“No servants are worthy of a King’s audience,” one guard sneered.
“I assure you, he is expecting us. He will be sorely disappointed if he finds you haven’t let us through,” Alex countered, hoping he sounded convincing.
The guards looked at one another before the one who had spoken tapped on the door. Hadrian appeared, poking his head out. For a moment, a look of horror flashed across his face at the sight of Alex and Aamir, but he covered it quickly, turning to the guards.
“What appears to be the problem?” Hadrian asked.
“These two say you ordered them to come up?” the guard said gruffly.
Hadrian nodded. “Indeed, I did. Allow them through.”
With a shrug, the two huge men stood to one side, letting Alex and Aamir pass with little more than a cursory glance. Once inside the top floor chambers, Alex’s heart really began to thunder. Sitting at the low table, where Alex and his friends had shared breakfast that morning, was Julius. Beside him, staring blankly into a cup of something hot and bright red in color, was a woman dressed in a striking violet silk kimono with vivid pink blossoms embroidered upon the fabric. She was of an exquisite beauty that quite literally took Alex’s breath away. Even Alypia, beneath the veil of her enhancement spells, paled in comparison. It had to be Venus.
Although it was clear she was of an older age, there was a youthfulness to her face that defied time. Her eyes were a pale, silvery blue that seemed to pierce the soul, and her hair was long and pale, not quite the same shade of white as the other royals. Hers was closer to silver in color, flecked with strands of gold. Alex noted that Helena must take after her grandmother, rather than her mother, where looks were concerned. Venus’s face was indescribable. If Alex put together all the most beautiful women in history, he wasn’t sure any of them would match up to the beauty he saw in front of him.
Julius rose, prowling around behind his wife. It was clear that, even after so many years of marriage, the king couldn’t take his eyes off his queen. He lunged toward her suddenly, and though everyone else in the room flinched, Venus didn’t bat an eyelid. Making a charade of it, Julius reached past her shoulder to pick up a candy shaped like a ladybug, his mouth moving as he whispered something in her ear. There was malicious intent in his eyes, his lips curving up in a cruel smile. Whatever it was he’d said, she still refused to react, focusing on the liquid in her cup.
Chuckling to himself, Julius planted a firm kiss on his wife’s cheek. It was becoming quickly apparent that Julius and Venus had the kind of twisted relationship in which nobody was ever sure if he was going to kill her or kiss her. It wasn’t a comfortable thing to watch.
“Your book collection is terrible, nephew,” Julius purred as he moved away from Venus, stalking toward the bookshelves at the back of the room. “You should always replenish your stock,” he said, thumbing the spines.
Alex froze as the king came close to the spine of the Book of Jupiter, tucked away where Alex had left it at the far end of the highest bookshelf, under the supervision of Hadrian and Aamir. Having not expected such an honored guest to turn up, Alex had thought it would be safe there. All he could do was watch as Julius made his way down the line of books, mouthing the names as he went. There was only one book left between Julius and the Book of Jupiter, and Alex didn’t think he could bear it. He wanted to shout, or throw something, to create a distraction, but he had a feeling it might have the opposite effect. Julius wasn’t stupid; he would suspect something.
At the very last moment, Julius turned back to the room, missing the book by mere millimeters.
“It’s essential that you read as much as you can; it is the only way to truly understand the world around us,” Julius said, his tone brimming with self-importance. “I, myself, always have several miniatures about my person, so that I can read wherever I may be. My dear wife will tell you—I am rarely without a book in my hand. Knowledge is power, and to be truly powerful, you have to have read more than any other man.”
As if to prove his point, he removed several small books from various hiding spots all over his body. It was mesmerizing to watch, like seeing clowns emerge from a tiny car.
“Very impressive, my king,” Hadrian murmured, wringing his hands furiously.
“You can’t just read from your own writers, either. No—how can one get a good grasp of the world if they hear only a portion of its voices?” Julius continued, evidently not caring about his audience’s clear disinterest. “I read mage books, non-magical books… I’ve even been known to dabble in a Spellbreaker book or two, in my time, though they’re not easy to come by. I’d say I have the finest collection of literature on the planet, and that is no exaggeration, wouldn’t you say, darling?” He placed his hand at the back of Venus’s neck, as if to caress it, or snap it like a twig.
