Page 2 of The Crown of the Dark Prince
There was a pause.
No more doors opened.
Turning on my heels, I looked up to the crowd, and the perched box where the Dragon and the other members of the Council sat watching the show. Carefully, I avoided the gaze of Clayton Vail, our Crown Prince.
The Dragon met my gaze without flinching. With careful slowness, he raised a bushy eyebrow at me and smiled. And that’s when I knew this wasn’t over.
Both doors on either side of the arena opened. From the left came a guard I hadn’t met before. From the right came Dimitri, the head of my personal guard team.
Oh, come on now.
I glared at the Dragon while I pulled a second blade from my left thigh.
“I am sorry for this, my lady,” Dimitri said as he approached.
Groaning, I wiped away the blood from my broken nose with my forearm and took my fighting stance.
“Let’s just get this over with.”
The last fight was a blur of flying arms and weapons. My muscles screamed in protest and my head swam as the exhaustion threatened to take me under. Still, I carried on. Dimitri grabbed my wrist and twisted, pulling the muscles there so tightly that I couldn’t help but scream out. He flinched as I did, but still I carried on. I couldn’t care about pulled muscles or broken bones right now. The palace healers would take care of all of that once this was over. I just needed to finish it.
I defeated the sixth guard with a blade across the throat and took down Dimitri with a blade to the back. Dirty fighting for sure, but successful.
Music filled my ears as the band began playing the Athenian anthem and the crowd erupted around me, chanting my name. Slowly, the Dragon raised his hands and clapped. I had done it. I had passed the combat trial. I was officially two-thirds of the way to taking my place on the Council.
“You fucking did it!” Rankor cried, sweeping me into a bear hug that lifted me from the ground and knocked the breath from my lungs.
“Did you doubt me?”
I struggled to laugh while he squeezed.Rankor was a brawn from House Arto, making his strength magically fueled. He suddenly seemed to remember this, and that he could literally kill me from hugging me too tightly, and sat me on my feet in a rush.
“No!” he replied in a rush, before sighing when I raised my brows at him in disbelief. “I believe in you, of course. I’ve always known that when you’re at your best, you can handle anything that’s thrown at you.”
“But?”
“But you haven’t been at your best.”
His hand cupped my face affectionately, his thumb stroking the skin under my eyes that was hollow and dark from lack of sleep. “You’ve been so exhausted. I’ve been worried.”
Yes, well, Ihadfelt exhausted lately. Exhaustion was the unhappy consequence of refusing to sleep. For weeks, I’d barely been sleeping. Ever since I’d discovered that I’d somehow been communicating with my ancestor, Hyrax, in my dreams, I’d been terrified to return to that place - the Underworld. Hyrax had lied to me. He hadn’t pretended to be someone else, but he also hadn’t openly admitted who he was. For months, he had taught me how to use my magic and counseled me on how to navigate politics and relationships in the Mortal Realm, all while hiding his true identity. And a lie by omission was still a lie.
And if the God of the Dead was lying to me, then I had to question why.
What did he want from me?
“You care to tell me what’s been going on with you?” Rankor pressed, pulling my focus once more.
I sighed dramatically. “Oh, I don’t know, Rankor. It could have something to do with the fact that someone in my inner circle tried to kill me for months and only ended up killing one of my best friends instead.”
We rarely spoke about Camilla, or how she had fooled us all into thinking she was our friend, while she secretly got addicted to forbidden magic in her attempt to kill me. In her addiction-fueled rage, she had planned an attack during a palace party. The attack had been the first time I’d had to battle during a real-life threat, and I hadn’t been good enough. I wasn’t fast enough to stop an assassin from killing Lorelai, the fiery-haired Truthseeker who had been one of the first to befriend me.Camilla’s betrayal had shocked everyone in the kingdom. No one else had deciphered why she had lost herself in blood magic.
But I knew.
In the immediate days after her capture, I had visited her in the palace dungeons and she had told me of a prophecy she had once found. A prophecy seemingly written about me:The daughter of Hyrax will shake the veil, and the King of Damnation will rise once more to rule over the children of the Gods. She will create a new death in the Mortal Realm and will stand at his side as his armies usher in the new age. Prepare for the Final War of the Gods.
That prophecy was yetanothersecret I was keeping because the last thing I needed was people in this palace thinking I would destroy the world. Not that it mattered anyway. Regardless of what some stupid prophecy from hundreds of years ago said, I would not shake the Veil between worlds. Icouldn’tshake the Veil, not even the Gods themselves could move it.So, giving voice to the delusional concerns of a dark Witch was entirely unnecessary.
“Go bathe,” Rankor commanded, flopping onto the settee in the parlor of my apartment suites and reaching for my bar cart. “The party in yourhonour begins in about an hour, which doesn’t give us much time to get fashionably drunk beforehand.”
