Page 31 of Brutal Fae King
“Councils and advisors whohate me!” I clap back.
“My entire village hatedme!” she sneers.
“Yes, but have they tried to kill you?” I ask
She glowers but drops her gaze; I take that as my answer.
“My council has! I had to fend off my first assassination attempt ateleven years old!” I snap. “If all you’ve had to deal with is village gossipers, then don’t ask for pity fromme!”
“Well, don’t ask for pity from me either!” she grunts. “Your council hating you is no excuse for all the kidnapped and murdered women—and everything else you’ve done!”
I can hear the outside now. The screaming, the chaos. She hears it, too; as she finishes her sentence, she’s trailing off, looking worriedly at the windows.
“You want to know why I do what I do?” I demand.
She looks at me, a little fear dancing behind the strength in her eyes.
“This is why!”I snap, and I draw the curtains around the window back.
She looks around, out into the castle town of Eyston, and gasps.
I take a second before I turn to look. I know it’s awful, and it takes me a second to build myself up to seeing it up close again.
The castle town was once the pride and joy of Faevea, as glorious and beautiful as the keep itself. It used to have shining white marble cobbles and carved pillars on almost every building. It had a glory to it that every citizen shared in, feeling grander by association with the city. That wasbefore.
Now, every cobble is stained with so much mud and blood that they will never be white again, I’m sure. The pillars have been overturned, whether by exposure to nature, collateraldamage from the wars, or purposely overturned by the bitter. The city is drenched in the remains of chamber pots, carelessly overturned in the streets. Corpses rot, with none caring enough to even drag them away. There are too many dying daily for any to keep up with digging graves. Even mass graves. And so, rotten flesh flecks off the bones of skeletons, both humanoid and animal, mingled together in a horrendous orgy of putrefying meat.
Even now, they fight. We pass by, and I see a Naga hanging from the roof of nearby ruins—once a fine building, I’m sure—and throw something. As we continue rolling by in the carriage, we see it land and explode. She flinches away from the window as it does. There’s screaming from where it lands, and I see others—either human or dark fae, I cannot tell—begin sprinting toward where the Naga was, weapons in hand, set on revenge.
“Oh, my…Gods!” she gasps. “This… this can’t be—!”
“This is the world,” I grunt. “A stranger to itself now.”
“B-but Eyston is this magnificent city!” she gasps, looking at me. “It’s a hub of art and culture! I-its streets are paved with gold! It’s where the beauty of Faevea lies!”
“All ash in the wind now,” I answer. “That’s what it once was. The human settlements are so far away that it doesn’t surprise me that the news of its ruin hasn’t reached you.”
I glare at her.
“So, tell me now—tell menow—how unjustifiable everything I’ve done is!” I snarl. “Look me in the eye and tell me a harsh guard response isn’t warranted or that large-scale magical assault to prevent reinforcements from sieging the city isn’t necessary.” I lower my head and glare at her even moresharply. “That keeping the humans in the frozen North wasn’t the right thing to do.”
Her gaze softens a touch.
“You’re whining about crops being hard to grow up North,” I growl. “Butthisis the alternative!War!And not just any war—war between magically empowered species that have no qualms about taking humans as spoils! Your people could barely survive the Weeping Fever—you think they would survive being poisoned by Naga? Or struck by sirens?! The ice settlements are the only territory none fight after—it’s the only territory where humans would be safe!”
She just stares at me for a moment. I glare back.
“What?” I ask.
“I didn’t know your sympathies lay with humans,” she notes.
“My sympathies lie witheveryspecies!” I snap back. “Butthisland does not need a sympathetic king right now!”
Again, another moment of silence—relative silence, considering the chaos reigning outside—where she nods.
“And,” I say. “despite every effort on the part of me or my war council, things continue to decline. Our only hope to save the kingdom was the lost queen—the one fated to save us all, or raise the kingdom to the ground, depending on who got his hands on her first.”
She looks up at me, frowning.
