Page 65 of Blood of Two Crowns

Malekai’s laughter slowed enough for him to speak as he gave Pomona a bloody but no less dazzling grin.“Be a lamb and close the door, would you?”

Excitement flooded my veins as I braced myself for Malekai’s next punch, sucking on the blood from my split lip just before Malekai’s fist connected with my jaw. I stumbled backwards again, falling against the lockers as my head spun and raucous laughter consumed me.

Roderick giggled, and even Rumiel’s and Rayne’s lips twitched in amusement.

Pomona shook her head, giving us her most maternally admonishing look. “You’re bothinsane.”

Lokus’ eye’s bounced between us, looking thoroughly unimpressed. “This locker room smells worse than an unwashed asshole. If you’re gonna trap us in here, the least you could do is make it worth it. None of thistit-for-tatnonsense. I want a real fight. Between real males…”

Something silent passed between us when Malekai’s eyes met mine as I peeled myself from the lockers.

Our wild grins widened.

“And those can only ever end one way, boys…,” Lokus continued.

Malekai and I turned to look at him as he nodded and gave us a stern look.“With someone’s dick in your mouth.”

Silence fell between us for a brief moment before the group of us erupted in laughter. Val smacked Lokus on the back of his head, who had the audacity to look affronted.“What?Don’t you,of all people,try to tell me you wouldn’t buy tickets to that show.”

Chapter

Thirty-Six

MALEKAI

Pride blossomed in my chest as I watched Nakoa inspire an audience of thousands of soldiers that I had commanded for decades. I had never seen them so impassioned.

Or so unified.

For once, they’d been given a cause worth dying for, all for a Kingand Queenworth fighting for. The fact that that cause was Mareina—a female many of them had fought beside and hadearnedtheir respect—was more than enough to inspire them. With the added threat of the open portals… the threat of imminent doom… It took very little to inspire them to raise their arms.

The plan was rather genius on Zurie’s part. And more benevolent than she’d ever seemed capable of.

Chills rose on my skin as Nakoa’s powerful wings beat the air, lifting him high above a sea of soldiers all dressed in dark green and umber fighting leathers. His voice boomed through the coliseum, and I swore I could feel the crackle of electricity.

“Your Queen gave her life to protect this realm! To protect you, her people! But she is alive and suffering at the hands of the demons who have robbed us of the greatest Queen Atratuswould ever know! And they will suffer the wrath of Atratus for daring to take what is ours!”

Our soldiers raised their swords as another impassioned roar rent the air.

If only Mareina could see this. See how much she isloved.

Keres was nowhere to be found, likely glued to Zurie’s side.If she was still alive.Without Zurie, it was a risk to go through that portal… Though, before we’d left Nissi Tis Pillis, I’d taken Azrael’s blade, and somehow, the words she had spoken stuck. They’d repeated over and over again in my mind.

When I was a child, my parents had spoken their native language only when they thought I was too young to understand, or too distracted or far away to hear. On the few occasions I’d tried speaking it, I was admonished for it. They’d never spoken it in public, and at hearing their accents, if anyone asked where we were from, they’d only ever said Hades.

When I asked,they told me we were from Hades. I had been born in Atratus to parents who, as far as we knew, were the only ones who had survived the drakonati genocide. The only time we would shift into our drakonati forms was late at night, and we’d venture out to sea where no one could see us.

And instead of flying, we would swim.

It wasn’t until after my mother was killed during the war that I’d flown for the first time. I’d been desperate to share my secret with Mareina, but I’d kept hearing my mother’s warning voice.

“Trust no one with your secret, tessari mú. Always remember that it was love that incited the genocide of our people.”

It hadn’t been. It had been hatred. It had been an old sanguinati king with a young wife who fell in love with a drakonati slave that got her pregnant. The sanguinati king hadn’t even realized until the child grew to be an adolescent and had his first shift. The king murdered his wife, and there were rumors as to whether or not he’d succeeded in killing the child.

My parents never told me this. I’d read it in a book, in Zurie’s library of all places, many years after my mother had been killed.

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