But no matter how good my acting was, I was not Neculai.
They just stared at me, the silence heavy not with reverence but with skepticism—and just a little bit of disgust.
Despite the Mark, the crown, the wings, they still saw a Turned slave.
Fuck them.
I paced the dais, staring them down. I stopped short when I saw a familiar face—a man with ash-brown hair speckled with gray at his temples, and sharp dark eyes. I recognized him immediately—faster than I’d like—because the memories came in an unwelcome, violent slash. That face, and hundreds of nights of suffering.
He resembled Neculai, in some ways. The same hard-angled features, and the same cruelty in them. That made sense. They were cousins, after all.
He’d been bad. Not the worst. That prize went to his brother, Simon, who, I noticed with a quick scan of the room, was not here today.
I paused before him, head cocked, smirk at my lips. I just couldn’t help myself.
“Martas,” I said pleasantly. “It’s a surprise to see you here. I could have sworn my invitation was addressed to your brother.”
“He couldn’t make the journey,” Martas said blandly. Downright dismissively. And there was no mistaking the way his eyes flicked up my body, the twitch of disgust at his lip.
The room was utterly silent. Harmless words on the surface. But everyone here knew what an insult they were.
Simon was one of the most powerful Rishan nobles that still remained alive—hell, the most powerful. But he was still just a noble. When a king summons, you fucking come.
“Really?” I said. “That’s a shame. What was so important?”
Martas—that snake—actually looked me straight in the eye, and said, “He’s a very busy man.”
A dark, bloodthirsty pleasure seeped through my careful composure.
“I suppose you’ll have to swear fealty on his behalf, then.” I lifted my chin, staring down my nose at him, smiling broadly enough to reveal my fangs. “Bow.”
I knew exactly what was about to happen.
Simon and Martas had believed that they had a clear path to the throne. They were the king’s only remaining relatives—surely, they must have thought, Simon would find an Heir Mark on his skin when Neculai died, as Neculai’s oldest next-of-kin.
But unfortunately for them—unfortunately for me—Nyaxia wasn’t so predictable.
The pricks had probably spent the last two hundred years assuming that no one had the Mark at all. Must have been an unpleasant shock a few weeks ago, when I revealed mine and then summoned them to Sivrinaj to kneel before the Turned slave they’d abused for seventy years.
They had no intention of doing so, and I knew that.
Martas did not move.
“I cannot,” he said.
One might have expected a gasp through the room, a ripple of murmurs. No. The crowd was silent. No one was surprised.
“My brother only swears his fealty to the rightful king of the House of Night, and I bow only to that man,” Martas went on. “You are no king.” The sneer at his lip twitched again. “I’ve seen the way you’ve defiled yourself. I can’t bow to someone who has done such things. Nor to someone who stands on a dais beside a Bloodborn prince.”
Defiled myself.
What a way to phrase it. It was almost fucking elegant, the way he made this about some non-existent moral code—as if I’d chosen anything that had happened all those years ago, and as if he hadn’t been one of the ones holding me down.
I nodded slowly, considering them. I smiled at him. It was now entirely genuine. I couldn’t have suppressed it even if I’d wanted to.
Bloodlust hammered through my body with every heartbeat, taking over.
And then Martas said, words growing faster, hand thrust to the dais, “You say you’ve freed us from the Hiaj, but I see Vincent’s whore sitting right next to your throne.”
His eyes flicked over my shoulder. Landing, I knew, on Oraya.
I knew that look. Hatred and hunger and desire and disgust, all rolled together. “Fine if you want to fuck her,” he snarled. “But look at her. So untouched. Not a scratch on her. All you need is a mouth and a cunt. Why did you bother keeping the rest?”
My smile disappeared.
I no longer found it fun to toy with him.
I had been keeping everything about this meeting calculated, deliberate. But now I moved on nothing but impulse.
“I appreciate your honesty,” I said calmly. “And I appreciate Simon’s.”
I stepped down the stairs in two long strides and placed my hands gently on either side of Martas’s face. He really did look so damned similar to how he had centuries ago.