“Your collection is the finest of them all,” Venus said softly.
“You!” Julius barked, his gaze settling firmly on Alex. “Do you read much?”
Alex gulped. “Not as much as I’d like to, Your Royal Highness.”
“You must always make time for books—what are you teaching these wastrels?” Julius scoffed, flashing a withering look in Hadrian’s direction.
“They aren’t s-students, Uncle. This is Thomas and Leon, two of our non-magical staff,” Hadrian lied. “The students have a m-much richer education, with far better access to the literature of which you s-speak.”
“You look familiar,” Julius murmured, stepping closer to Alex. It seemed the king had no concept of personal space, as he got right up in Alex’s face, scrutinizing him closely. “Have we met before?”
Alex shook his head. “No, Your Royal Highness. I don’t get out much.”
The king burst into a bout of alarming laughter. “I like this one! Perhaps you just have one of those faces?”
“Perhaps, Your Royal Highness.” Alex forced a smile onto his face, though his heart was thundering and his palms were clammy.
“Could be, though it’s rare that I forget a face, isn’t it, darling?” He turned his attention back to his wife for a moment.
She looked up, smiling falsely. “It is, though I think you’re mistaken with this boy. Do leave him alone, dear. Can’t you see you’re frightening the life out of him?”
Julius flared his nostrils, an angry glint appearing in his eyes. “Did you say something, darling?”
“Come back over here to me—your coffee is getting cold,” she replied, her voice sickly sweet. It was clear Julius had heard what she had said, but the power play between them was an interesting one. Alex hadn’t expected to hear such boldness from her, and yet she had spoken without fear. After so long suffering under the cruelty of her husband, Alex supposed she didn’t feel scared anymore. There was no point.
“Yes, I suppose we should be returning to business anyway,” Julius remarked, moving over to the low table again. He sat down beside his wife, pulling her to him in a tense embrace. She wrapped her slender arms about his neck, evidently adept at calming him.
“Business?” Hadrian spoke, biting nervously into a dumpling.
“I can honestly say, I never thought I’d see the day when I could commend the offspring of my brother, but you have truly surprised me,” Julius said. “To see such ingenuity from the leader of a haven is utterly refreshing. The others, they coast along, doing the bare minimum, but you—you call me here to discuss how we might work together to increase our yield of essence. Now that is the kind of initiative I want to see.”
Alex watched as Hadrian steeled himself. “Yes, Uncle, I thought it would be good for us to talk, and for us to perhaps begin something of a partnership. I have so few ideas; thus, any assistance is much appreciated, especially from your f-fine mind.”
Julius smiled, the expression lacking warmth. “A partnership, you say?”
“Yes, though perhaps partnership is the wrong word—it’d just be me putting your ideas into action,” Hadrian replied, keeping his stutter at bay. It was ill-advi
sed to show weakness in front of a man like Julius, and it was clear that Hadrian was doing his best impression of a brave face.
Julius straightened the high collar of his suit jacket. “Well then, it looks like we have a little something to celebrate!”
With that announcement, the king picked up a narrow glass chalice, and Alex saw his opportunity.
Chapter 21
Julius raised his glass upward. Hadrian picked up his, as did Venus. Grabbing a bottle of some kind of sparkling drink from the sideboard, Alex moved toward the table, eager to get closer to the king, and the glass in his hand. Aamir reached out to grasp the edge of Alex’s shirt, evidently trying to stop him, but Alex weaved out of the way. This was a prime opportunity, and he wasn’t about to miss it.
“To new beginnings, and a replenishment of our great nation’s essence!” Julius toasted.
