Page 34 of Bride to the Fiend Prince
“A little less when you speak it,” he said.
He had that look again, that vulnerable, hopeful look that cut right down to the quivering core of my heart and turned me into a puddle of empathy. It was all I could do not to leap from my chair and hug him tight and kiss him all over his pathetic, pretty face—
He smiled at me, his lashes blinking slow over his dark eyes, and my breath hitched.
“The deal is struck,” I said brusquely. “On with your explanation, Fiend.”
“Very well.” He leaned back in the chair and began. “Long ago, before man emerged as a dominant species, this world was populated by great beasts who possessed intrinsic, natural magic. Their power was raw and unfocused, but tremendously strong.”
“Where did they get their power?”
“No one knows. And even what I’m telling you now is only a theory put forward by the Dreadlord’s sorcerers. When my father and Andreas were young men, roaming the North and wreaking havoc in the name of their own glory, they discovered the preserved carcass of one such prehistoric beast. A member of their band cracked open a bone of the petrified monster and found strange iridescent ichor inside, still liquid after thousands of years. My father fed a bit of the ichor to a slave, and the woman gained a temporary burst of strength and magic.”
I gasped, gears whirring frantically in my mind. “You’re consuming ichor from some old preserved beast’s bones?”
“Technically, yes. My father killed most of the people with him on that excursion, so he could preserve the secret of the ichor until he was ready to use it. Once he and Andreas had figured out how to refine and employ the substance, he began giving it to Terelonian soldiers under the guise of a magical tonic. To this day, most Terelonians do not know the true origins of the tonic they’re given. They drink it at my father’s command, and they battle for Terelaus until the side effects become too severe, and their bodies wear out. And then the Dreadlord calls up more soldiers, and poisons them all over again.”
“It’s horrific,” I said. “And it sounds unsustainable.”
“My father doesn’t give the tonic to everyone,” the Prince said. “He has been strategic with it, until recently. But yes, no matter how carefully he doles it out, no matter how skillfully he spends the lives of his people, it is an unsustainable system.”
“And what is he planning to do once he runs out of people?”
“He has already begun conscripting soldiers from conquered lands,” said the Prince. “It is a never-ending cycle of greed, you see. He wants more ichor, so he conquers more lands so he can search beneath their soil for petrified monsters. But to keep his hold on the new lands, he needs more enhanced soldiers, which necessitates stillmoreichor, which means he must expand his holdings yet again—and on it goes.”
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This was beyond what I’d imagined. Ichor from an ancient beast, giving magical strength and abilities to otherwise normal Terelonians. No wonder the armies of Terelaus were so powerful, and so greatly feared. But the side effects of the substance, the gradual draining and decay of its users—that was a terrible price to pay for an empire.
“If Terelaus doesn’t collapse first, your father will continue consuming men and women, won’t he?” I asked. “He will keep finding more soldiers and feeding them ichor, so he can conquer new lands and findmoreichor.”
“Exactly.” The Prince nodded. “Brintzia should keep him occupied awhile, though. Your people have quarries and bogs where such monsters are likely to be preserved intact. My father believes your entire kingdom to be rich with ichor. He’ll send in teams to pull out the beasts’ bodies, and sorcerers to conceal the secret work from the people of the land. It’s what he does in every nation he conquers. Then he’ll take your father’s armies as his own.”
My father’s armies. My people would be conscripted, dosed with ichor, and sent off to fight the Dreadlord’s wars until they met the same fate as the Terelonians.
So my father’s surrender and his gift of me to the Dreadlord’s son hadn’t saved our people at all. Everyone in Brintzia was still doomed to die—except instead of dying in battle, they’d be dying slowly from the toxic ichor in their bodies.
“Don’t your people realize what’s being done to them?” I asked. “Don’t they understand that their ruler is killing them? They should be able to see the correlation between their use of the tonic and the acute suffering when it wears off. Why don’t they simply refuse to drink it?”
“My father has convinced most of them that Terelaus suffers from a widespread plague that leads to weakness and early death,” the Prince said. “Terelonians believe that the strength and abilities they enjoy after drinking ichor is their true state, as they were meant to be. The sorcerers tell everyone that drinking ichor staves off the plague, so the people clamor for it. They believe they will die much sooner without it. Most of them can take it for several years before they finally succumb to its effects.”
“How long have you been taking it?”
“Only a year.” He examined his own thin fingers, the joints sharply pronounced, the veins showing blue-green through his pale skin. “The decline has been extremely rapid for me, probably because I once had true innate magic. Andreas isn’t sure how the monster’s poison interacted with my body’s chemistry to negate my powers. And he has not been able to reverse the damage.”
“Then we’re back to my original question—why would your father revive such a beast?”
“He didn’t know about the poison,” the Prince said. “He craves power, and he thought if the petrified bones of a dead beast yielded such valuable essence, the body of a live one might do even more. When you think about it, it’s hilarious how thoroughly his plan backfired. He wanted to increase my power, as the greatest of his warriors—but he ended up losing me instead.”
“You’re not lost yet,” I said firmly. “And lucky for us, the monster with the magic-removing poison is still alive. So now all we have to do is collect some of that poison, dose your father’s sorcerers with it, and then—” I stopped short, but the Prince knew what I was about to say. To achieve any freedom for Terelaus and the subjugated lands around it, we would have to kill his father—or imprison him, at the very least.
“You should talk of treason in a quieter and less jubilant tone,” the Fiend Prince said dryly. “And now that I’ve answered your innumerable questions, it is your turn to answer three of mine.”
He rose from his chair, circled the low table between us, and with a soft rustle of black velvet he perched on the arm of my chair. His licorice-and-pepper fragrance sifted into my nose, muddling my head.
I drew away and glared up at him. “What are you doing?”
“I felt too far away from you. This way I can look right into your eyes when you answer, and I can discern the truth of what you say.”
