He was a monster.
As I stalked toward his desk, my feet crunched over the glass, and I imagined it was his bones beneath me.
“You enslaved my daughter,” I repeated softly.
Dick arched his brow. “No, you did. You were the one who wanted her protected. The tattoo accomplishes that. The title of the bond is of no consequence. It makes no difference; I told you everything that mattered. I never lied.”
“You bastard,” I spat. “What do you mean, of course you lied.” I paused then asked with confusion. “Why would you do this?”
He shrugged casually. “Because you asked me to.”
“No,” I snarled. “Answer me honestly.” I pressed my knuckles into the glass top of his desk and leaned forward.
“I did.” He shrugged.
Typical. Dick refused to take responsibility and was putting it all on me.
“Coward!” I whirled and grabbed the second guest chair, and crystal wings clattered as Dick casually stepped to the side and avoided it. “All you do is hide behind your precious gods.”
He chuckled and murmured, “If only you knew.”
The crash echoed loudly in the large office as it exploded against the window.
I picked up a large glass shard from the first chair and chucked it.
Again, he dodged it.
I threw another one.
He caught it.
I threw everything I could get my hands on as I screamed like a lunatic and fantasized about wearing Dick’s flesh as a coat. Mounting his head on my wall. Drinking his blood until he was silent.
He kept dodging glass casually.
When my hand was slick with red like I was wearing gloves, I staggered backward with exhaustion. Heaving breaths shook my chest as I took in my ruined surroundings.
Carnage all around.
“Are you done yet?” Dick’s voice was monotone.
“No.” I spat onto the mangled tile floor.
Dick put his hands on his hips. “Would you like to throw something else? Perhaps break off a chunk of the wall and chuck it at me.”
I walked over to the wall, punched a circle with my fist, ripped out the wood paneling, then flung it at Dick with all my might. He waved his arm lazily, and wood slammed against the floor.
He rolled his eyes. “Feel better?”
“Never.”
Dick stared at me for a long moment, then dropped into his fancy leather chair that was curved at the back to allow room for his wings. He sat at his desk like this was an ordinary meeting and said, “If you’re done acting like a petulant child, I have a matter I want to discuss with you.”
Manic laughter exploded from my throat, and I almost fell to my knees from the weight of emotions coursing through me. “A matter to discuss? You enslaved my daughter with that tattoo, and now she can’t leave the kings without pain.”
Dick waved his hand like he wasn’t listening. “That has nothing to do with the tattoo.”
How quickly he dismissed everything as trivial.
He’d ruined my daughter’s life with his games, in so many different ways. She was going to be devastated when she discovered how far his deceit reached.
I already was.
Would the lies ever stop?
Dick leaned back in his ostentatious leather chair and placed his hands behind his head. He put his boots on his desk and stared at me impassively.
He was so sure I’d just keep playing his games.
Not this time.
He’d gone too far.
I smiled. “I’m done. Turn me over to the sun god, I don’t care what you do. I’m finished being your pawn.”
Silence stretched between us.
“Perfect. I’ll alert the entire High Court network that Arabella Alis Egan is enemy number one and should be exterminated immediately.”
My fangs dug deeper into my gums. “You made a vow.”
Dick’s pale skin glowed under the bright lights of his office, like he was a god addressing a subject. “I vowed to leave your child alone once they took on the mantle of ruling the fae realm and sided with the sun god. Your child has not yet done so. There is no vow binding me.”
My jaw trembled. “Stop with the games. You know what she is. Why would you want her to rule?”
“Because that is her destiny.” His lips thinned. “Because I’ve decided that is her fate and she will fulfill her role.”
My fangs dug deeper into my gums as I spat, “I hate you.”
“I know.” Dick spun a fountain pen between his fingers and said calmly, “Emotions aside, the matter to discuss is important. At the direction of the gods, the High Court is instituting the Legionnaire Games at Elite Academy.”
My temples throbbed with pain.
Dick said casually, “We’ve both known for decades that war is coming. Now it’s here. It is crucial to the war effort that the gods establish this generation’s legion leadership structure. They’ve already identified the six strongest groups in all the realms. All that’s left is to test them and evaluate how they interact with one another. The gods need to see how they suffer.”
I’d been monitoring the ungodly for years, and I’d seen firsthand how dire the situation was becoming. How they were spreading.
There was an infection in the galaxy.
But some things were more important than the threats to civilization, so I shook my head and said, “I don’t care.”
Dick continued like I hadn’t spoken, “Your current training group is among the strongest we have. So the gods have evaluated that they have enough ties among them to make up a single legion.”
I narrowed my eyes.
Foreboding skittered down my spine.
A legion was a group of elite warriors, people whose lives were bound by more than circumstances or blood. It was about devotion and loyalty. Legions were the building blocks of war.
You couldn’t fight a multirealm war unless you had the best from all the species on your side.
My recruits fought well together, and there was no doubt they were powerful, but some days, they barely tolerated one another. From what I’d seen, they had nothing in common.
Legions were thrown into the trenches of suffering, and they usually only survived because they had one another. My recruits did not have those types of connections with each other.
I didn’t like it.
“What ties them together?” I asked slowly.
Dick arched his brow like he knew something I didn’t. “That’s above your clearance level.”
I bared my fangs at him.
“All you need to know about them”—Dick’s feathers clattered as he leaned back in his chair—“is that their connection is strong. The gods are excited to watch them perform.”
Working my jaw up and down, I stabbed my fangs into my gums until copper flooded my mouth.
I rolled it around my mouth.
Dick nodded. “I’m telling you this because the gods have ordered you to host the games. You will work beside me and the other representatives. Centuries ago, you were involved in the last Legionnaire Games, so you know how it works.”
“No,” I said harshly as I took a step back because I knew exactly how it worked.
I could see what they were doing.
They wanted to put distance between me and Arabella.
If I hosted the games, then I wasn’t allowed to interact with the competitors or assist them.