The others around the low table chorused the sentiment, and Hadrian even managed to look almost pleased with the words tumbling out of his mouth. Alex had to give the man props; he was putting on a very good show. It didn’t look like the king suspected anything was amiss, though Alex’s eyes were drawn to Venus, who seemed remarkably more curious about the whole thing than her husband. From time to time, she would glance around, clearly absorbing her surroundings. Where Julius was outwardly vocal about his intellect, and undoubtedly had the evidence to back it up, Venus was quiet and stealthy with hers, though Alex could sense there was a deep pool of it within her, ever-ticking behind her serene silver eyes. More potent even, perhaps, than her husband’s.
It was Venus who looked at Alex oddly as he stood close to Julius. There was a warning in her eyes, but Alex thought he might be imagining things. She couldn’t possibly know what it was he planned to do, could she? He’d never even seen her before; she couldn’t know what he was. Still, it threw him for a second. It just so happened that, at that exact moment, he was pouring more drink into Julius’s glass while feeding imperceptible slivers of his anti-magic through the sparkling liquid, into the chalice that the king held in his hand. In his distraction, Alex vibrated the particles all wrong. Instead of shattering the glass, he only succeeded in shaking the molecules of the drink, causing it to spurt the fizzy fluid up through the narrow chalice, straight into Julius’s face.
The king was less than impressed, whirling around and grasping Alex tightly by the throat. It was all Alex could do to restrain the anti-magic inside himself, stopping it from crackling through his skin in retaliation. Julius oozed magical energy; it radiated from him in tangible waves.
“You little wretch! You did that on purpose!” Julius roared, spittle flying in Alex’s face. “Did you shake the bottle? Did you think it would be funny?”
“No… Your… Royal… Highness… I… just…” Alex croaked, unable to finish his sentence as Julius’s hand gripped tighter. It was a move Alex had seen the king use before, on the laughing prisoner back at Kingstone Keep. Suddenly, Alex was very aware of his mortality.
“I am your king, you cretin! I talk to you, I welcome you, I engage in polite, intelligent conversation with you, and you choose to repay me with this?” Julius growled. “Let me guess, it was your little friend that put you up to this? Or was it you, Hadrian, you stammering fool? Are you precisely like your father after all?”
Hadrian raised his hands in surrender. “Uncle, this w-was an unfortunate accident—I can assure you, it is no p-practical joke on my part,” he insisted, his voice tight.
“Then it must have been you!” Julius snarled, glowering in the direction of Aamir.
Aamir shook his head rapidly. “An innocent error, Your Royal Highness—I believe the bottle got too close to the window, and the sun increased the volume of bubbles within the bottle, due to increased speed of fermentation,” he replied hurriedly, the words pouring out of his mouth with such conviction that even Alex nearly believed him, though he was starting to feel like his head might explode.
It was hard to breathe, his cheeks puffing out, the veins at the sides of his head throbbing, and his eyes beginning to bulge as Julius continued to tighten the hand around Alex’s throat. With a surge of panic, Alex realized he was close to losing control over his powers. It was like drowning, feeling the pressure of blood pushing through the body, urging the sinking person to take a breath. Alex’s anti-magic was his survival instinct, and it was taking every fiber of his being not to use it.
Julius raised his hand, bringing it close to Alex’s face with such force that Alex thought he was about to be punched. The king stopped just short of impact, showing exceptional control over his own muscles. It was this kind of strange thought that kept Alex’s mind away from the sinking feeling that he was having, knowing he was about to be disintegrated from the inside out, until there was nothing left but a floppy husk.
Alex could feel the pressure building beneath Julius’s hand, the space between the king’s palm and Alex’s face growing unbearably hot. It was because of this man that the Spellbreakers and the mages had split apart, ripping up a potential treaty of peace in favor of violence and segregation. It was this man’s hatred for Alex’s kind that had signaled extinction for the Spellbreakers and brought about the Great Evil. In mere seconds, Julius would realize what he was dealing with, would know that the key to his own survival was standing right before him.
“Nobody makes a mockery of me,” Julius hissed.
With barely a sound, Venus stood and rested her hand upon her husband’s arm. She leaned toward him, her mouth close to his ear, and whispered something soft and soothing. There was a musicality to her voice that had Alex transfixed, even though he could only catch snippets of what she was saying. It sounded like a familiar poem—a sonnet, perhaps.
