the Keep’s wall.

“I know of him,” I said neutrally, my dry lips cracking. Denial would be a sure sign of guilt, and if Zor had miraculously escaped detection…then fucking good. Maybe Julian and Tristan had evaded the king’s notice as well. No dead bodies had white or red hair.

Right now, I’d cling to anything that brought a shred of hope.

Zor did a good job of looking bored with today’s sordid ordeal, his dark gaze skimming down the line of disgraced, kneeling soldiers—most of whom he’d recruited personally—his expression never faltering.

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