Page 162 of Brimstone

Fucking Zovena.

I was going to ash her one of these days and wear her fangs as fuckingearrings.

The Lord was on her feet, slinking around the table toward the dais. Her tittering, imbecilic friends moved aside for her as she passed them. She was dressed in a blood-red velvet gown that cut a savage silhouette, her blond hair braided and wound artfully around her head. Rubies flashed in the hollow of her throat and at her ears. Each of her fingers was clad in gold andprecious stones. Atop her head, she wore a golden-leafed laurel that looked suspiciously like a crown.

Saeris ignored the viper, her attention still fixed upon Ibanwae. “These aspirations you speak of. They are not end goals. It sounds to me that the goals for all at Sanasroth are safety, security, legitimacy, and food.”

“Hah!” Zovena snorted. She prowled before the dais, acid burning in her eyes as she faced the high bloods. “Isn’t that what I just said?Food, your highness. We need to know what, or ratherwho, we will be eating!”

Saeris didn’t rise from her seat. Didn’t even frown as she flicked her hand at the table to the right, and a candelabra—whichhadbeen crowned with eight shivering points of evenlight—flew from the snow-white tablecloth and twisted in midair. It formed a length of metal two feet long and struck Zovena from behind, curving around the back of her neck. The Lord of Revels let out a shriek as the malformed candelabra dove downward, pulling her off her feet; it slammed into the obsidian floor with a loud, metallic clang, biting into stone, pinning Zovena to the ground by her neck.

I’m pretty sure you just shattered her jaw, I said into Saeris’s head.

She’ll recover, was my mate’s acerbic reply.

I ducked my chin into the collar of my shirt, hiding my smile until I managed to banish it from my face.

“Ahh! You . . .bitch!” Zovena yanked and pulled, but try as she might, strong as she was, she couldn’t tug the mangled candelabra from the obsidian floor. The metal was servant to no one but Saeris. “Let meup!” the Lord seethed.

Ibanwae, who had started her petition with much the same energy as Zovena’s outburst, gawked at the other female, pinned by her neck to the ground, and swallowed thickly. “I wouldlike . . .” She stopped speaking when Saeris slowly rose from her throne and began to descend the steps.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose, every instinct I owned telling me to get up and put myself between my mate and the danger that stood before her.

I couldn’t do that, though. I wouldn’t undermine her in front of these leeches. I stayed where I was, and the inaction damned near killed me. What was she doing, though? And why was it making me so fucking hot under the collar?

With shoulders relaxed, spine straight, and head held high, Saeris made her way down the steps and skirted around Zovena. She collected a chair from one of the tables and dragged it, back legs scraping loudly on the floor, over to Zovena, where she set it next to the prone woman, sat down, kicked her feet up, and rested her heels on the female’s back.

“Be still,” she commanded before the outraged Lord could buck her off.

Zovena screeched. “Get off me, you stupid f—”

“Be quiet.”

Calm as the center of a storm, she was. Brutal. Cruel. Lethal. Even I wouldn’t have fucked with her in this moment, resting her feet on the back of a female whom most of this court was afraid of. Iwouldhave fucked her, though. I desperately,desperatelywanted to do that. There was something deeply arousing about my mate owning her power. Turning to Ibanwae, Saeris plucked a piece of lint from her skirts. “You were saying?”

“Keeper of Pain,” the female said, eyes glittering, voice a little shaky.“Iwould like to be the Keeper of Pain.”

Three more petitions.

A would-be Keeper of Monies. A prospective Keeper of Truths. A hopeful Keeper of Antiquities.

The minutes ticked by as Saeris heard the applicants speak, and she did not move from her position, feet resting on Zovena’s back. Halfway through the proceedings, she fished out a dagger from the scabbard at her thigh and began cleaning her fingernails with the blade. Zovena didn’t move. She didn’t say a word.

Only once all the petitions had been heard did she very slowly rise from her chair. She was in no hurry at all as she hooked her little finger underneath the metal band that was cutting into Zovena’s neck and gave it the gentlest of pulls, and then the candelabra came free.

“You may move. You may speak,” she said in a bored tone as she walked away from the female’s shuddering frame and climbed back up the steps.

Zovena was as mad as a spitting snake when she leaped to her feet, but her hostile stance was of no interest to me. The haunted expression Tal wore as he looked away from the female, frowning at a spot on the far wall hanging, though? No wall hanging deservedthatlevel of scrutiny.

“You think this is a game?” Zovena shouted.

Saeris still had three steps to go before she reached her throne. She stopped, eyes finding mine briefly before she turned, her skirts rustling around her, and at last gave Zovena her full attention.

“You seem to confuse the dynamic between us, Zovena. I am your master. I could command you to sit at my feet, and you would bow, knowing death chased the edge of my blade. You mistake my patience for weakness. For tolerance. But test me further, and you will discover thelimitof that patience.”

From the moment Saeris had set foot into the Hall of Tears for her coronation, she had been playing a part. She’d played itwell, too. But she wasn’t acting now. She was as sick of Zovena as I was—impressive, since she’d known the female such a short time. I had no doubt that shewouldput the female down with a smile on her face if she got the opportunity. Zovena shook with the effort it took to cage her retort. For uncounted years, she had bathed in the warm glow of Malcolm’s approval. Unchecked. Unchallenged. Beloved of her king. It must have been raw indeed to find herself out in the cold, standing in the shadow of the female who had killed him.

Taladaius sauntered across the five-pointed star, a casual smile playing across his face, but there was a tightness around his eyes that could not be mistaken for anything other than worry. “Come now, high bloods of Sanasroth!” he called. “The petitions have been heard!” He raised his hand high, holding Ereth’s ring aloft for all to see. The large amber-orange jewel at the ring’s center caught the evenlight, refracting rainbows up the walls. “It is time to discover who will become our next Lord and don the fifth Ring of Midnight—”