“Are you sure that’s wise, Your Majesty?” Eliza asked. Though her voice from the bottom of the dais was steady and even as usual, it was clearly heavy with concern.

  The throne room was dimly lit by only a few candles, flames flickering off the damp stone walls of the central Duke's Spire.

  Zer’Nack, King of Lysoria, grunted and took a slow sip of his favorite red wine, letting its warmth settle in his stomach before meeting her gaze. She stood rigid before him, her sharp blue eyes betraying an emotion she rarely let slip—fear.

  He enjoyed that. Though, at least at this moment, it was not fear of him but of that girl. Lilliana Silverwater.

  The goblet trembled ever so slightly in his grasp as he traced its rim with a thumb, his other hand drumming impatiently against the armrest of her late brother’s throne. This seat was a poor imitation of his own—smaller, less ornate, lacking the authority he was accustomed to. But for now, it sufficed. He wouldn’t have to endure it for long, only until the Elyndor nobles bent the knee and that Silverwater girl was elevated to Duchess.

  “What would you have me do, Eliza?” His voice was thick with amusement. “Accept that sniveling grandson of yours as the official heir?”

  Eliza stiffened, but he barely noticed. His gaze lingered on her, drifting over the lines etched into her aging face. He remembered when her hair had been as golden as the sun cresting over Lysoria’s eastern hills, when her eyes had held the fierce, untamed depths of the open ocean. Time had worn her down, as it did all things.

  Ah, those were the days.

  “He’s still learning,” Eliza replied, a defensive edge creeping into her tone. “He has a good heart. He would make a fine Duke one day.”

  Zer’Nack dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand before absently running it roughly through his graying hair. “And perhaps he might still. But this girl—this Lilliana Silverwater—she is powerful, Eliza. Maybe more powerful than even we realize.” He shifted in the throne, rolling his shoulders against the stiff fur lining his royal robes. The damn thing itched no matter how many seamstresses swore it wouldn’t. “There’s something unnatural about her. Isla tells me that less than a year ago, the girl was half her current size. Did you know she’s only fourteen? Fourteen. And yet she looks nearly a decade older.”

  Eliza’s nod was slow and measured, tinged only slightly by a shift in her expression suggesting some confusion and uncertainty. “When she first arrived, she appeared barely eighteen. I don’t know what happened, but she’s changing rapidly. The scholars I’ve consulted believe it’s her Gold Realm reformation, but I’ve never seen a transformation this extreme. It’s as if she’s becoming someone else entirely.”

  Zer’Nack exhaled through his nose, eyes narrowing. “My thoughts exactly.”

  He leaned back, surveying the dimly lit chamber. It was a fine throne room, he admitted, if a bit cold. Austere, strong—much like its former master, Collin Alistar. A warrior. A man who had answered to him. Only to him. When Alistar died, so too did one of Lysoria’s strongest pillars. The loss had weakened his kingdom and left him vulnerable in ways he despised.

  Then Lilliana Silverwater had appeared to change everything. To, hopefully, fix everything.

  “Then why elevate this unknown girl to the ducal throne?” Eliza pressed.

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “Because she wants to be part of Lysoria. And because she is powerful. I’d rather have her bound to my kingdom than risk making her an enemy—or worse, allowing another nation to claim her first because they were not too cowardly to grant this child the land she so obviously desires.” His fingers tightened around the stem of his goblet. “And this way, I can keep an eye on her. If she exhibits behavior that is... unbecoming of her station, she'll be close enough to handle it. Believe it or not, Eliza, she is not yet the strongest. Even if it seemed like it, watching her fight that nine-headed creature.”

  Eliza arched a skeptical brow. “You believe Dame Annalise can best her?”

  Zer’Nack shook his head. “That I am not sure of.” He let the silence stretch, then added, “I believe you underestimate Lysoria, Eliza. You’ve been out of the military for far too long.”

  He didn’t tell her the real reason for his confidence.

  The elixirs.

