Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 117167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Rei pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay. Kill the king.” Certainly the kind of request he expected to hear from his mother. Nothing surprising there. “Does my mother have any helpful suggestions on how to accomplish this when my father still possesses an army and I do not?”
“There’s a small human town called Coldwater. Close to the edge of the forest land and very few humans are present. The king wishes to conduct a test. He wishes to wipe it off the map and claim it for our kind. It will be the farthest he’s been from the palace since the last time you crossed swords with him, and the rumor is that he’s planning to take a small complement of soldiers.”
“When?” Rei barked. It sounded good.
Too good.
“Midnight, three days from today.”
Rei remained silent as he paced a short distance away, turning over what he knew in his head. Was this a trap? Almost definitely. But there was also a good chance that his mother was serious, in that she wanted Rei to kill his father. Of course, she could also be pitting them against each other so she could be rid of them both. He wouldn’t put that past her.
And yet, if his father was going to strike Coldwater, could they pass up this opportunity?
No. Not really.
But whether to go after King Ash at Coldwater wasn’t the only question he needed to answer.
Rei spun on his right heel, turning to face Sayra, his appearance and tone once again nonchalant. “Okay, so I kill King Ash. What happens after that?”
The weasel in courtly garb of green and silver blinked. His smile slipped from where it had been pegged to his face and he looked confused. But on the second blink, he recovered, his grin hiked to where it belonged, if a little awkwardly.
“Well, naturally, His Highness would return home and take his place at the queen’s right hand. The Dawn Throne and Oak Crown waiting until the day when His Highness claimed them upon his queen mother’s natural death. Of course, all that nonsense with the vampire would be forgotten. You would return to the life you were born to.”
Yes, the life he was born to.
Maybe it was time to remind Sarya and his mother exactly the life he was born to.
With nothing more than a flick of his wrist, the dagger he’d been holding streaked across the distance separating them. It slammed into Sarya’s right hand and nailed it to the tree behind him. A scream erupted from Sarya as he stared almost frozen in shock at the knife cutting straight through the palm of his hand and into the tree. Blood poured along his fingers and into the bark of the tree like small red rivers running to the ground.
As Sarya reached to pull the blade out, Rei lunged forward with another knife. Holding Sarya’s left shoulder against the tree, he slowly pushed the other dagger into Sarya’s throat. Hot blood sprayed across Rei’s face and across the front of his shirt, but it made him smile even wider. Yes, this was a long time coming.
He didn’t push the dagger in far enough to kill Sarya. No, no. Not yet. That was too quick. This was to silence his screams. There was no need to bring a vampire audience for this.
“Sshhh, sshhh,” Rei hushed the elf, his own voice barely more than a whisper. He leaned in close, their chests almost touching. “It’s my turn to talk.” He paused and cocked his head, furrowing his brows. “Wait…are you Trin’s father? You’re not, right? Because I’m trying to get in good with my half brother, and I don’t think it would help my case if I killed his dad.”
Sarya’s pupils had shrunk and white dominated his wide eyes. His pale lips moved, but there was only a thick gurgling sound while more dark blood spilled over his lips and ran down his pointed chin.
“That’s what I thought,” Rei continued. “You two don’t look alike. Besides, even if you are his dad, I am trying to get him to kill my parents, so it would be a fair exchange.” Releasing the dagger still wedged in Sayra’s throat, he lowered his hand to the hilt of the sword the elf wore and slowly drew it out as he stepped back. “I want you to know that I’m rejecting my mother’s offer. But don’t worry. I’ll send my reply for you.”
As Rei lifted the sword, Sayra stretched out his free hand and opened his mouth in a scream, but no sound left him. Rei drove the blade into Sayra’s chest and plunged it downward, cutting through the elf from sternum to cock. More blood splashed on him, but not as much as earlier.
The elf sagged dead; the life drained out of him, while only his arm hung in the air, the hand still pinned to the tree. With a curl of his lip, Rei tossed aside Sayra’s blade as though it were a bit of rotting trash. He wiped his hands on his splattered jeans and sighed. That was about as pleasant as he’d expected it to be, though there had been a tiny concern that Sayra was Trin’s father. The annoyance served his mother a long time, which meant it was possible.