I break off but then swallow and finish. “I won’t be able to survive it a second time.” Then I laugh humorlessly. “Though I guess it won’t really matter. Because they’ll probably just kill us both at the same time. But knowing it’s coming and not being able to do anything about it…” My voice fills with tears again.
“Stop talking like this,” Shak demands. “I will not lose you or our child. I swear to you, Juliet— The King is on our side and—”
“Arrest that Draci,” comes a shout from the doorway and I look up in confusion to see a group of guards come in to the room. The one in the lead is pointing at Shak.
“What?” Shak and I ask at the same time.
Whatever the reason, they’re clearly coming for him.
“What is the meaning of this?” Shak asks, standing to his full height. “I have the permission of the King to be here. If you do not believe me, we can go ask him ourselves.”
“Do not blaspheme on top of your other crimes!” cries one guard. “You know perfectly well that the King is dead. You killed him.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Shak
This is a nightmare. For it cannot be true that Father is dead and I am being dragged before the court as his murderer, while my mate remains caged by my enemies.
This cannot be the reality that I now find myself in. Truly it cannot.
And yet when I am brought before the thrones, the King’s lies forbiddingly empty and the gleam in the Queen’s eye is one of a long-awaited triumph.
Right then, I know the true murderer. It was her. The female who has been a poison upon the throne from the first day she was crowned Queen.
The room is full to the brim. All of those in the highest castes are here. Thraxian. Syrthithian. Psaris.
The King’s guard drag me to the Queen’s feet and then force me to my knees in front of her. One shoves my face to the floor so that I am bowed in the ultimate position of subservience.
The Queen must lean over then, because I hear her whispered voice not far overhead, as cold as our icy planet right before we fled.
“Your female will die along with that little bastard offspring you put inside of her. I will make it painful. Just as I did for your whore of a mother after poisoning the King against her.”
She killed my mo—?
Before I can roar and spit fire, a rag soaked in Dracisbane is shoved in my mouth and tied securely around the back of my head.
I am lifted from the ground and turned on my knees to face the assembled crowd.
“My fellow Draci!” the Queen calls out in a ringing voice that echoes around the Great Hall. “We are gathered here for the most wretched of purposes. The King is dead!”
Shocked cries and murmurs run through the crowd.
“Slain by his own bastard son, this mutant here before you.”
Even more murmurs along with the occasional shout of “Kill the mutant!” come from the crowd.
I glare them all down. They will just accept what she says? There King is dead and they demand no examinations? No exposure of evidence?
“King Thraxcruhxas wanted to explore this option for the survival of our race,” the Queen continues. “But clearly the human impulse for violence cannot be ignored any longer. Do we truly want to breed with such a race?”
“No!” shouts someone from the crowd. Others echo them.
The Queen smiles. “Would you not rather live out our long, long lives in peace after we clear this planet of the vermin infecting it? After all, if we had not arrived, they would have made it uninhabitable within a few short centuries. They would destroy their most precious gift. They do not deserve it! But we do!”
Cheers erupt all over the crowd and I watch on in growing horror. It is just as Juliet feared. The Queen would lead them to destroy the humans and take their earth for ourselves. I would not have believed it of my people.
But then again, I am young. I was not around for the old wars. Mine was a time of everyone flocking together for a single purpose—to pool our resources, to escape a dying planet, to build ships that would be our salvation.
This bloodlust is not a side of the Draci I have ever witnessed before. But just because I have not seen it does not mean it is not very, very real.
Especially among those in this room. The highest castes. The oldest families.
“Bring out the ceremonial blades!” the Queen cries.
The ceremonial blades are executioner’s blades. Draci are hard to kill but one sure way to get the job done is to chop off our heads. It takes a special type of Draci-fired metal—of which the ceremonial blades are made.