Page 148 of The Crimson Walls Of Algorath

Whether he heard her or not, he did not acknowledge her words. Alek engaged with the officer, trading blows again and again. He scored a deep gash on the officer’s thigh, forcing him to limp, but still neither put down their sword.

Emillie saw the split-second opening when Alek lifted his blade. Unlike the officer, he wore no armor. As he searched for a killing blow to the neck or another exposed spot on the body, the officer had an open target.

The sword punched through Alek’s chest, not unlike what happened to her father. Blood dribbled from his mouth, and as the officer yanked back his weapon, Alek heaved his sword through the air again. The blade cleaved through his opponent’s neck just before his knees gave out.

Emillie did not scream. She had lost that ability when she watched her father die. This time, however, she ran to her husband’s side and landed on her knees in the red mud. She pulled him onto her lap and tore open her wrist.

“Run, Vi,” he choked out. “Hide.”

Vi? Had she heard him correctly? Or did he see someone else as his lashes fluttered over his hooded eyes.

Still, she did not fight the fresh tears that streamed down her face as she pressed her wrist to his open mouth. Somehow, she had not cried them all. “Drink…drink.”

But he did not drink. His eyes, a strange mix of onyx-marbled crimson, stared at the night sky beyond her shoulder, empty and unseeing. No matter how many times she shook him, no matter how much she begged him, he did not heed her pleas to take from her vein.

Emillie sat for a long time in the mud, cradling Alek. The world she had so carefully constructed burned to ash with every slow rock. In her mind’s eye, she watched her father look to her as blood poured from his lips. She heard Kyra’s words, I’m not coming. Now she held the last person who had cared for her, his final act in this life to protect her. Rain slipped down her face, mixing with the tears, and all she wanted was to sit there. To let the world move on around her.

But she could not.

She pressed her lips to Alek’s forehead. “I am so sorry, Alek. I loved you. I really did. Thank you…”

Run, Alek had said, and run she would. He had died to keep her from Loren’s grasp. She could not let his death be in vain. She could not let herself fall into the same darkness that had once claimed her sister.

After lying him gently in the mud, Emillie closed his empty eyes for the last time. She had never noticed the strange tint to them before. Never looked hard enough. Never cared enough to find it.

Her heart shattered, and a moan of agony ripped from her. She stood and wrapped her arms around her as though she could comfort herself as her dead husband had in the carriage mere hours ago. Alone and blinded by pain, she turned to face the world. The woman she loved had left her, and now…now her husband had passed to Empyrean.

After wrangling a dead guard’s horse, she mounted and gripped the rain-slick reins. She wiped her face, smearing mud and the blood of her family across her cheek before nudging the stallion with her heel. The hooves clattered across the bridge before turning off the road and into the wild underbrush.

Emillie did as Alek bid: she ran.

With dawn less than an hour away, Loren looked out of his new study at the lightening sky. The bloodstained rug had been removed at the same time as Markus Harlow’s corpse. Both had been burned unceremoniously in a pyre off-property. He did not need the ex-Princeps’s stench lingering about the home he had taken control of.

He had always known the Harlow Estate would be his. Its grandiosity had called to him from a young age, and as he progressed through the military ranks, he set his eyes on the key to inheriting such magnificence. He was determined to become something greater than his father or brother ever imagined. Darien had always followed his heart. He had not seen what was in the palm of his very hand.

Ariadne Harlow had always been Loren’s. If the dhemons had not killed Darien, there was always the probability that his brother would have found his end in another way so Loren would have his chance. He nearly succeeded, too, if it were not for Azriel fucking Tenebra.

Now, he was a king without his queen—a problem easily rectified so long as he kept his head on straight. She may not love him yet, but he would show her the might of a true Caersan man. Once he found her, they would wed, and she would submit to him as any good wife would do. With her by his side, no one in the Society would doubt his claim. No one would dare stand against him or the many heirs she would bear him.

The only one who stood in his way had been the filthy half-breed. With him locked away in Algorath, he would send word to the Desmo in charge to have him killed. A simple solution.

In the meantime, Loren would use Emillie as his bait. Ariadne would return before long. Between her disgraced husband’s death and her sister as security, she would walk into his open arms willingly.

A knock at the door drew Loren from his thoughts of the future. He turned, hands clasped behind his back. “Enter.”

The door swung open, and a breathless soldier stepped in, sweeping into a low bow. “Your Majesty.”

“At ease.” Once General, always General. He would adjust to the new terminology eventually. “What news?”

The young Caersan stood stick straight. “I have come from the Hub.”

“And does Lady Nightingale accompany you?” Everything was coming together nicely. He would have his wife on his arm within a month.

A beat of silence. The soldier shifted on his feet. “There was a struggle, Your Majesty. All the men are dead.”

Loren stared at him for a long moment. He stepped forward and braced his hands on the desk, leaning onto his palms. “What do you mean all the men?”

“The soldiers,” the soldier said and swallowed hard before continuing, “as well as Lord Nightingale and his guards.”

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