Page 69 of Princess of Death

I recognized the moment based on the stories I had heard. It was the moment my father reclaimed the Southern Isles in his name, usurped the tyrant who had nearly condemned his homeland to extinction.

“Why are you showing me this?” I turned back to Wrath.

His eyes remained on my father as he walked past us. “You will see.”

I turned back to my father, who was rushed by a dozen soldiers in charge of protecting the castle. I felt a jolt of fear when I watched him battle them single-handedly, and I reminded myself that I didn’t need to worry about the outcome of this battle. With a ferocity he’d never shown me when we sparred, he cut down the soldiers like they’d personally wronged him.

And then they began to scream.

Soldiers who had just been executed sprang up from the ground and continued the fight—but against the other soldiers. The earth moved from the cemetery, and corpses that were mostly bones climbed out and surrounded the fray on all sides.

My eyes couldn’t believe what they were seeing—an army of the dead.

I moved close enough to Wrath that I could feel his arm. “What—what is happening?”

He didn’t answer.

The last soldier was slain and hit the ground, but then eyes snapped open once again, and he took his rank—behind my father.

My father stepped forward and drew closer to the double doors of the castle. In present times, it had the family name Rothschild carved into the wood. But at this time, there was a different name. Augustus.

“Fight me like a man, or die like a coward.” A gust of wind blew through and flapped my father’s cape into the air. He brandished his sword at his side, and even from the rear, he looked villainous. “Barron!”

I’d never seen my father so angry. Didn’t think he was capable of being that angry.

Then the doors slowly swung open, and the man I assumed to be Barron came forth, dressed in hard armor similar to my father’s, followed by his two sons. Barron was a decade or so older than my father, at least in appearance. He was heavier and looked unmatched athletically to battle my father with the sword. Buthe was fused with a dragon, and using that reserve of power would make him formidable.

There was a silent standoff, and even though I knew the outcome of this, I held my breath anyway.

Barron was the first to speak. “I look upon the Death King, a necromancer who’s taken the Northern Kingdoms with fiery death. But I still see Talon Rothschild—a boy.”

I spoke in a hushed whisper, like the past would be able to hear me. “A necromancer…”

Barron unsheathed his blade and stepped forward. “You’ve come all the way here to join your kin—how touching.”

They exchanged more threats back and forth, and then the silence was interrupted by a roar from a dragon I didn’t recognize. “Rooooaaaaarrrrrr!” Nearly twice the size of Khazmuda, he appeared, going straight for Khazmuda in the skies above. Fire from their mouths erupted and sprayed the courtyard, setting the trees and brush aflame. Constantine tried to burn my father, but my father evaded the fire and regained his stance. The place erupted in flames, and soon, every living thing was set ablaze. The smoke was worse than it’d been moments ago, and now the sky was a combination of ash and fire.

Then I heard the drums.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Except there were no drums. The dead began to beat the hilt of their blades against their chest plates, all in sync. They surrounded my father and his opponents, not intervening in the oncoming battle but participating with their intimidation. The beats became louder as they slammed their swords harder.

I looked around at the dead corpses that haunted my father’s opponents, my own ancestors who took up one last call to fight.

Then my father joined in, his fist to his chest, hitting it so hard it seemed like the plate would cave in from his beating fist. He approached Barron with his sword in his grasp, the world hot from the flames that surrounded them both. “This is for my mother.” He continued forward, beating his chest along with the dead. “For my sister, Rosella.”

Barron readied his sword. So did Jairo and Kael behind him. They did their best not to appear afraid—but they were definitely unnerved.

“For my brother, Silas.” My father started to raise his voice. “For King Bolton Rothschild—my father.” He came toward Barron and stopped beating his chest. And the second he did, so did the dead who supported him. When he spoke again, it was a scream that I would never forget. “And for Vivian and Lena—my wife and daughter—the people I loved most.You took them from me—and now I’ll take everything from you!”

I watched my father defeat his enemies with angry tears and burn them alive. I watched as my castle burned, as the courtyard was destroyed by fire and ash. I watched my father reclaim his lands in our family name.

But now, I saw it differently.

The moment abruptly changed when Wrath took me to the same place, but a different day. Now, it was sometime in the middle of the night because it was dark and no one was around. The smellof ash was still potent. The stakes where Barron and his family had burned were just a pile of ash now. All the trees and flowers had been destroyed by the carnage.

My father no longer trembled with rage he could barely contain. His eyes were dry, but he looked so devastated, it was like he’d lost the battle. I’d never seen him look that way in my memory, even when I disobeyed him and he punished me, or when he was stressed about a food shortage in the kingdom or the horrible drought we had one summer.

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