Page 60 of A Heart of Crimson Flames
“I am never returning to Damrienn again,” she said definitively.
“You returned to save me,” I countered.
“Because you are mine, Briar,” she said. “And I would go to the ends of the world for you. But don’t ask me to return again.”
I rocked back on my heels at that. She would go to the ends of the world for me. That should be enough. It had to be enough. She loved me, even if she didn’t have the words to say it. I was hers and she was mine, and still...stillI needed more from her.
I tried to hide the pain of it, the fear, that she was unwilling to help them. Maez was so powerful, so strong, she could annihilate the Silver Wolves just as she had in Taigos. There was nothing to fear except the ghosts of her past. But she chose not to go, and I had no control over that decision. It had been foolish of me to think I could sway her. I knew I could push her forever and she wouldn’t budge.
“To the tower, then,” I said, holding her gaze. “At least we can end one evil king.”
“That’s a plan we can agree on.” Her eyes alighted with mischief, and she held out a hand. “Lead the way, Princess.”
WE CUT THROUGH THE ROOMS IN SEARCH OF THE NEW KING. The top floor of the palace was a twisting labyrinth of doors, hard to navigate. And in each room, we found more maids and young pups, the children surrounding the King’s chamber like rings of a tree, protecting their King with his most vulnerable.
“Who uses their young as shields?” I growled, looking around one of the anterior rooms where a human servant wrapped her arms around three cowering pups.
“Sick, evil men,” Maez growled back. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she added tightly to the Wolf pups who flinched at the shooting sparks of her angry magic. “My lightning will carve up a much more appropriate host.”
“Get them out of here,” I said to the human servant. “Take them and whatever gold you can carry into the villages. Raise them better than the ones before them.”
I said it over and over to every carer who’d listen. Sending them from the squalor of the beautiful rooms that had rotted under their confinement. The farther from Tadei, the better.
Maez had told me the way the King had leered at Sadie, of the failed marriages and wives who’d barely escaped... and of those who didn’t. And I knew then why when she swore she didn’t care for anyone but the two of us, she was determined to put an end to this King: she’d lived through this story before.
We got to the last antechamber. This one only filled with mountains of treasure like a dragon hoarding its wealth.
“He uses his young to protect his gold,” Maez snarled. She grabbed a burlap bag and began stuffing it with jewels and coins.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m taking a souvenir.”
“You’ve come for treasure?”
“I’ve come to kill the Onyx Wolf King,” she said. “But stealing his treasure is far more satisfying than pissing on his grave. He will have no need of these riches now.”
“We don’t need this treasure,” I said. “Let the humans keep it.”
Maez shrugged. “I’ll leave most of it to them, just a token for me.”
“Maez—”
But Maez wasn’t listening. She dropped her bag of spoils at the last door and kicked it in. A pathetic yelp sounded when the door banged open.
The place looked ravaged by a madman. The bed upturned like a barricade, shredded open with feathers strewing from thespilling guts of the stuffing. It reeked of piss and shit, the windowless room unable to throw the excrement out. A lone candle was burnt nearly to the nub.
Two bloodshot eyes peeked up from behind the overturned bed frame. Pupils blown so wide that they nearly consumed the sockets, hollow faced, the effects of the mountain flower evident even without its sickly-sweet cloying scent filling the air. Drugged half out of his mind, Tadei watched us.
“Come to finish the job, you monster?” he asked, but his voice was only filled with fear, no heat of venom left in it without his many guards to protect him.
“Everyone uses that word as if there’s only one definition. Take a look in a mirror,King. Look how pathetic you’ve become in only a few short weeks,” Maez said with a click of her tongue. “Only babes to protect you now.”
“You can have them,” he said all too quickly. “Take them, they’re yours. A trade for my life.”
I let out a little snarl, and Maez took another step forward, the brightness of her magic illuminating the shadowed room.
“You are truly loathsome,Your Majesty,” she said.