  He could feel the few remaining in his possession, even now, calling to him from their hidden vaults. A craving coiled in his gut, relentless and insatiable. He had burned through most of his final supply faster than he intended, and his attempts to ration out the rest weren't working. The raw power, the sensation of ascension—it had been intoxicating.

  He needed more.

  The Holy Kingdom had told him that the elixirs came from the blood of something called a progenitor. One of those would be arriving any minute now.

  Eliza sighed, her features softening. “Please, be careful, Your Majesty. I say this with the utmost loyalty, but people tend to die around that girl. Her father. My brother. Even that mage boy she was always seen with. Sealrite. Now Elyndor. Even her own House was destroyed by a monster the Holy Kingdom has taken to calling a Progenitor.”

  “I will,” Zer’Nack murmured, his voice taking on a false gentleness.

  "And what of the Duke?" she asked. "should we not have Lady Lilliana heal him?"

  "Duke Goldenhearts?" Zer'Nack chuckled, the sound so newly deep that it surprised him how it vibrated within his chest. He wasn't sure why the elixirs deepened his voice, but he found it to be one of the more enjoyable side effects. "I believe the Duchess has made her stance regarding her grandfather quite clear," he answered, correcting Eliza's continuous refusal to properly title Lilliana.

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  "But your majesty," Eliza protested, taking a step onto the dias Zer'Nack sat atop. "Without him, our country will be significantly weakened."

  The King sniffed with derision. Goldenhearts was one of his most outspoken adversaries in the political world. Lysoria may become physically weaker, but he would become politically unstoppable if Goldenhearts were to fade into the background. And if Lilliana were to ascend to archduchess, he would have a useful pawn in charge of both the Alistar and Goldenheart duchies.

  Why would I ever want that old man healed?

  "I will think on it," Zer'Nack finally acquiesced, leaning forward to rest an elbow on his knee. "Perhaps he will become more amenable to us if it is his mana and energy access on the line." After a moment's pause, he added. "Keep an eye on the old Duke. If he attempts to name an heir before we figure out what to do with him, alert me immediately."

  He hadn’t meant it as a dismissal, but Eliza seemed to take it as one. She bowed low before retreating from the chamber, her footsteps echoing through the vast hall. He didn't stop her.

  He'd said what he needed to, so her departure hardly mattered. He generally preferred solitude anyways.

  And he had much to consider for his upcoming meeting with the progenitor. If his senses were correct, the time to meet was near. The Orange Cardinal had told him the progenitor's name was Azrakkul, a foreign word that slipped Zer'Nack's tongue as much as it twisted it.

  Almost as if conjured by thought alone, Azrakkul appeared, nearly half an hour or so before he was supposed. The King, however, felt it difficult to care. Rather, his heart raced with anticipation of what the meeting would bring.

  Azrakkul didn’t enter through a door. He didn’t step through a shadow or tear through the fabric of reality. He simply came to exist at the center of the throne room. There was no sudden shift in energy or manipulation of mana indicating his entrance.

  He simply wasn't, and then he was.

  Maybe he is teleporting? Zer’Nack mused. That would be something.

  Zer’Nack felt the tension ripple through his shadow guards, their fear an almost tangible presence in the air. He flicked his fingers—an almost imperceptible motion.

  Stay still, the gesture warned. Do not move.

  “I upheld my end of the bargain,” Zer’Nack said, his voice steady despite the coil of unease wrapping around his spine. “Lilliana has been made Duchess.”

  Azrakkul tilted his head, expression as unreadable as it was utterly inhuman. His abyssal black eyes gleamed, reflecting nothing. Assessing him. Judging him. As if considering whether to devour the king where he sat.

  Zer’Nack’s grip on his goblet tightened.

  “Now, it’s your turn,” he said. “I need more of the elixirs.”

  The progenitor’s lips curled in amusement, his long, beastly claw tapping against his high cheekbone. “I am not Orpheus,” he said, his voice a graveyard whisper, deep and unnatural. “I can give you my blood, but there is no guarantee it will yield the same effects.” His forked tongue flicked past his lips, vibrating with clear distaste. “He was… different.” The emphasis Azrakkul placed on "different" was like nails clawing down a chalkboard.

