Kingdom's Vice Series: A Voyage of Vengeance ( #2 2015)

Chapter Seven

The news hits me like ice water. Duhamas sits beside me in the hall, a hand on my shoulder, patting my back, telling me that Alec will be here soon to console me.

Nothing can change this. This is too far.

'How could you let this happen?' I demand from him, my eyes afire with rage and pain. 'How could you let this happen?' he retorts, stepping away from me. 'It could have been different.' He says, shaking his head.

I hide my tears. 'But they'd still be dead.'

'It would have been kinder if we had killed them the moment they set foot on the shore.' He tells me, dusting off his gauntlet with his gloved finger. In the starlight I see blood. My mouth goes dry and my stomach drops.

'Jasmine,' I gasp, my eyes stinging with tears, 'I have to tell her.'

I grab my skirt as I stand up to take my leave, but his hand loops around my arm and jerks me backwards. 'Don't bother,' he whispers, 'She has already been informed by one of the guards. She will join him at sunrise.'

I shove him away with a greater force than I knew myself capable of. He staggers back and collides against the stone pillar, his breath taken by the shock. He doesn't fight back. He just lets me pin him there, a blade to his throat.

'How did it feel?' I yell, 'How did it feel to kill a man who was going to be a father? How did it feel to take away the life of someone innocent?'

He chuckles and shifts in my grasp. 'Nobody's innocent, love. Not even me. We've all done something worth condemning...you made your life picking from the pockets of so-called innocents.' He has a point. 'You are no different to me.'

I tighten my grip on the blade. 'I am nothing like you. Uncle has poisoned you, all of you.' And with that, I release him, cursing under my breath. He slumps against the wall and gags, before wiping his mouth with the back of his gloved hand.

'I won't tell Alec!' he yells after me, still chuckling and wincing. 'Your secret is safe with me.'

~.~.~

'I don't know what you want me to say, Skaya.' is all he mutters in the dark. 'I cannot undo what has already been done.'

I shake my head. 'You're right,' I say. I don't even believe myself when I say it, but it just slips out. 'There's nothing you can do now. He's already dead, and Jasmine will be next.'

He looks me in the eyes, 'Jasmine?'

'Yes,' I snap quickly, 'that was her name. It's a shame you never asked her, before she walks the hall for the last time.'

He paces himself in the room, the moonlight shining on his hair, painting it silver. 'Indeed, I have made a mistake; a mistake I cannot fix. Her execution has already been scheduled for sunrise.'

I look down at my own belly and imagine what it would be like if I had a child growing inside me too, how I would feel in Jasmine's position. 'This isn't right, Alec. None of this is.'

He sighs as something inside him snaps: his patience. It has been wearing thin, I suspect. 'Do you really think that has not occurred to me before now?'

'Well, clearly not! Otherwise you would have grown a spine of your own instead of listening to my Uncle!'

His breath is hot on my face as he nears me, but I swallow my fear. 'Yes, and your Uncle is the king! I do not take orders from anyone other than him! That is my condition for living under his good graces, Skaya. You do as you are ordered to, or no good will come to you.' He says it without any hope of taking it back. 'It is a lesson you should have learnt by now. This is not the time to play empathy with scoundrels playing distressed beggars in search of compassion.' He spits. 'You'll do yourself no favours by caring for them.'

A cruel joke. He tells me not to care for them, when caring is all I can do. It seems my gift is now a curse.

'And you would know of the good fortunes of abandoning your emotions entirely, would you not?'

After that comes silence, a painful, aching silence.