Page 32 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
CHAPTER13
We drift down the hall where all the other rooms are now shut, passing a few soldiers as we go. We stop at the tall ebony doors of what I know is the throne room from when I passed it with Ediye. Ashen pushes them open and I enter it for the first time.
“I wanted you to see this space, so you could decide how to make it yours,” he says as he walks into the massive room.
Tall, narrow windows look out across the Bay of Souls, the horizon of the black water veiled under heavy fog. The vaulted ceilings ascend several stories to slanted skylights, and the room is filled with gentle light even though they don’t breach the clouds. In the center of the room is a long, black marble table surrounded by matching chairs finished with black velvet upholstery, all facing the dais where a single throne looks out upon the room, framed by the view of the anguished sea.
“Well, the room brings the drama,” I say, turning slowly to take in the tapestries and paintings hanging along the walls, all in dark colors with pops of red that display many acts of carnage. I point to the nearest tapestry, which seems to be one in a group of eight similar works. “Big fans of impaling, I see.”
“Yes. I thought you should see what kinds of changes you’d like to make.”
“Burning the tapestries is a start.”
“Noted,” Ashen says, the smile warming the edges of those two syllables.
I continue on toward the table, running my finger across the spotless, glossy surface. “I don’t want the throne on a dais either,” I say as I look at the chairs, trying to envision the Council of the Shadow Realm sitting around this innocuous slab of stone. I imagine Ember here among them, her expression likely smug and self-important after sending me to be tortured at the hands of Gallus. Did any of them pretend to be merciful when they talked about their sentences against immortals like me? Or had they given up true justice centuries ago? I guess those are questions only to be answered by imagination. All I know now is that I want it to be different. I don’t want to justpretendthat anyone else has a voice, even if I may be the person who ultimately has to decide which souls to save and which to take. “When we have a new Council, I want to sit at the table with them.”
Ashen’s voice is as rich as thick honey warmed in the sun. “As you wish, vampire.”
I smile to myself as I drift toward the dais, Ashen trailing behind me like a faithful shadow. I draw closer to the tall black throne.
“It doesn’t scream‘mercy’to me. It more just…screams,” I say, leaning forward to sniff one of a semi-circle of little heads adorning an iron skull in the center of the high backrest. I recoil at the musty scent of the leathery old skin. I touch it with a tentative finger and it’s surprisingly sticky. “Eww, Ashen,what the fuck.”
“Yeah… Eshkar had a fascination with shrunken heads and bodily preservation. You should have seen him when Body Worlds became a thing. He was giddy. It was the only time he went to the Living Realm in the last century”
“That’s a lovely story. And I amnotsitting on that throne, Reaper. Get fucked.”
“You are a surprising creature to me, even now. I find it odd that you would be bothered by it, all things considered.”
I level the demon with a dead-eyed glare. He manages to contain his smile, but it still lights up his eyes.
“I may enjoy killing humans, but I drink their blood tolive, Ashen. I don’t cut their faces off and make them into upholstery. That’s just so Leatherface, or that dude from American Horror Story.”
“Oliver Thredson.”
“Right.” I give him the side-eye and he throws his hands up as if to say it’s not his idea to make skincloth. I turn back to the fuck-ugly throne and poke one of the little heads that has a fuzzy tuft of dark hair. “Regardless, I’m not sitting on a sticky old skin chair with a crown of tiny heads.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I figured that might be the case.” Ashen keeps his eyes on me as he whistles for the guards. I feel his gaze linger on my face, even when I look away to watch six soldiers wheel in a structure covered in black velvet cloth. They lift what looks like a very heavy chair from a pallet on wheels. Ashen’s eyes are still fused to mine as the soldiers then step away and he whips the cover from the surprise.
It’s a throne of polished lapis lazuli, the color of the deep sea. Seams of pyrite shimmer within like shafts of sunlight. The rolled edges of the arms are capped with scrolling gold waves in the exact shade of my mark, shaped to look like the surf caught in a suspended moment in time. And above the curved waves that cascade from the throne’s high back, a stone scepter topped with a golden crescent moon cradling an eight-pointed star, framed by two familiar words.
Sunu liiktisuma
May they be bound.
A caged breath escapes my lungs in a thin stream between my pursed lips.
It’s ornate. It’s opulent. But somehow, it’s still…me.
My fingers flow along a wave that rises at the end of the armrest to fall down the front of the chair in dripping gold. “It’s stunning,” I whisper. The heat of Ashen’s gaze warms my face. I feel his pride ripple beneath my skin.
“I could not really picture my Lu on a throne of fallen souls,” he says. When I look up, I’m lost for a breath in his subtle smile. Ashen’s eyes dip to my cheeks and my flesh heats with a blush. His gaze lands on my lips and stays there for a long moment before he meets my eyes once more.
“It’s so beautiful. Thank you, Ashen.”
He doesn’t say anything in reply, just smiles a bit wider and then gives a little bow of his head.
I test the cushion of crushed gold velvet with my fingertip. It’s definitely plushy enough to be comfortable for a few hours at a time. The same gold fabric is stitched across the backrest.
