Page 2 of The Death King

We couldn’t fight. We couldn’t flee. We couldn’t do anything.

All we could do was await our fate.

“Calista.”

My eyes were on the bowl of soup in front of me. It was still hot, steam rising to warm the skin of my cheeks. We’d had a rough winter this year, several feet of snow falling throughout the night, and that just made our woes worse. I lifted my chin to meet my father’s look across the table.

He seemed just as disinterested in his soup. The servants served us like nothing had changed, like death wasn’t marching for our doorstep. The sheets were still changed daily, fresh meals were placed in front of us, and our clothes were still ironed.

I stared at my father and waited for him to say his piece.

He gave a quiet sigh and let his eyes drop slowly. “I’m sorry…for all of this.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“My father had a peaceful reign. So have I. But it seems that luck has run out. Goes to show that nothing ever stays the same…”

I looked at my soup again.

“You deserve to be a child. To be happy. Not to watch your father prepare for a battle against a necromancer.”

I kept my eyes on my soup. “He may not come?—”

“He will. I won’t shield you from horror, but I don’t want you to be oblivious either.”

I lifted my chin to look at him. “What happened…to the people of Kravensworth?”

His eyes locked on mine for a long while. “I don’t know. I imagine he beheaded King Theodore and took his crown. Now, he rules over the people as his own. If it was that easy for him to take the capital, then it’ll be even easier to take the other kingdoms.”

“Then we should surrender,” I said. “Submit to his reign…”

My father stared at the table.

“We recognized King Theodore as our king. What does it matter who sits on the throne if we keep our kingdoms and our heads?”

He remained quiet.

“Father?”

“We don’t know who we’re dealing with, Calista. A necromancer…as our king? It makes me sick. To disturb the peace of the dead, to command the quiet spirits, to raise corpses from the soil to do his bidding…is truly disturbing. Imagine how our lives would change with someone like that in charge.”

Bumps formed across my arms. My heart even skipped a beat, like it was too afraid to make the slightest sound. “But we can’t defeat him…”

He stared at me for a long time, seeming to be at a loss for words. “There are worse things than dying.”

“Roooaaaarrrrrrr.”

I jerked up in bed at the sound, my gently beating heart now in a sprint. My eyes pierced the darkness of my bedroom before I turned to the window, expecting to see something that wasn’t there.

Did I really hear that? Or was that a dream?

I threw off the covers and hopped out of bed to reach the window, the frost so thick against the glass I couldn’t see outside. I tugged the sleeve of my nightgown and used it to rub against the ice-cold glass, but because the cold was on the outside, that was a waste of time. I twisted the clasp then pushed the window open, making it fly back on its hinges. The cold air rushed straight into my face, the temperature so spiteful it made me break out in a cough. When it subsided, I looked into the darkness, hearing nothing.

“Maybe it was just a dream.”

And then I heard it again.

“Roooaaaaarrrrrr!”

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