Page 51 of Our Vicious Oaths
Lord Prime Tareek stood up with hands fisted at his sides. “Whereismy daughter?” the old fool shouted. “What have you done with Keeya? She is missing, and thisspectacle,” he spat out as ifhewas in the right to be repulsed, “tells me you had everything to do with Keeya not being present at the challenge or this feast tonight!”
“You’ll be reunited with her soon,” Malachi assured the lord prime.
“So, you admit that you killed her prior to formally accusing her of any crime before the gathered court,” Tareek charged. “That is a violation of Court Law too, and I am owed justice and a debt of my own,” the bastard declared, desperately and pathetically trying to save his own skin by invoking the very laws he’d violated.
“Malachi didn’t touch your daughter. She was killed by my hand,” Kadeesha cut in. “And I had every right to do so. Just as I have every right to the life of the individual who ordered her to poison me.” Purple flames silhouetted Kadeesha’s frame by the time she finished.
The lord prime screeched. “You filthy Aether whore! How dare you—”
Malachi and Kadeesha struck at the same time. A dozen void daggers flew toward Tareek alongside a column of purple flames that blasted heat around the room. Malachi’s daggers skewered the lord prime from his neck down to his gut a hairsbreadth before Kadeesha’s flames encircled him. Tareek screamed as he collapsed to his knees. It was bloodcurdling—and Malachi hoped it rang out as a warning to everyone else. Kadeesha dropped Malachi’s arm and strode down the dais steps. She took her time descending each one while she dragged Tareek’s penalty out, the lord prime’s skin becoming a scorched, blackened, and cracked landscape. The flames ensconcing Tareek vanished when she stood over him, although his wails didn’t stop. They dragged on as the acrid smell of burnt flesh mixed with piss and feces rent the air.
“How dare I? Idarebecause I am a queen and you are a mere lord,” Kadeesha reminded Tareek in an icy voice that made a flush of pleasure course through him, “and you fucked up the moment you decided to drag me into your treason.” It was an impressive thing to witness when Kadeesha’s hand blazed with brilliant purple fire as she raised it in the air and flames roared down at the lord prime. She relit him ablaze. However, this time it wasn’t a slow, deliberate burn. Making good on her earlier promise, she reduced Tareek to ash, wiping his existence from the realm between one breath and the next.
He could have watched her wield her power—both her aether and the aura her presence commanded—forever. So it pissed him off when his enjoyment of the show Kadeesha was putting on got cut short by Lady Niyarre’s desperate attempt to mount an assault.
He formed a pair of void scimitars in his hands and whirled, dodging the first pair of void daggers Lady Niyarre sent his way and knocking the second set out of the air with his own blades. He snarled and threw the scimitars, transforming them mid-flight into a volley of void arrows that impaled her between her neck and gut in a dozen spots. Then he directed the arrows impaling Lady Niyarre to disintegrate, reverting from the solid weapons back to their natural shadow state. He commanded the shadows that now writhed over Lady Niyarre’s wailing form to burrowintothe Stone Warden and wreak greater havoc on the inside. Her wails hit a particularly earsplitting pitch when he set his shadows to slither into the crevices of her soul. Like a ravenous beast who’d just run down prey, they devoured her vital organs and thus the Stone Warden’s very essence. When Malachi was done, when her screams abruptly halted, there was no soul left behind inside the corpse for Nyaxia to collect and welcome into the Mist Isles.
Nychelle would scold him for it later, but in the moment, he gave zero fucks about the mephitic stench of fear that permeated the feast hall and grew thicker by the second.Good. Let them cower. Let everyone observe, and deeply understand, precisely what will befall them if they’re foolish enough to follow the Stone Warden’s path and plot against me, or any queen I claim, or any heirs I’ll sire in the future.Giving his folk an Apollyon queen and siring heirs were, after all, events he’d have to contend with relatively soon. So he might as well put the proper safeguards in place this nightagainst further treason in a future where such acts would become untenable.
