Page 3 of The Sea of Zemira (The Zemiran Chronicles 1)

Zemira; Inside the palace

Alight tap at the door pulled King Matthias’s eyes from the window.

“Come in,” he called. His voice was deep and authoritative.

One of his most trusted guards, Mason, crept in slowly but stayed at the doorway.

“We found an Elven spy in Baylin. She refuses to speak to us and give up the location of the others,” he explained. “What would you like us to do?”

Gah, I am such a fool,the king thought.

That was the tenth spy they had captured. He wondered how something like that could happen under his nose. The lies, the deception, for nearly a year?

The king cleared his throat, stood up straight, and then looked back through his window onto his kingdom.

“Do it at the center of the city and make sure everyone is watching,” he ordered, “the more who witness the punishment of betrayal, the more they’ll fear to deceive us.”

He laid a shaking hand on the windowsill while the other twisted into a tight grip.

He continued, “My ships should have reached the Eastland Forest several days ago. Which means King Argon is dead.” Matthias turned away from the window to face Mason. “Now the spies they’ve sent here will have no one to turn to but me. They must either surrender their sword or die by one.”

“And what of the queen and the prince?” the guard asked softly, almost to a near whisper.

The king flinched. “My wife does not have much longer. The Whale’s Tongue poison will take her any moment now. And Tristan—” he stopped himself from giving any orders and placed both hands against the windowsill. He let out a long sigh, and as he leaned forward, he said, “Please, Mason, go deal with the spy at once.”

Mason left the king’s bedchamber after saluting him out of respect. Matthias ignored him when he heard the screams coming from the streets as they dragged the Elven spy at the center of the square and watched as she knelt and begged for her life.

Moments later, one of the new guards, Thomath, raised his sword high. When Mason gave the order, he brought the blade down with one swing, slicing off the elf’s head. People around them watched it roll down the curb until it hit a ditch.

Loud cries echoed through the streets—another death on his hands that did not have to be.

The king was aware Elven spies had been living among them and reported to the Fae people for over a year.

A year!The king shouted to his thoughts.

That, maybe, did not surprise him as much as the fact that his beloved wife had been working against him.

King Matthias looked around the rest of the main square once his guards concluded the execution and the crowd had dispersed. He peered out into what was once a wealthy and magical kingdom. He stared at his dying lands, worried about the poor decisions he had made that year—all at the hands of the treacherous betrayal from his people.

Long before Matthias claimed the throne, magic was in every corner of the kingdom; magic was his kingdom. Yet everything changed when the Fae deemed themselves more powerful than the king and refused to abide by his law. He did what he had to do to bring peace and order to Zemira.

Using the enchanted emerald he still wore proudly upon his crown, King Matthias doomed his people to become blind to what he hated. Thus, in Zemira, magic became a mere fairy tale. No one remembered the dragons that soared the skies and the sirens that governed the seas. Even though it had only been a year since he ousted magic from the kingdom, those were not the stories parents told their children anymore. They tried to put together fables and came up with not-so-happily ever afters. They told grim tales of giants as tall as the palace walls with legs as thick as trunks, crushing their victims with one single blow.

The stories that followed were those of sirens who would drag young sailors down into the depths of the dark waters. Or the ones about the monsters who haunted desolate islands, just waiting for someone to become marooned. They were as bizarre as they could be, but it made the king happy that none of them were good enough to be credible.

Tired of watching the chaos outside of his castle, King Matthias walked away from the window and sat on his extravagant velvet chair to ponder. The week before the slaughter was a mere blur. Matthias’s eldest son, Tristan, held a letter with shaky hands at the dock’s edge, intending to deliver it to a sailor on board a trading vessel heading east.

But it was not only the queen warning King Argon her husband had sent his ships to kill him as an act of revenge; it was the other troubling piece to that letter.

The letter also contained the knowledge that not everyone succumbed to the crystal’s power when he used it a year before on his people. Many were immune, and several of those not affected by it formed a resistance against him, with the Elven spies protecting their cause.

Matthias glanced at the mirror on the wall and stared back at his reflection. A grin, not precisely of joy, pulled at his lips while he ran his hand down his thin, black beard. Power aside, his looks played a role in his reign. His towering height and barrel-chested figure alone drew men to their knees, and his fierce eyes were as black as his soul. The king ruled the land in a way that created fear in people’s hearts. That was the only way to achieve utter control.

King Matthias clamored to his feet and walked back to the window, gazing with his dark eyes out into the ocean lining the palace walls—the scent of the salty sea loomed in the air. He hunched forward, digging his fingers into the windowsill.

How could I be so blind to the betrayal?He thought to himself, enraged.

A pang of grief hit him suddenly. He had sworn to himself that as long as the Fae kept their end of the bargain, he would shed no blood. How he wished they had simply honored that agreement. He gave them a chance to leave and live in their own land, away from Zemiran law. They are the only ones to blame.

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