Page 81 of Fated to the Wicked King

My eyes lit up upon spotting a wide table piled with papers, tools, beakers, and spare parts.

Our main goal was to find the rabbit hole to get back to the other side of the river. We weren’t really here to solve the mysterious disappearance of the Hatter.

However, I still needed to see if he at least had an F-capacitor amongst his bizarre collection of otherworldly trinkets before crossing back. It was the last thing I needed to make my own invention work.

“It’s faint.” The king tilted his head, as if straining to hear a silent melody. “It’s not quite here.”

“What is?”

“That strange energy.”

He had always been able to detect the bizarre anomalies first.

Touching his arm, I furrowed my eyebrows in thought. “Last night⁠—”

His eyes lit up suggestively. “Yes? What about last night?”

I sighed. “No. What I meant was—I sensed something in your mind. These anomalies, are you able to detect them because of the traces of magic from my heart?”

He nodded. “Since I started wearing your heart, I have been detecting bizarre energies across the land. I’d first felt it in Cindervale.”

“Cindervale,” I echoed with a frown. “I’d heard you leveled that kingdom.” I couldn’t help the despondence in my tone. “So many innocent people.”

The king huffed. “Those people were not innocent. Cindervale betrayed my family. The only reason the Red Queen was able to usurp my father’s throne was because of them.”

My stomach still felt queasy. “Surely there must have been another option. You could have gotten justice without having to annihilate an entire kingdom.”

I couldn’t even imagine how it would have felt to lose my entire family to such a tragedy, but I couldn’t fathom how a wrong would right another wrong. How death could justify even more death.

“Traitors deserve no mercy.” He smirked. “During my mission to seek them out, on occasion, I felt that same bizarre energy. That was when I discovered the other odd villages afflicted with the mysterious malady. Brasshaven, Aurelforge. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I knew couldn’t let the sickness spread. They had to be dealt with swiftly.”

My jaw dropped at recognizing the names of other towns he had leveled. All those people, women, and children… “So you just…killed them all?”

“It wasn’t until Lucerne that I realized what they meant, and what they had to do with your origins. Those ghosts, those infected people. They were a threat to Wünder and to you.”

Heaving at the horror, I covered my face with my hand. “Oh my god, that doesn’t mean you can just go and kill whoever you want.”

“Why not? I’m the king.” He crossed the house, approaching the back door.

I sucked in a breath. “That’s not—oh my god—that is so not what that means. It is the king’s responsibility to ensure the well-being of all the citizens of Wünder. Surely, you could have done even a little bit of research to find out the truth before annihilating all those kingdoms.”

“That’s what that prick Gregory said.” He turned back with a sneer. “You do think he’s a better ruler than I am, don’t you?”

A wave of helplessness drained my energy.

It had already occurred to me before. Rabb had never had any formal royal training—not in policy or diplomacy. He was an assassin. He had been one for hundreds of years. He knew nothing else. He’d never had to think too hard to solve problems. He’d simply eliminated them. His former employer, the Red Queen, certainly didn’t set a stellar example as a monarch.

His shoulders lifted, matter-of-factly. “Besides, I knew it would make a better story. That I was out for revenge for my family, instead of some sort of otherworldly conspiracy. It strengthened my reputation further. Also, I was sure it would make you hate me more. If you believed all the bad things everyone was saying about me.”

“What?” I sputtered out. “Are you saying…it was part of your elaborate plot to get me to break up with you?” My head spun. “You are mad.”

“Am I? Didn’t it work? Didn’t you hate me even more?”

Almost crying in frustration, I threw my hands up. “You can’t just keep killing everyone.”

He scoffed. “Casualties of war are negligible compared to the king’s will.”

“The cost of a war cannot be every single life,” I groaned. “Besides, why would you willingly take on such a dangerous mission on your own? You didn’t even care that you were risking your own life left and right—and for what? For me? I never asked you to do that.”