Page 84 of Merciless Is My Crown

I opened my mouth to point out that she’d freed these witches as well when Zephryn, of all people, swung his feet down off the chair and shoved to his impressive height. His lazy smile raked over the room, leaving everyone shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

Anaria might be the most powerful in the room, but the dragon shifter was the biggest predator.

“True, we have no army. But there is enough gold in Darkhold to fund the biggest army ever amassed in the history of this godsforsaken world.” The dragon shifter dipped his head to Anaria. “You want to kill Serpens and take back Solarys? I will give you enough gold to do so.”

“Or we assassinate him,” Raz muttered from the back of the room. When everyone turned in disbelief, the bastard just shrugged. “What? No armies going to war, no innocents dying for his cause. Or ours.”

“You’re suggesting we go into Solarys and get close enough to the Shadow King—and we’d have to get pretty fucking close—and stick a knife in his heart?” I shook my head. “You are certifiable.”

“Well, preferably between his third and fifth rib, but yes, that is what I’m suggesting.”

“And who would do the honors?”

“I’ve killed over two hundred people for that monster because of that fucking collar.” Raz shrugged again, even more casually this time, and every eye in the room fell on the line around his throat. “What’s one more?”

“How much gold is at Darkhold?” Anaria asked instead. “And doesn’t it belong to someone?”

“There is nothing left of my kingdom, and if the gold can do some good, it would be better to free an enslaved kingdom than rot under a mountain of rock.” Zephryn managed a faint smile. “Yes, I know, that is not very dragon-like thinking, but it is how a king thinks. I would like to propose a formal alliance, Anaria of Caladrius. Between the Kingdom of Darkhold and you.”

Everyone in the room was sitting upright, their eyes ping-ponging between Anaria and the dragon shifter sucking up all the air in the room.

“I’m not sure what I could offer you in return, Zephryn,” Anaria murmured softly.

“You have the will to change the world. And that, alone, is worth every ounce of gold beneath Darkhold.”

32

ANARIA

Zephryn’s lazily arrogant claim about having enough gold to buy the largest army in the history of the known world brought the meeting to a quick close and thank the gods for that, because now I was finally doing something I actually wanted.

Creeping down a dark set of steps that might very well be haunted.

“I’m the only one who’s been down here in three hundred years,” Bella whispered, the constant breeze battering her torch so badly there were heart-wrenching moments of almost total darkness as we descended the spiraling stairs.

“Vireena boarded the library up but didn’t think books were important enough to guard.”

The flickering torch revealed the boards nailed haphazardly over a door twenty feet tall, the frame engraved with strange symbols. “Follow me. It’s through here.” She ducked beneath a loose piece of wood and disappeared through the narrow opening, the keys at her waist jangling faintly.

I crouched beneath the boards and lost my breath when she lifted the torch over her head.

The coven’s library rivaled Torin’s room at the Citadelle, shelf after shelf of books in all shapes and sizes stacked to the ceiling, unused rolling ladders covered with thick cobwebs and an inch of dust.

If abandoned had a smell…this was it.

Opulently rich and desiccated and dusty at the same time, but gods…I took another deep inhale. I could smell this scent all day and never grow tired of it.

“Welcome to the great depository of the High Barrens Coven.” Bella swept her foot over the dusty floor, revealing an inlaid symbol—a triangle within a circle—of deepest black against the once-beautiful wood. “Besides me, you are the first person to set foot in here in three centuries.”

“Since Vireena became priestess,” I murmured, my faint whisper creeping over the cold stone walls. “What did she do? Challenge your old priestess and kill her in the Arena?”

“Hardly.” Bella shot me a sideways glance while she set the torch into an iron holder.

“She murdered our old priestess while she was on the throne, ripped the crown off her head, and sat down in the pool of blood. Then she ordered her loyalists to kill anyone she marked as enemies. More than a hundred innocents died that first day alone.”

“So she staged a coup?” I didn’t like where this was heading. “Do you remember anything about the Wynters? Lord and Lady Alaric Wynter?”

Again with that knowing, sideways glance. “I know the Wynters’ story all too well,” she said quietly. “After she took the throne, the first thing Vireena did was send Alaric and Zephora to Tempeste with enough wealth to buy the entire kingdom. The next we heard, they were part of Carex’s inner court and had built a palace high in the mountains.”

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