“Love is not love… that looks on tempests and is never shaken,” she whispered.
It was Shakespeare, and a poem Alex knew well—it was one his mother liked.
“Release him, my love,” she requested, her hands covering his. As if drawn by the desire of her voice, Julius’s hands lifted upward, away from Alex’s face. They settled on Venus’s face instead, his forehead leaning in toward hers, until they were nose-to-nose. A crackle of energy flitted between them, like static electricity. The way the king’s hands rested at the base of her neck still made Alex feel as if Julius could either embrace his wife, or strangle the life from her.
For a long while the couple stood that way, with their eyes closed, breathing rhythmically with one another. It was like a bizarre meditation, a still moment in the middle of a storm. Nobody dared to speak.
With a loud exhale, Julius let go of his wife’s face and straightened.
“Apologies for the outburst. I’m not one for practical jokes,” he said casually, sitting back down and taking up the glass once more. It was mostly empty after the upward surge, and Julius held it up to Alex, who was still recovering from the shock. “Wouldn’t mind a top off now, if it’s not too much trouble?”
Alex’s hands shook as he attempted to pick up the bottle. Thankfully, before another catastrophic spillage could occur, Aamir swooped in, taking the bottle from Alex’s trembling hands and pouring out another full glass for the king.
“Didn’t scare you too badly, did I?” Julius scoffed.
Alex shook his head. “No… Your Royal Highness… not at all,” he croaked, his throat raw.
“Pity, I love a good scare,” the king remarked. If almost killing someone was the way he reacted to a perceived joke, Alex could only imagine how Julius would react to a real threat.
Venus placed her hand on her husband’s. “Now, now, darling, they’ll be trembling too hard to hold anything if you continue to terrify them with your terse manner,” she chastised. Something hypnotic seemed to have happened to Julius, who smiled lovingly at his wife, no hint of malevolence behind his eyes.
“Whatever you say, my precious sweet pea,” he cooed, like a teenager in the first throes of love. It wasn’t to last, as he turned to Hadrian, a steely look overwhelming the doe-eyed e
xpression. “You really ought to have learned the proper way to receive guests by now, Hadrian. Honestly, this isn’t good enough—I expect you to keep this place spotless, and you turn it into a crass, uncouth dump. It wasn’t by chance that you received the finest haven, filled to the brim with all my precious things. I took a chance on you, and you have let me down.” He sighed dramatically.
“Come, darling, you were praising him a moment ago,” Venus said softly, though Alex could tell her comments weren’t appreciated by her husband. She dipped her head, knowing she had gone a fraction too far in her boldness. Alex guessed it was a delicate tightrope she walked, between saying the wrong thing and saying just enough. It was neither right nor fair, but Alex didn’t dare speak up.
Julius stared at Hadrian. “No, I really am most disappointed by your upkeep of this place. I won’t stay a moment longer,” he said, standing sharply.
“Now, darling, we mustn’t be rude,” Venus said, her tone soothing, but it seemed her charms had worn off for the day.
“We are leaving,” he snapped.
She tilted her head toward him, almost like a bow of reverence, as she too stood to go. Alex began to panic, wondering how he was supposed to get his hands on the required amount of royal blood if they left now, and yet he could think of no way to stop them.
While Alex was wracking his brain, Julius was gathering his own servants together by yelling loudly down the hallway. The two married royals seemed to have arrived with an entourage, which Alex supposed was to be expected, given their status.
“Are we ready?” Julius demanded, turning toward his wife.
She smiled pleasantly. “Yes, darling.”
“Well, what began with such promise has turned into something of a wasted visit,” Julius remarked, pulling up the edges of his high collar. “Nephew, I require… nay, I demand more essence from this place. These havens cannot expect to go on giving the bare minimum, and though you have displeased me, I dare say you have been the one to inspire me. More essence must be collected. You must increase your yield, and I would see you add to the number of children taken in the annual lottery. Let’s give first-born and last-born a whirl, shall we?”