“Don’t snivel, Daddy,” she sang, all trace of Clara banished from her as if my pet had never even been present within her at all. The bond between us was broken, just as the bond between the Vega girl had somehow been removed from my flesh too. Though I got the feeling this connection had been lost when Clara had taken leave of this body, not through any trick of the stars.
“I do not snivel,” I snarled, forcing myself to my feet despite the way my head was spinning and slapping my left hand down over the stump of my right wrist as I pushed healing magic into it and stopped the bleeding, fusing skin over the wound and stealing away the pain. I could not grow a hand back like I could other limbs, it was one of the Cardinal rules of our magic. Any source of power could not be restored. Head, heart or hands. None could be returned if they were destroyed.
All the time I worked, the Shadow Princess watched me, her head cocked to one side and the shadows dancing all around her, caressing her skin and letting flashes of if be exposed so that I was gifted a view of her naked body beneath them.
“This is a disaster,” I snarled, turning away from her and striding along the outer wall of The Palace of Souls as naked as the day I was born and looking for a target to aim my wrath at.
“Sire!” Jenkins called as he darted out of a door, my old butler ready and waiting with a robe for me like always. If there was a single Fae in this wretched kingdom who I held any kind of fondness for then it was him. And that was the only reason I didn’t blast him apart to sate the bloodlust pounding through me and instead threw the robe over myself to cover my body.
“I need a full report on the fight and who was involved. I want names of every Fae who turned on their king and I will see heads roll for it. If you can’t find the perpetrators then find me their mothers, brothers, sisters, children or their fucking pets. The executions will begin at dawn.”
Jenkins bowed low and I strode on, my gaze scanning the dead bodies and the damage to the grounds as I went. This was unacceptable. I could not allow this kind of dissent in my kingdom and now the public were going to learn the price of crossing their king in the most public and gruesome ways I could imagine.
“What am I going to do without my hand?” I demanded of the stars, snarling up at them as they looked on without a fucking care as always.
It didn’t matter anyway. I was the master of my own fate and the fate of the entire kingdom. So I would make the decision on how to proceed for all of us.
A prickle ran up my spine as the creature who had once shared a body with Clara followed me and I fought against the urge to look back at her, sensing the shift that had taken place here. For some reason, the girl who had been Guardian bonded to me was absent now and I got the feeling I was going to have to work hard to tighten my control on the shadow wielder that remained in her place. But I refused to balk at the change, refused to so much as acknowledge it as I continued to walk ahead of her, making her follow me and reminding her of who ruled here.
I would need to figure out this change in her and perhaps adapt my methods of control over her too, but if there was one thing I had learned during my rise to power then it was to make certain you never let anyone see you flinch.
So I would treat her as though nothing had changed while I figured this out and if luck stayed on my side then she would continue in the role I’d crafted for her without any need for me to tighten my hold on her.
A man let out a cry of fright as I strode closer to him, his wide eyes the only thing making it clear he wasn’t a corpse as I observed the broken bones protruding from his body and concluded that he had likely fallen from a great height. But I didn’t recognise him. And as his pleas for mercy reached my ears, I strode straight towards him, planting my bare foot on his throat and bearing my weight down as he began to thrash and fight beneath me.
I snarled as I watched him struggle uselessly against me, drinking in the terror in his eyes as he was forced to accept who the more powerful Fae was here, and my fury was tainted by a fleeting moment of victory as I watched the life spill from his gaze and sent him into damnation like the worthless cretin he was.
All the time, the Shadow Princess trailed behind me and I felt her curious gaze on my movements, assessing me and hunting for any signs of weakness.
No matter how hard I pushed for it, I couldn’t feel any kind of bond with her now and my mind was spinning with what that could possibly mean. How had the Guardian bonds been thwarted? And now that she was no longer under my thrall, how difficult would it be to maintain control of her?