He cut a glower around the hall, skewering each of the remaining lord primes who were not part of his Cadre with a cautioning look. They each smartly bowed their heads in a show of silent fealty. There were nine in total, and three of them were snakes that would soon be expunged from the court too.
Malachi let them squirm for a few moments before nodding and acknowledging he’d accepted their displays of allegiance for now. Jakobi and Shionne had carried proof from Cygrove that Niyarre and Tareek hadn’t plotted alone, but he’d deal with the remaining guilty parties in a different manner. If he was going to take out multiple lord primes at once, he needed to be strategic about it to mitigate the upheaval. He next focused on the two tables that Lady Niyarre and Lord Tareek had formerly occupied. “When a lord prime of a cardinal bloodline betrays the crown, Court Law allows for the extermination of that bloodline. It is my right as king to exact that precise penalty,” he reminded the remaining fae of the Niyarre and Tareek bloodlines. The color drained from each of their faces.
A tall, dark-skinned male—Taodrick Tareek, who was Voshon’s nephew—dropped to his knees. “Please, Your Grace,” he begged, “I did not have any knowledge of the former lord prime’s machinations.” The faefolk of the Tareek and Niyarre bloodlines quickly followed Taodrick’s lead, dropping to their knees, professing ignorance and pleading for mercy.
Kadeesha still stood beside the Tareeks’ table. She held herself stiffly as she looked upon Malachi. A kernel of annoyance flared at the way she regarded him in judgment—as if he was being horrific instead of simply and wisely carrying out a sentence that was well within his right to dole out. He projected alook back that told Kadeesha this particular matter didn’t have anything to do with her now that she had been allowed to claim Voshon’s life in recompense for the debt she was owed. Anything that occurred beyond that was Apollyon business. He shook off the accusation that blazed in her amber eyes. At least, he tried to. But her damnable voice rang through his mind all the same, and it leveled the same charge at him that she had when first arriving at his court:
He and Rishaud were two sides of the same monstrous coin.
For some reason, he couldn’t shake her accusation loose. He didn’t want to be—he refused to be—the weak ruler his father had been. But also … he was loath to think of himself as a king who was a mirror image of the bastard he detested most in this realm.
Malachi looked away from Kadeesha and back upon the kneeling fae who beseeched him for mercy. “The young among your bloodlines, any stripling the age of seventeen or below, will be spared interrogation,” he told the prostrate fae. “All others will be taken to the dungeon and submit to an inquisition that is carried out personally by myself and my Cadre,” Malachi informed the fae of the alternative sentence he decided upon, which he supposed he could live with.
After decreeing it, he didn’t look back at Kadeesha. He impressed upon himself that he didn’t care to check and see if she still lambasted him or if his decision had gained him absolution. He told himself that it didn’t matter one way or the other because he didn’t care whatshethought of how he ruled or the male he was. He’d made this choice solely because it only mattered what his wider court would think. As much as he despised it, there remained the prophecy about him bringing ruin to the Apollyonfolk. He wouldn’t let his own actions clear a path thatmade it easy for Rishaud to be successful in bending yet one more prophecy to his advantage. It was also prudent to keep as many powerful, loyal Apollyon fae around as possible for what came next—the external war with the Six Kingdoms.
And because of these truths, he also knew he needed to place some distance between himself and Kadeesha Mercier in order to keep things in the right perspective and retain clarity withoutherclouding his judgment or any of his actions.
Because everything about her was as cloudy as a raging tempest.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
FOLLOWING THE CHALLENGE FEAST, MALACHI EXPANDEDthe inquisitions beyond the Niyarre and Tareek bloodlines. He quietly included select fae among the three other bloodlines whose lord primes supported the Cleric’s Rebellion. It took seven days total for him to have the information and assurances he needed for his next moves that would counter the havoc the damn rebellion was wreaking among his court. Presently, Malachi sat at the head of the polished oak table that occupied the center of the council room watching the Apollyon Court’s highest-ranking nobles apprehensively take their seats for the Assembly of Primes he’d called. Nychelle, Trystin, and Malachi’s Cadre were already seated around his end of the table. Only his inner circle knew what this meeting was truly about, but the rest would find out soon.
