Page 109 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Jade prowled forward. A group of males, dripping in gold, silver, and expensive fabrics too fine for the outside world, parted for the redhead. Allowing her to brace her back against a pillar dauntingly. She scrunched her bright crimson cloak against the stone and idly twirled a dagger between her fingertips while she burned her gaze into a dark-haired male curling his lip at her.

And if Jade’s presence was somehow not intimidating enough, Thalon was a vision of holy wrath. Silently promising them a Firekeeper-filled death if they so much as twitched. His mask curated brimstoned fury as he strolled below the balcony.

The crowdtrembledat the sight of him. Muscles of ethereal power rippled as he tore his golden sword from his back, slamming it into the granite. Cracking the surface through the warring bear crest in the center of the room.

Aiden sauntered between the masses with a toying grin. Like a cat chasing a mouse, he scanned a group of beautiful courtiers. His arm stretched out to an infatuating brunette with bronze skin glistening under a rosy evening gown. Aiden’s hand brushed across the transparent sleeve before he plucked her wineglass from her ringed fingers, winked, and downed her glass.

Alora mimicked their ruthlessness, adopting a deliberately cold and disgusted mask of her own. With a mannered wickedness in her eyes, she halted at the base of the balcony, drew a throwing dagger, and perched on the steps. One boot crushed the ballroom floor as the other rested two steps high. Draping her forearm across her knee, she displayed the dagger on its tip, spinning it in her fingers while veiling Soulstryker inside her armor.

It wasexhilarating.Knowing these nobles deserved the illusioned wickedness.

What honorable faerie handed Mystics to Magnelis to be tortured?

They deserved this. This fear. This malevolence.

All of it.

Then something caught her eye.

Among the nobility, servants donned in scratchy fabrics and aprons cowered. The innocents held trays plastered with decadent varieties of pastries and pies, roasted meats, fine cheeses melted inside braids of toasted bread, and crystal glasses in a spectrum of colored liquids.

Alora’s eyes threatened to burn with embers as she surveyed the servants. Within the disgusting display of wealth and power and privilege, among palms that had never held a sword or worked one starsdamn day in their lives, these servants lived with a horrific sight she recognized.

Like the brutality on the ankles and wrists of her High Prince.

Scars.

Deep and blistered and some raw.

Garrik had warned her. Yet the shock still blazed through her veins.

Ladomyr’s proclivities involved shackled slaves.

Willing herself not to explode into an inferno, Alora tore her eyes away, whispering a silent curse to the king’s name.

A cheery voice broke her attention.

In the center of the ballroom, Aiden stepped forward, feet carelessly dancing as he began his performance. “Friends and enemies.” His grin flashed expertly, despicable and twisted. “You should be kneeling.” Aiden twirled, grinning at the bronze-skinned female, before he tapped his boot on the polished stone, and suggested, “Get on with it, love.”

Every wary eye of nobility shifted. On trembling limbs, one by one, their knees kissed the granite. They dirtied their expensive finery. Clothes that servants would’ve spent weeks laboring over and taking a beating if they wasted even a thread.

The entire room went still as corpses, heads lowered as movement in the back drew attention to a ruby-crested, golden throne.

The floor quaked. From the walls, tree branches snaked and slithered. Like parting waves, those branches forced a pathway between the court as creatures budded from the leaves and twigs. Breaking away and forming …

Bears. Made of hardwood. Gnashing sharp teeth.

Adorned in a lavish red jacket with golden threads down the chest and brown furs covering the collar of a long crimson cape, an older High Fae male with a semi-short wavy gray beard leaned forward and crushed the armrests with his fists.

Lifting his fuming hazel gaze. “What is the meaning of this?” Fury mingled with the sounds of snarls from his beasts. A crown of golden branches, rubies, and emerald leaves settled on his bald head, shifting in the movement as if it were made to grace another.

But Garrik’s growl was long and terrible, the endless abyss in his eyes as black as the Smokeshadows whorling around him when he warned,“You are inmyseat, Ladomyr.”Razor-sharp teeth gritted under his curled lip. “You were ordered to kneel.”

Braids of shadows engulfed the male on the throne. Seconds later, he dawned in front of the court, standing as if the High Prince allowed him a choice.

Something like a scoff whispered from his lips. “I kneel forno onebut our High King.” Ladomyr didn’t so much as twitch when his bears prowled forward, thirsting for blood as they flanked their maker. Crimson curtains ruffled before guardsmen stormed in from the walls, stirring Dragons to draw their blades.

A golden sword wrenched from the ballroom floor before Thalon’s fury echoed, “You dare to draw on the High Prince?”

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