  Zer’Nack did not believe him.

  He had seen what the Holy Kingdom’s scholars had written. The blood of Progenitors, twisted or not, held power. Azrakkul would not be the exception.

  With Lilliana’s news that the Holy Kingdom, or at least a portion of it, was working together with the Pandorian Kingdom for some continental takeover, his mind was contorted with hesitation and warnings to not do what he was doing.

  He was no fool. Despite what the Holy Kingdom told him, Zer’Nack knew this progenitor creature was not an angel from the heavens. Its blood was not a gift from the Gods, as the Justicars and Cardinals kept claiming.

  But he needed the elixirs. He needed them.

  They gave him the power he hadn’t been born with.

  “I don’t care,” he growled. “I know your blood works.” When Azrakkul didn’t move to offer his blood, Zer’Nack snarled and leaned forward, halfway off the ducal throne. “Give me your blood, beast.”

  Azrakkul chuckled—a deep, guttural thing. Without ceremony, he reached into the folds of his dark blue robes and withdrew five vials of inky black liquid.

  Zer’Nack inhaled sharply.

  Something in his gut recoiled at the sight, at the wrongness of the substance. But the craving for the power it promised was much more potent.

  “What is this?” he asked, though his hands twitched toward the vials.

  Pushing aside the sickening tendrils of addiction clawing their way up his throat, Zer’Nack stormed down the steps of the ducal dais, his boots striking hard against the stone. He halted, face-to-face with the being before him—angel, progenitor, or whatever it was.

  “What exactly are you?” he demanded, revulsion and desire warring inside him as he eyed the black vials. “You are no angel. No messenger of the Gods.”

  “Angel? No.” Azrakkul's grin curled, sharp, and knowing. “Orpheus was as close as our kind ever came to such a thing. But a messenger of the Gods…” His grin widened, teeth glinting like daggers. “That is not entirely wrong. My God and your Gods, however, are very, very different.”

  Azrakkul had not so much as shifted his weight, his open hand still offering the vials. Zer’Nack spared them one last glance before snatching them away, securing them inside one of his many storage rings.

  “Don’t forget,” Azrakkul murmured as Zer’Nack turned away. “Let the girl continue to climb. Let her rise through the ranks, let her believe she stands above them all once more.” Zer’Nack turned back just in time to catch the full force of Azrakkul’s grin—wide, jagged, predatory. “And when she has reached the highest peak, even beyond what she once had in Aedronir, I will do to her what she did to me. I will take everything. Everything she has. Everything she is. And then…” His voice dipped into something almost reverent. “I will cast her into the abyss. Back into the loving arms of Nothingness.”

  Zer’Nack had no idea what Azrakkul meant. He didn’t care. His thoughts had already fixated on the vials of black blood resting within his ring.

  Finally.

  Finally, I have more.

  Gold realm? Platinum realm? He laughed under his breath. I will reach them all!

  “Oh, one more thing,” Azrakkul added, his grin feral, his gaze bright with something cruel and amused. He looked not only capable of devouring Zer’Nack but as if he might relish it. “I am no angel. I am a demon. A demon and a progenitor.”

  Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone. The space where he stood emptied between blinks, erased as though he had never been there at all.

  Zer’Nack didn’t notice.

  He was already seated back on his throne, one of the vials summoned into his palm. He stared at it, his fingers tightening around the glass. A quiet, shuddering exhale left him—one filled with fondness, longing, and a hunger that defied his duties as King.

  He uncorked the vial.

  The scent struck him instantly—pungent, but somehow also cloying and irresistible. Even the pungent smell that lingered awfully on his tongue quickly shifted into something... intoxicating.

  With Orpheus, he had refined the blue blood into an elixir.

  But this...

  This he would drink whole.

  Lifting the vial to his lips, he tilted his head back and drank to the last, bitter drop of Azrakkul’s black blood.

  End of the Soul Weaver Chronicles Volume 2: Throne of Ashes

  To be continued in Volume 3: Queen of Conquest

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