Page 41 of Vicious Is My Throne

“And turn us into monsters in the process,” Anaria pointed out wryly, shooting me another glare. “I can’t believe you didn’t wake me up for this, Tavion Montgomery.”

“You were fast asleep and things progressed swiftly. In ways Raz and I did not foresee,” I said, glad when she turned her evil eye to Raziel. Better him than me.

“Monsters would be bad,” Bexley agreed. “But there is something else. If the two of them are twins, chances are they share magic between them.”

His brow cocked. “Can you share powers? Do you even know how to access each other’s magic? I think not.” He tossed back the entire glass in one swallow, his thin throat bobbing.

“Given time, you would learn, but the Oracle will never give you that time. She will never allow you to become strong enough to defeat her and her brother and break the stranglehold they have on this world.”

His smile faltered. “She will kill you all before you become a threat.”

“I had a theory that the answer was somewhere in there.” Anaria jerked her head toward the ratty paper. “Now, I suppose we’ll never know.”

She was getting desperate. We all were. Here we were, pinned down in a palace we all despised, surrounded by creeping rot meant to kill us, and we were no further ahead than we’d been months ago.

All we knew for sure was that in order to kill Corvus and the Oracle, at least two of us had to die.

Which was total bullshite.

“I’ll work on the writing.” The mage’s face softened as he looked at Anaria. “Knowing all of this, as unbelievable as it sounds, helps. I’ll try to find the answers you’re looking for.”

“Thank you, Bexley.” Anaria’s smile wavered, but that hope in her eyes glowed brighter, despite our fading odds. “What we really need is a magical weapon that will kill them,” she grumbled. “Enough with the riddles and clues. Just give me a chunk of steel I can stab into their chests and be done with this.”

She grinned up at me. “I know Tavion would love to stab something right about now.”

“You have no idea what I’d like to do now, wife,” I whispered, sliding my hand down her back and cupping her arse, her sweet, warm curves filling my hand perfectly. Raz watched us with a slow, anticipatory smile.

Tristan had gotten a taste of her sweetness last night, but I was fucking starving for my wife.

Thankfully, the mage was staring off into space not paying a bit of attention to us. “But a weapon does exist. There was a picture that kept cropping up during my master’s research on the Old Gods. Somewhere in here…maybe toward the beginning…”

He kept flipping pages until he reached one covered in renderings of a weapon.

And not just any weapon. A sword, elegant but oddly made, with a curved blade——and a handle decorated with the same, strange writing that Anaria had copied all those months ago.

“I’ve seen that before,” Tristan murmured, rubbing his chest. “Somewhere. Somewhere.”

I could hardly breathe because Tristan was right. This weapon was familiar in a way that had nothing to do with the now me.

This weapon struck a chord inside the past me, of fear and terror and dread. Had we seen this in a past life? Been killed by this weapon?

Anaria drifted closer, her fingers reaching for that picture as if she couldn’t stop herself.

“According to legend, this weapon was made to kill the invaders. Either during the Fae wars when Astragulus Centaria marched his entire army into the mountains and returned with only a handful of soldiers. Or when the Vanguard Conclave fought the Mystara, long before the Fae even arrived on these shores.”

Bexley’s eyes landed on Anaria’s fingers tracing the delicate handle, the carefully drawn details.

“I’ve seen many mentions of this weapon over my years and every one shows a red stone set into the end of the pommel. The stone, they say, imbues some special power to the sword, rendering it capable of channeling great magic, turning magic itself into a weapon.”

“That curved blade distinctly reminds me of the witch blades.” Tristan nodded to the rendering. “They have to be the same, don’t you think?”

“Not in the way you think.” Zor, who’d spent the past hour leaned against the wall in the shadows, came forward. “This blade isn’t made for battle. It’s too slender. And see that open area in the center of the fuller? At first I thought the hole was decorative, but I don’t think that’s what it’s for at all.”

“What are you thinking?” I took a closer look at the drawing. The cutout was a strange shape, a line intersecting a…I sucked in a breath. “It’s the same as our markings.” A line leading straight up the fuller to a circle, and in the center, cleverly suspended by two prongs, was a polygon.

“Five sides.” Tristan’s eyes gleamed brighter. “Five of us.”

“Magic united into a fearsome weapon,” Bexley said quietly. “A weapon to kill a god. Or gods, as it were.”

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