Page 7 of Dark Reign

He peered up, scanning the spread that had been laid before us. When his stare settled at the center of the table, I followed it to the crystal pitcher filled with thick, dark liquid—fresh blood.

“Suppose I’ll have a drink,” he replied, reaching to pour himself a serving.

“I’ll have a bit of that as well,” Levi chimed in, extending his hand toward a glass, but never touching it. Instead, he easily lifted it into the air with a mere thought.

I chuckled at the show of his unique ability as the glass hovered before Roman, waiting to be filled. Once he obliged and blood nearly sloshed over the rim, Levi’s fingers beckoned for the cup to return. With it secured to his palm, he took a sip. The evidence of his approval after sampling the quality was an obnoxiously satisfied sigh.

“Still warm. Just how I like it,” he crooned.

I ignored the comment and turned back to my plate instead.

“So, any thoughts on the latest Blackbird debacle?” I asked, reviving an earlier conversation. Before, I was pretty sure the bot was listening in, so I killed the discussion until now.

Levi reared back in his seat, still wearing the expensive, gray suit from when we ventured into the city the night before, the red tie undone around his neck. He propped an ankle on his knee, swirling the contents of the glass he held.

“I, for one, say we reach an agreement here and now, gentlemen.Whenwe catch this scourge,” he offered with a menacing grin, “we sentence her to a unique concoction of our most inventive punishments. She deserves to taste the harshest of deaths each quadrant has to offer. A mere hanging in the square is too lenient.”

Each of us nodded in agreement as Levi continued.

“First, we’ll leave her in the iron maiden for a day in honor of the South,” he laughed, pointing toward Roman as he spoke ofhisregion. “Then, we’ll lend her to the Judas chair to satisfy the West. After that, she’ll be drawn and quartered per the law of our brothers in the North,” he added, nodding toward me when my father’s territory was acknowledged. “And finally, once her limbs have been pulled from their sockets and she’s reduced to little more than a limp pile of tattered flesh, we’ll watch her boil in a vat of oil and feast on her charred remains to the sound of a celebratory festival and grand parade.”

Envisioning the death of Blackbird, he and Roman shared a laugh while I reached for the pitcher. As I poured, Julian finally found his way into the dining room to join us. Judging by his expression, I concluded something wasn’t right. That’s when I remembered his bot had been present when I shared that another donor had gone missing. He only nodded a silent greeting as he dropped down into the seat adjacent to mine and began filling his plate.

Meanwhile, Levi continued his rant.

“It’s only fair,” he concluded. “This …girl …has singlehandedly undermined the very principles Dr. Percival fought so hard to establish and protect.”

“We could always just hand her over to the Butcher,” Julian grumbled, never lifting his gaze from his plate. “Then we could wash our hands of her altogether, move on with our lives.”

“Out of the question,” Roman interjected, speaking through gritted teeth. His gaze lingered on his glass as he traced the rim with a finger. “She’ll suffer before usall.”

There was a distant look in his eyes as he spoke, drifting further with each passing second.

“She doesn’t get to die in secret, in some private corner of the Butcher’s funhouse. Her sins have been carried out for all to see. Therefore, her death should be carried out in the same manner.”

None of us spoke, knowing his bitterness was warranted. The loss he experienced had been at the hand of a rogue faction similar to the one Blackbird orchestrated. Actually, the only reason we were certain shewasn’tresponsible was because the event had taken place in the South Quadrant. To the best of our knowledge, she’d only directly plagued the East. Although, it could be argued that her rogue actions, the message they conveyed, had been just as damaging.

It was time to change the subject, forRoman’ssake.

“Well, on aslightlylighter note, who’s gotten started with the whole … mate selection thing?” Levi chimed in, having the same idea to switch to a new topic.

And quite elegantly, I might add.

I glanced around, taking in the array of expressions my brothers in royalty wore.

Reluctantly, Roman raised a hand into the air, and I think we were all equally surprised. Just a few months ago, we could hardly convince him to leave the house, and now, he’d taken the initiative to explore his options for a mate. It was a good sign.

“And?” Julian chimed in, seeming to have shed whatever mood he’d been in when first joining us. “Were any of them ‘empress material’?”

“Screw that,” Levi interjected. “We’ll get to the ‘tied-down-for-life’ business later. The real question is whether any of them are worthy to grace our sheets,” he added with a cheeky grin.

We’d come to expect these outbursts from him. Mostly, he just said the things the rest of us were too socially conscious to say out loud.

Roman shrugged. “A few were mildly interesting, but as a skeptic of the entire system, I’m probably the wrong one to ask. Are we expected to believeallthese women have been screened by the Dynasty’s coordinators?”

“Thoroughly,” I answered with a laugh. “There’s a multifaceted selection process, followed by a second, evenmorecomplex sifting that further scrutinizes the candidates. When all is said and done, what we’re left with is the crème de la crème of Ianite women,” I shared.

Roman wasn’t biting. “I still believe no one’s more capable of finding a man’s true mate than that man himself.”

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