Once they were all settled in, he called the assembly to order. “Our business here,” he told everyone around the table, “is to formally fill the vacancies at this table caused by the previous days’ events.” Malachi then turned to Trystin and asked, “Can you retrieve those who are waiting?”
Trystin vanished from his seat beside Malachi and reappearedstanding near the door with the individuals who were next in line to ascend as lord primes of not only the Diamundis, Niyarre, and Tareek bloodlines but also the Uma, Windemyr, and Liander bloodlines.
The treasonous primes who remained sitting among them stiffened.
“I am sure you three know why the heir primes of your own bloodlines are here,” Malachi told the lord primes whose days had been numbered since the challenge feast. “Like with Remi and Voshon, it has been discovered that Lord Primes Uma, Windemyr, and Liander have joined the Cleric’s Rebellion and would turn our kingdom over to the enemy, which is indefensible,” he apprised everyone else. Before the guilty trio could react, Malachi’s shadows chained the primes to their chairs. Shadows clamped over their mouths because he wasn’t interested in any denials they’d utter. This wasn’t a trial; it was an execution.
Malachi looked upon the six individuals beside Trystin who would newly join the table as lord primes. Isiadora Diamundis, a distant cousin about a century older than Malachi, stood among them. So did Taodrick Tareek, nephew of Voshon Tareek; Cyinthia Niyarre, the former Stone Warden’s niece; Izabelle Windemyr, cousin to her seated prime; Brison Uma, a nephew to his prime; and Marius Liander, also a nephew of his prime. Not only had they all proven loyal during their interrogations, but they’d also displayed balls of steel and had been repulsed by the idea of Rishaud gaining any dominion over their people. Which was why they’d make far better lord primes than their predecessors. It was also why Malachi needn’t carry out these latest executions himself—it was prudent, given the prophecy, that Malachi and those closest to him not be the only ones carrying out the necessary pruning taking place. Malachi motioned to the tableand told three of the soon-to-be lord primes, “The current heads of your bloodlines have participated in acts that have placed the longevity of your bloodlines in peril. As such, you have every right to address their crimes yourselves since Court Law allows for intra-bloodline offenses to be handled within the bloodline. As your current lord primes’ successors, the decision to enact this precept of the law lies with each of you.”
Izabelle Windemyr, Brison Uma, and Marius Liander moved at once to stand behind their restrained lord primes, as they’d already made their choices and communicated them to Malachi beforehand. Malachi’s speech was issued merely to point out the validity of the acts before the gathered assembly. Izabelle, Brison, and Marius manifested void swords and severed the heads of their lord primes at nearly the same time.
“Trystin, would you clean up the mess, please?” Malachi said then. His cousin made quick work of teleporting the corpses and heads away. Afterward, Trystin and the court’s new lord primes took their seats. The others continued to sit staidly and quietly by. Technically, there were no objections they could make to the proceedings. By Court Law, cardinal bloodlines had the freedom to deal with house grievances among themselves in the manner they saw fit without outside interference.
“On this day,” Malachi said to the entire assembly, “the crown formally acknowledges the right and legitimacy of Cyinthia Niyarre, Taodrick Tareek, Izabelle Windemyr, Brison Uma, Marius Liander, and Isiadora Diamundis to ascend as the heads of their cardinal bloodlines and act in service of not only their bloodlines but the wider court, the Apollyon crown, and the whole of the Apollyonfolk.” Malachi spoke the ceremonial words that were meant to set the foundation of the relationship between monarch and primes as well as between the kingdom’sprimes and its faefolk. And they were words that the replaced lord primes had forgotten.
