Page 9 of Vicious Is My Throne

He lifted his head, and in that moment, I saw him differently.

Not as part of our conspiracy, but as a blooded Fae High Lord, with centuries of breeding and education and wealth behind him. The smile he flashed me was filled with ice-cold violence.

“I wouldn’t have changed a thing, Anaria. So long as that bastard ended up dead, I didn’t care how it happened.”

“But that first day at court when we returned from Tempeste…when he gave you back Wingcrest and restored your title and your lands,” I said slowly. “He must have known you were a DeVayne. And if he knew, then why did he leave you alive?”

“Because the fucker needed me.” His gleaming smile was ruthless.

“Once the Oracle found me, once I was dragged into their conspiracy, he couldn’t kill me. Not if he wanted his brother dead and the Fae throne back. That was the original promise, remember? One throne, one king ruling over a unified kingdom. And according to the Oracle, we were the only ones who could guarantee him victory.”

His hands tightened around the reins. “With her prophecy, I became untouchable, and the bastard knew it. There was some small pleasure in that. In knowing he had to look at me and couldn’t lay a fucking finger on me, even knowing what I was.” A little laugh. “Proof of his failure.”

“But you’ve been working for the monster who killed your entire family. How long have you had to…” I shook my head and blew out a shaky breath. “Gods, how could you stand it?”

A bitter wind curled through the trees as if the whole world was taking a deep breath. I thought I heard the high, piercing cry of a bird, but the wind ripped the sound away before I could be sure.

“There were days envisioning him dead got me through the day. Other days when it didn’t. So now you see why Wingcrest, in fact, the whole of Solarys, doesn’t remind me of home at all.” His voice was emotionless, no hint of sorrow.

Tristan was so used to hiding his emotions, it was second nature. I cleared my throat, ready to…

At the head of our party, Zorander raised his fist high over his head with a sharp whistle.

Tristan scowled up at the gathering clouds. “Stay here. I’ll see what he wants.”

Watching him ride off, I remembered the audience when the Shadow King had given Wingcrest and his title back. How Tristan had stared and stared at the king that day. I thought that had been relief in his face, but the look had been pure hate.

It didn’t take me long to put together the rest of what he didn’t say.

The DeVaynes had big families.

Everyone dead, even the children. Tristan had been a child the day the king came to his home. That’s how he knew the Shadow King was there that day his family was murdered. Probably watched them die. Hundreds of years ago.

He’d survived but was forced to grow up, not as the beloved son of an aristocrat in an enormous castle, but as a fugitive hiding from a ruthless king who would hunt him to the ends of the earth and kill him.

Tristan tipped his head toward Zor, nodding,

None of us were what we seemed.

All of us damaged, scarred by those in power, by their greed and cruelty. All of us fighting for the same thing. Freedom. I found that thought comforting somehow.

Tristan was as uprooted as I was. If my hunch was right, his home was nothing but awful memories, and like me, he didn’t have anywhere else to go. And nowhere he really belonged.

A bone-deep sadness leached through me, and I might have wallowed in that misery, except that a cold blot of water hit my cheek, dripping down to my jaw.

A pulse of pain rippled down my face, searing away the melancholy as cleanly as if I’d sliced it away with a razor.

I wiped the droplet away then stared at the darkness smeared across my fingers.

Black as ink. Sticky. Only then I noticed every trunk around me oozed with the same foulness.

Diseased. Corrupted.

My next panicked inhale was saturated with rot.

That putrid odor invaded my nose, burning my already watering eyes as I realized another thing—the forest around us had fallen eerily quiet.

No birds. No bugs. No wind.

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