Page 42 of Tricky Princess
She took a steadying breath and told her powers to chill. This was what she and Azzy had been working on.
“The living no longer separate themselves, they shouldn’t be separate here.”
The lord waved his hand. “They’re fine.”
“Clearly, they aren’t!” She swallowed and shifted her shoulders. With a much calmer voice, she continued, “Jocelyn was unhappy, and from the sound of it, you have a lot of unhappy souls to deal with.”
“Who’s Jocelyn?” asked a reedy-looking demon in a black suit.
A few lords shrugged their shoulders.
“The soul I rescued.” She said it through gritted teeth.
“Regardless, child—”
Ellea’s powers crackled visibly across her skin. “Call me child. One. More. Time.”
Azzy cleared his throat from behind her, and she refocused, but relished the scared look now on the lord’s face. She didn’t need him to be scared, she needed him to understand that this old way of doing things would not work.
“Regardless, this will not happen again, and we need a plan to calm the current unrest.”
“How about you solve the unrest by moving the souls where they want to be?”
The lord shook his head and looked away from her.
“Are you upset because it’s tradition or because you lose power if a territory gets more souls than you?”
That got his attention back.
“And what’s the big deal? We are talking about two territories.”
“How would it even be managed?”
So they wouldn’t say why it was such a big deal.
“How is it managed now?”
“See, you know nothing and you are going around trying to change something that has been in place before you were even thought of.”
Don’t kill him.
Kill them all and let’s start fresh.
She inwardly glared at her powers. It felt like a different being pacing in the darkest part of her mind, desperate to be unleashed on the demons around her.
The lord began speaking as Ellea leashed her powers. “The Gods’ magic is what chooses where souls go. They came from a world where each species had their own realm and that is how it is here.”
Murmurs of agreement rang around the room, but only from the lords; all three kings looked solemn. Thankfully, Beelzebub and Belias were still being subdued by Florence.
“Magic can be altered.”
“Says the child witch.” He wheezed a laugh, and Ellea thought of a new stabbing maneuver Florence had taught her two nights ago. With the right angle, you could thrust up and stab someone through a couple organs and then sever their spine. “Only the Gods can choose. Only the Gods can change things.”
“Wake them up! Things are different now.”
Finally, a king stepped in, and Ellea resisted the urge to sag with relief. That feeling quickly died as Levithan spoke. “That’s enough. We have heard both sides, and there will be no change. If a soul becomes restless, we will simply start over with them. Everything will be fine.”
Fine? Fine!
