Page 103 of The Oracle of Dusk

She shook her head.

“Try to warn her, please.”

“I will.”

As he was taken from the vivarium and paraded through the halls of the palace like a living statue, servants and guards alike gawked and stared. Here was the king of Aureum, humiliated for their amusement. He vowed bloody vengeance, anger a much more palatable substitute for fear. The palace would soon be overrun with monstrosities, and then Batea would paint the walls in blood—vengeance was assured even in the event of his death. When he was finally brought before the princess in a receiving room, she waved the guards off.

“I’ll take it from here.”

Once they were alone, she sighed.

“You should have signed the treaty,” she began.

He shrugged.

“You’re about to have bigger problems.”

“Oh?”

“Monstrosities will soon appear in the vivarium.”

She barked out a laugh.

“Was the paint poisoned? Have you gone mad?”

“If you have any sense left in you, allow the paladins of Justice to enter the palace and negotiate peace with them. Keep them here until the sun fully sets. If I’m mad, you’ll merely solve a headache for the palace. If I’m right, you’ll save your wretched guests from being devoured. Well…some of them.”

She eyed him with complete bewilderment before she wiped the expression from her face.

“As I said, you should have signed the treaty. You might have saved yourself this humiliation. And there is more to come this evening, for you, and for your…paramour.”

“If anyone touches her—”

She held up her hand and rolled her eyes.

“No one will. You, however, will be expected to, intimately, in front of an audience. You should have left her alone. Instead, you brought her to Her Majesty’s attention. What happens now is a result of your poor choices.”

The last little piece of the puzzle in his mind fell into place. No wonder he’d been so keen to accept his fate in her vision—why he was now determined to face the monstrosities rather than risk flight and eventual capture. If he tried to survive, to flee, to resist, Flora would use her magic and force someone else’s soul inside him, using his body to violate Aurora for a crowd, rendering him without honour for all to see. He would rather be dead than do that to Aurora—to allow someone to do so through him. Given the choice between a noble death protecting her and living as his fairy’s nightmare, he would always choose death. A strange sense of calm swept over him. There was no escaping what was to come. In fact, he had no desire to. Better an honourable warrior’s death than a wretch’s life.

Theron tuned out most of the rest of what Epicasta threatened, numb to it all. Soon, her scheming would be someone else’s problem. He didn’t know how long she went on for, only that the sun had begun dipping low.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have a party to attend,” he said.

“You…you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said.” She raised her brow, her expression acidic.

“No.”

“Serves me right for trying to help you,” she muttered.

“You should call the paladins now.”

She rolled her eyes and rung a bell. The guards entered and took him back to the guest palace, where entertainers were beginning to set up in the exact spot the monstrosities would bubble up from. For some reason, it gave him hope. He would die with his honour intact. Aurora was already waiting for him, doing her best to warn whoever so much as glanced at her. But just as all the times before, no one listened to her.

Guests began arriving, leering at him and Aurora, at all the prisoners of the vivarium. Entertainers began playing music, servants circulated through the growing throngs with food and drink. Theron refused to reply to every jab and insult. What did it matter? Soon they would be dead, the same as he. Aurora continued her fruitless attempts to save them, to convince them to flee, only to be met with mockery and sneers. He did his best to shield her from their views, pulsing his magic into the eyes of any who dared allow their gazes to linger on her, a not-so-subtle warning to find their perverse pleasures elsewhere.

But as the sun dipped lower, and the scene was bathed in the exact same light as her vision, he prepared himself. His blood thrummed through his veins in anticipation.

“You should go somewhere safe now, madam fairy.”

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