AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Give me that.” I swiped the bottle from Endre, taking a long drink myself. “So we’re not telling anyone what we just learned, yeah?”
“Absolutely fucking not,” Viktor said, reaching around Endre for another bottle of wine. “It would provide Valintin and Luzak with everything they need to claim the throne for themselves.”
Vadim nodded at Viktor’s words.
“They’d still need to win a majority vote to place one of their greedy asses on the Night Throne,” Endre reminded him. “Right now, it’s five against two. But I agree with Viktor, it's too risky. We should keep it between us.”
After another pull from the bottle, I wiped my mouth withthe back of my hand, catching a stray drop of red before handing it back to Endre. “Good. Glad we are all in agreement.”
After draining half the bottle of wine with only half a sandwich on my stomach, my shoulders dropped and my chest loosened as the alcohol took effect. Finally, some of the numbness I craved was setting in, and I could forget for a moment about the deaths of my father and friends, and my missing mate.
Viktor chugged from his bottle before passing it to Vadim. “Remember when we got shitfaced after Béke when we were twenty-one and decided it would be a good idea to go for a midnight swim?”
“Yes, because my dick and balls were too frozen to make sweet love to that female I was fucking at the time,” Vadim shuddered.
“You seriously can’t remember her name?” Endre laughed.
“I’m not good with names,” Vadim waved him off.
I snorted. “That’s because you’d slip up if you remembered them.”
“Baby is a universal name, one that has saved me too many times to count,” Vadim raised the bottle in toast and then drained the last of it.
Viktor yanked the cork out of a bottle of hard amber liquid, then hissed after he took a pull from the glass lip. “Kriztof had just joined our group that year. We told him in order to stay he had to jump off that insanely high cliff without the assistance of wings or magic. That crazy bastard did it, too. I felt bad afterward because I would never jump off myself.”
He handed the clear bottle to me, and I gulped the smoky liquid, welcoming the burn down my throat and into my stomach. “He hated King Zalan more than any of us, especially after his father’s death. Kriztof died trying to protect Izidora and me from being torn apart. He is a hero.”
I passed the liquor to Endre, who poured a shot into a glass,then tossed it in the fire. “To Kriztof,” he said solemnly, raising the bottle then pouring an unhealthy measure into the glass for himself.
Vadim fetched the bottle from his hands when the amber liquid reached the rim of the glass. “Zekari and Kirigin didn’t come from a noble house, but their promise as fighters shone brighter than many sons of both High and Low Houses. It was an honor to fight alongside them, both last night and in many skirmishes before that.” He toasted them with the bottle, then drained a large enough portion for the three of them.
It was Viktor’s turn to snatch, and he poured two fingers into another glass, then threw it over the embers. “To Zekari and Kirigin.”
He filled the glass for himself, then another for me, placing the bottle in the middle of us as we sat in silence, lost in the memories of our fallen friends. After I finished my second nearly full glass, the alcohol said, “Who is up for a swim? I need to bathe anyway.”
“Let’s do it,” Endre said as he jumped to his feet, then caught himself on the arm of the chair before he swayed to the side. Or was it me who swayed? I jogged to the wall of windows, opening one to a slap in the face by the salty sea air. My bloody clothes were tossed away, and I called my wings to me as I stood naked in front of my friends, all in various stages of undress. The window was wide enough to leap through and take flight, so I backed up a few paces then charged through it, my wings catching a draft and sending me soaring over the angry waves that crashed against the jagged rocks below. Endre leaped out the window behind me, followed by Viktor and Vadim, and we whooped as we glided toward the surging sea.
“What are you idiots doing!?” A female screamed from the window, and I flew in a loop to find a red faced Liliana standing in the frame.
I swallowed down the alcohol that threatened to come up with a laugh, then banished my wings and plunged into the icy water. My brothers mimicked me, all of us gloriously drunk and sharing a light moment together before the reality of the impending war sank its claws into our lives.
5
Izidora would come around. Not a single doubt plagued my mind as I watched her sleep.
Was staring at my mate as she slept creepy?Probably, but I didn’t give a fuck.
I’d waited twenty-one years for the day when I could lay eyes on her. When I saw Izidora in that ballroom, in that gold dress, Angel wings on full display, and a halo around her head, I knew. She knocked the breath straight from my lungs, and if I hadn’t been on a mission to save her from those Night Fae who thought they knew better than me, I would have fallen to my knees and crawled that thread pulling me straight to her.
I should have killed that motherfucker Izidora clung to like a liferaft. His scent still lingered, and I knew they’d been intimate. My fists clenched so hard at the thought of him inside her that I drew blood into my palms. But that wasn’t the worst of what had happened to her.
She’d been raped by her guards, my father’s soldiers, and probably some of King Zalan’s, too.
My blood boiled as I swore to avenge her, sodomizing every last one with my sword until they begged me to end their lives,and only then would I wrap my hands around their throats and watch with glee as the life dimmed in their eyes.
No one hurt my mate and lived.
Izidora shifted in her sleep, brows creasing, and I was instantly alert to her every breath and movement, my violent thoughts vanishing like a cloud in the wind. I had to take care of her, to show her that I wasn’t going to hurt her, and to convince her to conquer the continent with me. It was what we were meant to do, prophesied to do, together.
