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I swallowed the rest of the liquid, letting the burn slide down my throat to my gut. Then, so fucking slowly, I placed the empty glass on the desk, the heavy bottom thumping against the wood, then pushed off of it, mimicking my father’s threatening stance. His eyes darkened and narrowed as he sneered at me, though he had to tilt his chin up to look me in the eye.
“Because,father, you allowed your soldiers to abuse her. To keep her chained to a wall for years. To rape her. To whip her. To beat her. To keep her identity from her. To literally keep her in the dark,” I hissed, dragging out each phrase to emphasize my displeasure. “You allowed my mate to suffer, all while telling me she was safe and there was no need to check on her. Did you know what they did to her? Did you know how many males got to taste her before me? Did. You. Know?” The glass splintered beneath my fist with a satisfying crunch as I punctuated my lastquestion with hits to the table, and Rares shirked away as the two alphas of the Iron Realm faced off.
My father’s expression was blank, betraying nothing but his distaste for my outburst, though his body vibrated with anger. “She needed to be broken in every way possible so we could make her into whatever we wanted her to be,” was his only reply.
“Well, that all went to hell when I wasn’t the first one to get to her,” I seethed, baring my teeth. I didn’t reveal that I didn’t think they’d ever been able to break her in the first place. “Now, I have to convince her that everything she was told before is a lie, and I have to wait to have her because she thinks another male is her mate! I have to convince her to accept a mating bond she would have otherwise willingly accepted. But if she had known the truth from the beginning, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“I believe you are capable of swaying her to your cause. After all, that is why you won your place as my heir. Calm yourself, Ruslan, and focus on the plan,” he snarled.
“Unfortunately, I do not have anyone to pit against her, like I had to do with my half-siblings,” I gritted through my teeth, the memories of their deaths flashing before my eyes, escaping from the part of my mind where I kept them under lock and key.
“You will find your leverage, if you need it,” he replied coolly, and I collapsed back into my chair, defeated, if only for a moment. Rares and my father turned to further discussions of the Félvér as I wrestled with the dark memories triggered by his statements.
He had forced us to fight for the right to be proclaimed heir. Only the strongest, fastest, and most ruthless could have won among a field of twelve who all wanted a claim on the land we were born into. I cracked my neck, relieving some tension there, then cracked my knuckles, only hints ofscratches remaining from the shards of glass that cut into my skin.
Pain was my anchor to this world. It held me steady in moments when the waves of darkness threatened to veer me off course. Whether I was inflicting it or receiving it mattered not. Pain was a universal experience, the threat of which would bring the weakest to their knees and the strongest to their feet. I became the strongest by welcoming pain into my body, imbuing myself with the ability to rise from the depths as it fought against me, dragging me into the murky abyss.
My sister, Brazren, was on her knees, a bloody dagger held over our brother Orrien’s lifeless body, her face horror-stricken as her actions landed squarely upon her shoulders.
Actions I convinced her to take.
I told her that I overheard Orrien speaking with Aztrina about how to kill her.
But I lied.
Orrien was an easy target; his Wolf Shifter nature made him crave the company of others.
“You’re a monster,” Brazren hissed. “The pain we endured in the tunnels beneath Ryza twisted your mind into something unlovable and irredeemable. You’ll never feel remorse for this or anything else.”
She was my favorite sibling, but after she turned her back on me, I killed her with the bloody knife.
At least she had her Demon mother around while we were young.
I had no one.
Out of the twelve of us, I was the loner, always reading when I wasn’t fighting. My siblings’ mothers were around to look after them, to teach them kindness and compassion to balance their warrior training. Yet none of them gave me any thought, for I was the favored one, the one who spent the most time with his father, who received special training from Rares. I oftenwondered why my father had us fight to the death – whether it was a test for me or simply because he was cruel. King Zalan may have been a jealous narcissist, but King Azim was a sadist – a trait that I sometimes shared, either by his blood running through my veins or by his influence throughout my life. Sometimes, I tried to be better – like how I wanted to be a good male for Izidora – but other times, I needed to satiate my rage, and the only way to calm myself was through pain.
I sought this pain as I stomped from my father’s office, headed straight toward the barracks where an unlucky guard of my father’s would bear the brunt of my rage.
It was unfortunate Drazen hadn’t found Izidora’s cave guards, because the release I would get from killing them would be pure ecstasy, and it just might slake this fury burning inside me.
16
The Angel regarded me with his unreadable gaze as we sat cross-legged in the center of a domed chamber beneath Ryza Citadel. If there weren't a thousand pinpricks of light above us, it could have been mistaken for the cave where I had spent most of my life.
“So, you’re my cousin?” I asked, brimming with questions like a too-full glass of wine. I was ready to get drunk on the knowledge about myself and my powers.
“I am,” Zuriel began, exhaling a long breath through pursed lips. “We are the last of our family line.”
A twinge of sadness stirred within me, despite not knowing a single member of my Angel family – until this moment. It was as if a small part of me held onto a kernel of hope that my people might be out there, waiting for me, ever since I had learned of my true parentage.
“You never fathered any children here?” I had assumed he would have, given where we were.
He shook his head, locks of silky white hair falling over his shoulder. “In my hundred years here, I have not been able to produce offspring.”
“You’ve been in the Iron Realm for one hundred years?” My hand flew to my chest, breath catching in my throat, at his casually-dropped fact.
“Yes. Your father, Ithuriel, and I were captured on the shores of Keleti – the continent of Angels and Demons – as we pursued a legion of Demons who had raided a nearby Angel settlement.”
