Page 77 of Marked By the Dark Lord
“Well, well, well. Isn’tthatinteresting,” she murmured. “Mich’av, you were just full of secrets you didn’t tell me. Coming back to cause me trouble one more time, are you?”
“I didn’t mean to cause anyone trouble,” I protested.
“Not you, half-breed,” the Dark Lady said contemptuously. “Rather, your father.”
I went still. “You knew my father? My real father?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, the reply devolving into an angry hiss. “I did.”
I frowned. “He’s dead, then?”
“Oh, yes. Him and all his line.” She tapped a chin with one long finger. “Well,almosthis entire line. I had thought they were all gone, but now it seems he left one last surprise. You.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He got you upon your mother, a human. As for your power, he must have bound that away from you. Tied it to something.”
I stiffened. The book?
“Ah, so therewassomething, was there?” the Lady asked.
I didn’t respond.
“You’ll tell eventually,” she said. “I must make sure there are no further surprises left by your father. He was an ambitious one. I’ll give him that much. His plot to take the throne quite possibly would have succeeded … if Aurr’av here hadn’t secretly been working for me and turned him in.”
The Fae who had brought me to the foot of the throne graced me with a broad grin.
“It took me quite some time to stop him and his loyalists,” she mused while Aurr’av and I stared at each other, him with contempt, me with fury.
My attention was wrenched away, however, when the Dark Lady flicked a finger, and blue magic swirled up to take the shape of a face.
One I’d seen before.
Instantly, I was back in my hovel behind the bakery. Magic was swirling around, erupting out of the book as I read the words I didn’t know from the page.
And for a brief moment, an image appeared in the red energy. Of a man with slanted eyes and pointed ears. He had black skin, darker than any human, just like Korr’ok, and his eyes glowed. In my vision, they had glowed red, but I realized now that it was just the magic. Because in the Lady’s conjuring, his eyes were blue. Like hers.
Like mine.
“My father?” I whispered.
“Oh, yes. Yourtraitorof a father.”
I swallowed a giant lump at the reminder that the Dark Lady had eliminated his entire line. Which seemed to be what she was leaning to with me. The last thing she needed was a reminder of my father’s attempt at a coup.
Before she could pronounce my death, or any other sentence, the air in the room seemed to still slightly.
“My, oh,my,” the Lady said, her voice distant but focused. “Now, isn’tthisa coincidence?”
She flung a hand outward, and between us rose the image of a figure standing on grassy plains at the edge of a line of trees.
He stood seven feet tall, with huge muscles and two horns that I knew all too well.
“I call upon Lallandri’av!” Korr’ok called in the vision. “Dark Lady of Mirgave. I am Korr’ok. Son of Char’ok of House Duloke. I seek an audience.”
The Dark Lady’s eyes focused through the vision on me. “First, a half-breed who shows up out of nowhere, and now, the long-lost son of my most hated rival is at my doorstep, asking for an audience. My, oh, my, Aurr’av, isn’tthata coincidence.”
The Fae captain inclined his head in agreement.
