Half-Demon's Revenge (Legends of Radenor #1)

Path to the Throne (part I)

I dealt with those implications in a simple way. I told them the merits belonged to their parents, and not from the crown, but also from my dear old uncle in particular. If they wanted anything, they could earn it themselves, from my own person. My bedroom was open, and demons, as everybody knew, were bisexual. Half-demons as well. Oddly, nobody volunteered.

They did come at me with their daggers, though, and swords, and spells; they even brought an exorcist once. After that, I had to raise the housemaids' salaries. Now, they had real merits to the crown. I mean, removing those noodles from the chandelier... Why noodles? Well, if half-demons get mad, they can cut you into ribbons—with their claws. And I was really mad that time.

But I'd better tell you how it all started.

My uncle married a gorgeous duchess. She was a real beauty, that one. I wouldn't be against spending some time alone with her myself, just no marriage.

She had raven-black hair, deep blue eyes, delicate features as if painted with a fine brush, and her figure...you couldn't see everything because of the dress, of course, but her bosom was to die for. And everything else, in all likelihood, was at least as good. Her legs might have been a little bit crooked, but who could notice that under a long skirt before marriage? Anyway, my uncle was head over heels. She wasn't having any of that, though. She fluttered her eyelashes and wiggled her behind, but as soon as he tried to touch her under her corsage, she rebuffed him. No sex before a wedding, she said. At the slightest provocation, she burst into tears, asking His Majesty to take pity on her virtue, show some understanding for her situation, and not to rob the poor girl of the only thing she could use as her dowry.

Well, as for poor, she got it right. She was as poor as a church mouse; each of her several dresses was patched up eight times at the very least. Later, after the king's death, she became known as One Dress Queen, as she never wore the same dress twice. She gave them away to her maids or court ladies. My uncle pandered to her every whim. What can a man do? It was love. I always wondered, how do people think when in such a state? Probably not with their brains.

In short, that lady had only one treasure—between her legs, and she sold it to the highest bidder—for the crown. Don't tell me about love, please. Those who loved him, my uncle used and discarded like trash. When you love someone, you're not thinking about yourself, and they didn't, giving their honor and soul to the knight in golden armor—no bargaining. They were simply happy that the crown prince stooped as low as to spend a whole night with them—or even two nights. That was real love. What she did was prostitution. At least common whores were cheap. That one turned out to be expensive.

My uncle, then Prince Rudolph, finally proposed, making her Princess Abigail. What a good-looking couple they were! You could hang their portraits on every wall in the city, and nobody would complain. Once Rudolph was king, folks rushed to gawk at them during royal parades on Sundays. There they went, my uncle, tall, golden-haired, on a black stallion, the crown barely visible in his hair, and his wife on a white horse, slender, delicate, bedecked in diamonds, like a midwinter tree. I never liked those baubles, maybe because she did.

Both threw copper coins into the crowd, as people cried tears of adoration and showered them with flowers. How...wonderful. Wasn't there anybody who could throw a brick? It was all bought with their money, with their blood. The coppers got fleeced from them, too, the very next day. Yet how could you prove that to a crowd? You couldn't.

After marrying the king, our Abigail started churning out kids. There were four: two boys, two girls, alternating between genders—boy, girl, boy, girl—so everyone got what they wanted. Everyone was content. My grandfather got noble offspring for the Radenor dynasty—that's my last name as well, if you hadn't gotten that yet, and the name of our kingdom. Abigail got the crown and money, my uncle, the position of a gorgeous wife and children. He never stopped fooling around, though. A leopard can't change its spots.