Page 6 of What Fury Brings
A rock to the head was perhaps the only way to best him.
“Despicable. Unsporting.” Sanos kept his response brief.
“She also had some interesting things to say about you. Rumors ofyou growing more popular than I. Rumors that there are those who wish to see you on the throne before your time.”
Shit.
This was what the king was building toward. More accusations of treason.
“Do I need to remind you what will happen should I meet an early demise?” the king asked.
“No, Your Majesty.”
“Your mother and sister have no value to me. I already have five sons and no use for a daughter. Shouldanythingat all happen to me, I have assassins in place to deal with them. It will not be quick. You will be made to wait years before finding their broken bodies.”
Sanos swallowed but kept the fury from his face. He forced himself not to look away.
Gods, but he hated his father.
If Sanos wanted the throne early, it wasn’t because of any ambitions he had but because he wanted to rid the world of his father’s evil. He wanted his family safe.
Sanos had to learn the hard way that his father was a master at finding weaknesses and causing the most pain possible. When he was ten, his mother declared that they didn’t spend nearly enough time together and took the prince on an outing into the city, just the two of them and a handful of guards. They sampled candies and purchased toys. At the end of the day, Sanos was allowed to select a pup from a local breeder.
But when he returned home, the king was furious. He said the queen had no right to take Sanos away from his tutors. To go into town without his say-so. The king wrested the pup from Sanos’s fingers and snapped her neck before he could even begin to protest.
When he was fourteen, Sanos had a best friend: Vanus, the son of a count. The boys practiced the sword together in their free time. Theyshared their hopes and dreams. Sanos wanted out of the city. He wished to see the world. Vanus didn’t want to be a count. He wanted to be a singer. Sanos encouraged Vanus to follow his dreams, and Vanus said that Sanos would make a better king than Atalius. He should take the throne early and see the world.
To this day, Sanos still had no idea how Atalius found out about the treasonous words, said mostly in jest.
Vanus lost his head, and Atalius had made Sanos swing the ax, else the king would put the prince’s little sister, Emorra, on the chopping block.
Sanos learned that no one could show him any sort of favor or love. The king wanted him isolated so he had few allies should he make designs on the throne. Atalius wanted his son to rely on him and no one else. It was Sanos’s good behavior alone that kept his family alive and intact.
The ax was always there in his mind’s eye, waiting to drop.
So the prince fought the king’s battles and did his utmost not to garner any special favor at all.
And now some Amarran general was spewing idiotic things into the king’s ear. Things that could result in unspeakable horrors happening to his family.
He wanted to wring her neck almost as much as he wished he could kill his father.
Sanos said, “People will amuse themselves with rumors, but that doesn’t make them true. I am devoted to serving the crown of Brutus. I am devoted to you, Father. Any victories I achieve are only because of your training. I win battles for your glory.”
Talking to his father was like balancing on a rope. One wrong word and he’d suffer a one-hundred-foot drop.
The king washed down his meal with a heavy drink of wine. “You mocked me today. With your brother.”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“And what else did Canus find so amusing, then?”
“I told him a joke.”
“A joke, is it? Let’s hear it. Make me laugh.”
Sanos’s mind went completely blank. His brothers had told him all kinds of lewd jokes over the years, but when it counted most, when the skin of his body depended on it, he couldn’t recall a single one.
“I don’t remember it,” he said at last.
