Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
I let out a shocked peep when I looked up and found him right there, in my space.
His hands spanned my hips, and he said, “I fear I’ll be unable to competently reign, because for the next hundred years, I’ll be able to think of nothing but my need to fuck you.”
My lips parted, every inch of my body, from brain to toes, reacted to his bold compliment, but that bothersome part at the back of my brain reminded me what was afoot, and I had to stay on target.
Because his eyes were now pitch black.
No lightning.
Just black.
This meant he was feeling deep, but it wasn’t the precursor to demonic anger or arousal.
It was something else.
Thus, I asked, “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
His mouth got tight, but he guided us to the couch and down to sit on it.
“Chamber fire,” he called out, and blue flames leapt in the fireplace. “Your voice will be added to the command module for this room,” he stated.
I nodded, too tuned to him to be freaked at this statement.
A muscle jumped up his cleanshaven cheek.
Then he said, “It’s official. My father was murdered.”
I reached up and caught him at the side of his neck. “Tanyn.”
“It’s worse, sweetheart,” he murmured. “There’s indisputable evidence he’d been drugged and for a very long time.”
“Drugged? Or on drugs?” I queried.
“Drugged,” he stated. “He would not take this on his own accord. No one would take it on their own accord. In fact, whoever drugged him, and we have a good idea of who that is, should never have been able to access the drug in the first place. It’s strictly used for two purposes and two purposes only. In matters that pertain to an imminent threat to realm security, something it has never been needed to do, or to control the criminally insane.”
I was struck dumb at this news.
“It’s excruciatingly expensive,” he continued. “One of the ingredients is a potion made by a single witch, the only witch who knows how to make it, and that witch was the one who stipulated the extreme limits of its use. The military can’t use it randomly or at their whim. Only in matters where there’s a verified threat. As for the criminally insane, that doesn’t need explanation considering what it does is make whoever takes it essentially an automaton, programmed to do what whoever gives it tells them to do.”
Lord Beelzebub.
This meant…
“Tatra was controlling your father,” I deduced.
He jerked up his chin. “It could be no one else. And it explains…”
I took my hand from his neck to grab his and pump it. “It explains…?”
“My mother has two sisters. They were given leave to visit us on Sigil. Only once a year. This is the reason I had birthday, Summer Solstice and Dead Winter presents, or we had any extras, because it was them who either brought that stuff, or begged my father to put it into a shipment. They’re also the reason we had our pets. They brought them too.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And I overheard them talking once when they were there. About how they couldn’t believe my father scraped off Mom like he did. How he was head over heels for her. How he acted like she hung the moon and lit the stars. And how quickly it happened.”
Cold was invading my body.
“Arnaud was born just shy of a year and a half after I was. My father had barely exiled us before he came into the world. She acted fast.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“It isn’t confirmed it was her, but someone was controlling him, and she was the only one who got anything out of it.”
Gods.
I couldn’t imagine all that was going through Tanyn’s mind, it had to be agony.
“Mom was murdered too, baby,” he whispered, pain permeating his expression that corresponded with the pain that spiked into my heart.
“Are you okay to talk about that?” I asked carefully.
Another chin jerk and he began.
“She was frozen when Manny found her. Dressed to be outside. He didn’t know what happened, but to get her in that state, he knew it had to be an accident. A fall. Something like that. But in her state, the time she’d spent outside, and him not being a physician, he couldn’t know what the marks he saw were. There was also dried blood on her face, but we suspected that was also from the fall, and this was confirmed by the autopsy. Also, she did have a broken ankle. She further had a broken wrist, five broken ribs, a broken cheekbone and orbital bone. They say it’s possible she did die of hypothermia, but they aren’t sure because she could also have died from the cerebral hemorrhage she had from taking a beating.”
I sat immobile as he took in a deep breath.
“This means there’s a good possibility my mother was beaten to death.”