Of course, his remains would still have to burn, and his ashes scattered to be sure he really wasn’t going to pop back up at some point in the future. But still, deflating like that was a pretty anti-climactic end.
Bastien clapped, flashing fang. ‘Felicitations, princess. I applaud your swordsmanship.’
I bared my own teeth at him in a smile. ‘If you liked that wait till you see what I’ve got for an Encore.’
‘Encores are all well and good, my lovely sidhe, but I do believe we have only seen the Prelude.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘Behold! Act One!’ He threw something at the Emperor— Gold flashed through the air: one of the Emperor’s coins.
The Emperor’s body twitched and lit itself on fire, the flames burning the cool blue of an ice-dragon’s breath. I stumbled back in shock as the blaze licked the tent roof, then spread out and rained down the tent sides, trapping me – and trapping Malik in the roaring inferno. A panicked scream twisted inside me. Even if he was immortal, no way did I want to see him crispy-crittered and endure the pain of healing. If I could get to his stone I could protect us both. All it needed was my blood in the circle’s outer groove, and hey presto, one Blood Ward. Only, a curtain of flames burned furiously between us. I’d have to jump and roll to smother—
Bastien lunged forwards and snatched something from the Emperor’s stone. The fire snuffed out as if it had never been. All that remained on the slab was a body-shaped pile of ashes. I sagged in relief then scowled at Bastien.
Somehow he’d managed to dress himself in the Emperor’s purple toga. He stood with his arms held out like he was offering benediction. In one hand he held the Emperor’s gold laurel-wreath crown, and dangling from the other by its dark hair was a small shrunken head the size of a crab apple.
‘Here we have Act Two, my sweet sidhe.’ He brought the shrunken head to his lips, kissed it, then popped it into his mouth and munched down.
‘Nice illusion,’ I said drily, trying not to heave.
‘Ah, but is it?’ He held his finger up much like the Emperor had done. I shuddered, the sight weirding me out. ‘Act Three comes, my princess.’
The hair on my nape rose as a low keening wind rushed through the tent’s entrance and the Emperor’s ashes spiralled up in a small tornado. An unseen hand briefly cupped my cheek with a gentle feeling of gratitude, startling me. Then the wind-gathered ashes exploded outwards and dissipated into the ether, leaving the candles still burning.
Bastien held the golden laurel wreath out before him. ‘Now for the Grande Finale.’ He placed the gold crown on his head and intoned. ‘The Emperor is dead. Long live the Emperor.’
I narrowed my eyes at him as the final piece clicked into place.
Bastien wanted the Emperor dead so he could steal his power. But the real kicker in all of this wasn’t that the psycho had set me up to do his dirty work, but that now his (or Malik’s?) plotting had made Bastien the Emperor, there was no way I could kill the sadistic sack of shit.
At least, not until he’d told me how to save the fae’s trapped fertility.
I gripped Ascalon, battened my frustration down and said flatly, ‘Tell me how to find that which is lost, and how to join that which is sundered, to release the fae’s fertility from the pendant and restore it back to them as it was before it was taken. And the price you want me to pay.’
Chapter Sixty-Two
‘Ah! And now we come to the Encore.’ He raised a mocking brow. ‘To have something you want, my sweet sidhe, fills me with such glorious anticipation.’
I glowered at him. Sadistic prick was obviously going to spin this out, whereas I wanted it done so I could kill him. ‘What’s the deal, Bastien?’
‘Patience, my princess.’ Slyness glinted in Bastien’s brown eyes as he moved to squat by Malik. He brushed a hand over Malik’s shorn scalp, smudging the glyphs painted there. ‘Does my loyal commander, my shadow, my kingmaker not deserve some care first?’ He bit into his own arm and held his wrist over Malik’s mouth so drops of dark crimson blood splashed on to Malik’s parted lips. ‘Were it not for his perfect plan none of this would have been possible.’ He smiled gleefully.
Fuck. Malik had planned it all. He’d used me, put those I’d cared about in danger and all to help Bastien gain power. It felt like his soul turned to ice around my heart and shattered into sharp icicles. Leaving me bleeding. How the hell could I have been so stupid to think that Malik cared for me? That we could have something together? We couldn’t. Not if he was prepared to put innocents like Katie and Freya in danger to get what he wanted. Furious and heart-sore, I wanted to shout at Malik, tell him there’d been no need to involve them. Hadn’t the Machiavellian vamp understood that if he’d told me his plan, I’d have gone along with it willingly? After all, he’d known I needed to see the Emperor, and I’d told him I’d help. And even if I’d ended up hurt or dead as I had in the past with a couple of his plots, it wasn’t as if I’d held it against him—
Malik wasn’t the type to put innocents in danger for his own ends.
But Bastien was. Bastien was also the sort to slither like a poisonous snake into my head and sic his mind-mojo on me. Sadistic prick was playing me. And, as an amber glint near Malik’s slab caught my eye – the dragon’s tear in Janan’s handle – I realised Bastien’s gameplaying wasn’t only for his own amusement. He wanted me angry with Malik because he wanted something from me. Malik’s soul.
‘You want me to give you his soul back, is that it?’ I snapped.
‘Actually, my bride’ – he lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug – ‘I do not. It is liberating to be without its depressing weight.’
Depressing? I blinked ‘What about its immortality?’
‘Ah. It appears that while my loyal shadow and his soul are truly immortal, that immortality is not bestowed on the bearer.’
I frowned. ‘But then why—’
‘Greed, envy and the lust for power are eternal motivators, my princess. In that the Emperor and my beloved mother, the beautiful Shpresa, were very much alike.’ As he spoke a centurion marched into the tent like an automaton. He carried a woman’s lifeless body. He laid her down on the stone circle recently vacated by the original Emperor, then saluted Bastien and left.
The Empress.
Bastien looked at her like she was something he’d scraped off his shoe. ‘She was the favoured Ikbal of Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, powerful, rich, vaunted, her children destined for greatness. But it was not enough. She lusted after eternal youth and beauty and so absconded with Romulus Augustus willingly. He did not, as some imagined at the time’ – he sneered down at Malik – ‘force, or persuade her in any way.’ He squeezed his arm to reopen his bite wound, so more drops of blood splashed on to Malik’s mouth as if he were performing some sort of vamp Chinese water torture. ‘Shpresa, as the blood-bound consort to a vampire, gained the immortality the sidhe denied her as a changeling. The Emperor lusted after a sidhe to bond to his blood. It was a match made in mutual delusion and betrayal. He discovered too late she was not the solid gold he sought, but only polished brass. She paid for her duplicity with her freedom and the enslavement of her children. But in spite of his Empress’ predilection for perfidy’ – Bastien squeezed the wound on his arm with a slight grimace – ‘the Emperor did not heed the lesson history should have taught him. Once again he let his lust for something he wanted override his good sense, and found the sting in the tail. As we are all wont to do at times, my lovely princess.’