The Blood of Darkness

Chapter 30

The Dark King

It's nearly midnight when I tell my guards to bring me my Torturer. My head aches from where he hit me with the chains, but the voices make the pain easy to ignore.

They are back for the first time in a long while, and there are no Gods to help me this time. After all, I was the one who betrayed them. They had helped free me from the voices' grip, and in return, I rejected my magic, successfully plotted to kill my parents, and conquered Nieves. In the years they had worked to help me, they always underestimated me. What I wanted.

I do not belong to the Gods, or the voices. They will belong to me. Just as Valerie will.

But for now, with the voices' return, I must walk a fine line and keep my interests to myself. As much as I would love to choke them on the ashes of the dreams they have burned, my dreams, the dreams of a young, innocent boy, I cannot.

Instead, I have allied with them for now, and it has proved to be very useful. So long as I don't let them take over, there shouldn't be much of a problem. Last time, I was much too young to even understand what letting them in meant. Now, I know better.

They have told me many useful things, one of them being that Icylus told my Torturer the truth about Valerie. It made sense, for I had been puzzling over the newfound hope I had been seeing in his eyes. The hope that wasn't there before.

Sometimes, the voices lie, trying to turn me against my precious love, my Valerie darling.

"You will never be a god," they say. "But she will. The one your Gods call the Shadow. Our enemy. Kill her, and this world will be ours. We'll let you rule it with us."

They say that Valerie is my enemy, that I must slay her. They even persuaded me to create an army of the Gifted to do just that. But I'd much rather beat her, break her, make her mine. The death of someone with as much power as her would truly be a tragedy.

But I can tolerate their words about Valerie so long as they tell me other useful things. I ask about who she is with in Trivette, where she is staying. How she has been able to kill so many of my spies, why she hasn't come to rescue her beloved friend. I know she must know that he's alive. One of the Gods had to have told her.

But the voices' answers don't make much sense.

"There is one with golden eyes and flaming hair who seeks to shatter your soul and turn you to ruins. One day in the near future, you will look into his eyes for a split second and see a world burning, wild shadows dancing in the fire, in mad desperation, ferocious rage, and haunting, broken pain. There will be fear in him, but beneath that a frenzy of soundless screams, bodies ablaze, and wine mingled with blood. Red on red on red. He will be screaming, and in his eyes, you will then hear the hisses, the warnings, or rather, the inevitable. And not long after that, you may scream along with him as you fall to your demise."

I laugh at that. Before my communications with the spy network were completely cut off, I received reports of a boy with red hair who was spotted with Valerie. I will kill him myself if I must. Nobody touches what is mine.

Despite my lack of communication from Trivette, I trust General Andras to lead the network to success. He is a clever, cunning man who is willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. King Conleth has already been killed, and soon enough, the Queen and the Prince will be disposed of as well. It will make the process of conquering Trivette go much smoother. Hopefully, the people will already be broken when my army arrives. And a kingdom without a ruler won't even stand a chance.

As I wait for my Torturer to be brought to me, my thoughts trail back to my future queen. My patience has grown thin without her, my interest in my brown-haired whore dwindling more and more each day.