The emperor considered her as if she were an interesting bug that invited study and vivisection. Lifting her chin, she held his penetrating regard, refusing to flinch from those cold and cruel eyes.
An enraged snarl caught in her throat. She had been deceived. Her sister’s protection and aid to their kingdom had been promised, and she had foolishly believed. Now she would remain a prisoner of the empire. No longer would she delude herself into thinking she was a guest of the realm. She had the freedom to traverse the kingdom but always with several guards. And not just any guards. They were from the grand general’s elite force, the most brutal warriors of Mevia. Now their purpose was evident, they were for her imprisonment, not for her protection.
She waited silently with foolish hope beating inside her for the emperor of Mevia to make his ruling. A ruling from one she perceived as the most dangerous man in the seven realms of Amagarie. Beauty should not sit so well on evil. Nor should an evil rule be viewed as legendary across Amagarie. He’d been the only ruler of the empire of Mevia for three thousand years—no other leader in Serange or Amagarie had ever ruled uncontested for so many years. He’d held his throne against war and sedition. The tales of his rule had been why she’d approached him, not realizing that she dealt with a monster until it was too late.
“What have you to report, General Shenzhen?” The emperor drawled, finally taking his eyes from hers to look at a point beyond her shoulder.
He dismissed her once again and it stung. She reached out with her power, not surprised to see that his barriers remained fortified. The taint of a spell sparkled with a gray aura. She tapped gently, testing its strength and the complexity of its construct. It would take immense energy to break through his psychic barriers. Not that she could launch an attack with so many guards present and no viable plan of escape. But it did not hurt to assess his shields to understand the potential fight that loomed inevitably if he did not fulfill his bargain.
The grand general stepped past her and made his way closer to the throne and lowered himself to one knee and bent his dark head. Surprisingly, his ordinarily impeccable hair held in a queue behind his nape was loose and flowed over his shoulders. His black and red armor had blood specks in several places, and there was a slight discoloration on the lower part of his sharply chiseled left cheekbone.
“It is done, my sovereign ruler. The attack on the capital city of Nuria was successful.”
Shilah cringed from the grand general’s subservient tone. His voice poured forth treachery, yet the beauty of its pitch enticed her.
“You have proven invaluable to me, Princess Shilah.” Sweet venom dripped from the emperor’s tongue. “That is a most coveted position to hold in my court. Value it.”
A hum of satisfaction vibrated on the air, and the import of their words slammed into her stomach like a high beam laser. With every honeyed word from the emperor, the promise of freedom slipped away like ashes in the wind. She held tightly onto her self-restraint, it would never do for a princess to flinch and betray fear.
“She has failed, my sovereign ruler,” Grand General Shenzhen replied with a frown,
lifting his head to stare at her. His black eyes holding contempt. “The princess is not fit to be in the service of the sovereign ruler of the house of Zhang.”
His obsequiousness sickened her. He was such a paradox—abjectly servile to the beautiful Emperor, yet deadly and powerful in his own right.
Shilah exhaled slightly, relieved when the emperor responded in a moderate tone. Sounds were weapons for Mevians. Their voices were not naturally beautiful. They merely had the ability to manipulate the variance of sound whenever they chose to turn their voices into a lethal instrument.
“Come now, General Shenzhen, the princess has proved her worth. She was able to pull forth each demon beast from its master into a corporeal form. That is extremely impressive.”
Nothing moved inside of her at the smile that curved his lips. It was self-satisfied, covetous, and downright terrifying.
“But we do not yet have the king of Nuria, my imperial emperor. The attacks failed in its main purpose.”
The emperor tapped his chin lazily. “We do not have the king, but we have something better.”
Shilah tried not to be startled at the presence that simply appeared in the emperor’s room. A Darkan and he had the witch, Amirah, clutched in his grasp. Shilah’s stomach knotted, and she forced her mind to remain calm as the Darkan threw the witch that she’d worked with on the ground. She was a bloody mess.
A hard shaft of fear slammed into Shilah, and she cringed as the Darkan shifted his gaze to her, sensing her rising dread, for his kind fed on negative energy.
The grand general slowly rose from his kneeled position. “What is better than the Nurian king, my emperor?”
Fierce satisfaction emanated from the emperor. “A Dracan beast.”
General Shenzhen faltered into complete stillness, an arrested expression on his cold face. “An impossibility, none has been recorded for more than a millennium, my emperor.”
The emperor slashed his beautiful eyes to look at the witch who huddled on the ground.
“Report, my sweet Amirah.”
The witch’s aura wavered and flickered a deep violet, indicating the depth of her pain. The witch held her ribs and swiped at the blood that bubbled from her lips. “I incanted my emperor, for the Darkans and their beasts to attack the Nurian King at the Games of Fyre. I controlled the Darkan’s demon beast with all my abilities and fulfilled my end of the bargain. I ordered it to capture the king, and the beasts tried but failed. The king of Nuria is a fierce and powerful warrior, and he drew forth the spirit of the Phoenyx buried inside him to defend against the demon beast. I tried using spells on him, but the king had a witch, High Duke Acheron, who incanted to counter-attack my spells.”
She paused as she labored for breath, and then continued, “The Darkan and his summoned beast were defeated before the king was incapacitated for his retrieval.”
“By a female warrior who has the tattoo of a Dracan?”
The witch trembled, yet she maintained eye contact with the emperor. “She killed one of the beasts and its master. The king of Nuria killed the other.”
Amirah flinched as General Shenzhen withdrew his sword from its sheath.