Page 19 of The Sea of Zemira (The Zemiran Chronicles 1)

Prince Elijah entered the palace’s gates, dismissed his guards once again with a wave of his hand, and headed towards his father’s bedchamber. The king stood by his window, looking out like he always did when lost in thought.

“Father,” Elijah called.

“You did not slip up this time,” his father sneered, turning to him. “That is a first.”

Elijah gritted his teeth; his cheeks burned with fury.

His father was never a kind man, but he grew to be someone he despised more than any creature in their world in the last few years. The prince knew his father hated him too, finding him both cowardly and weak. Still, Elijah refused to be manipulated by him any longer.

Elijah sat on the edge of the bed, running his hands over the polished, silk bedding. He would not tell Matthias what he had seen in the marketplace. No. It would be his secret that he knew without a doubt the ruby was on the siren girl. He knew it the moment he placed his hand on her wrist. It was no secret to the prince what she was. He also knew what a siren looked like when angry or afraid—the swirling motion of her eyes.

He did find it puzzling the sheeracats could not identify the magic in her. It was probably for the best. That could have driven his father to kill the siren girl—and Elijah needed her.

The king turned from the window and approached his son, placing his hand on his shoulder.

“Who was she, boy?” the king asked.

The prince’s stomach lurched. Does he know about the siren? He thought.

Elijah swallowed. “An Elven woman and her child,” he said, hiding the truth from his father.

Matthias’s mouth curved into a wicked smile. “Well done. Now tell Mason to cut off their heads.”

Elijah quickly stood to his feet. “Why not simply banish them to the Eastland Forest as you’ve always done?” he said. “Father, that child looked no older than five years old.”

King Matthias’s warped mind had finally caught up with him. Elijah refused to let his deranged ideas of how to rule a kingdom continue further.

“Bah!” The king spat at the floor next to him. Elijah recoiled. “Aren’t you as worthless as your mother,” the king said.

His father was not referring to the mother who raised him, but he meant his birth mother.

“Watch what you say next, Father,” Elijah warned.

The corners of the king’s mouth turned up. “Oh, look at you growing bolder by the day.” He straightened his back. “She was a whore who died a slow and painful death. The only kind she deserved.”

Elijah bit down hard on his bottom lip before asking, “And what of your wife? The one I called Mother? Did she deserve the kind of death you gave her too?”

“Hold your peace, boy!” The king’s jaw tightened, his brows pulling together as if he were disgusted by the memory of what he had done. He paced from his bedside back to the window. “Traitors will eventually meet with death. For some, later than for others, yet they always have the same fate.”

“She loved me!” the prince said, his voice pitched. “She didn’t have to love your bastard child, but she did. She should have hated me, but she didn’t. Serena—my mother, loved me when no one else would, even more than you.”

The king’s face reddened, and he swatted his hand in the air to dismiss the young prince. “You’re too naïve and callow to run this kingdom. You continue to prove you are not fit to make hard decisions such as this one! Every time, I am met with disappointment. I’m happy to pass down the throne to someone else.”

You don’t have a choice but to hand me the throne, Father. You killed your eldest heir,Elijah said to his insides, enraged.

He wanted to say those words aloud, but he knew better. Elijah was not a fool, despite what his father thought of him. Then, as sadness clouded his nearly perfect features, he turned his head away from his father to face the door. Matthias snarled and guzzled down his drink and perched on his velvet chair, slamming the mug back down.

“I have given you an order, my son. You want to be king someday; you must let go of that merciful side of yours and start making tough decisions. That Elven woman knew what kind of danger she was putting her child in, and she chose to break the law anyway. Tell Mason to take care of it, or I will make you watch it happen when I do it!”

Elijah bit his tongue, then bowed his head and walked away, exiting the king’s chambers. He stormed down the stairs that led to the dungeon where the Elven woman was locked up. The lantern-lit tunnel reeked of elf blood. The prince gagged at the filth.

When he reached the dungeons, he looked to one of the guards leaning up against the door that led to the cell.

“Your Highness,” the raw-recruit said and stood straight. The young guard, as if caught sleeping, opened his eyes wide. “They’re locked in their cells, just as instructed, sir!”

Elijah looked to the guard as Mason walked down the stairs to meet him.

“Mason, my father has instructed that you kill the Elven mother and her child,” Elijah said as Mason reached for the lock’s keys hung on the wall. Matthias’s most trusted guard never enjoyed killing children. Still, it was the Elven child or his head for disobeying an order.

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