Page 11 of The Gathering

Rhaif grabbed the bird.

Zoria screamed and writhed beneath his grasp. His hand wrapped up her face, wrist pressing further into her throat as he squeezed her cheeks.

“No—please—“ Tears ran down her cheeks, her bird screeching—

His grip tightened around the bird.

“Beg,” he said in a haunting whisper.

“You’re going to pay—“ she writhed. “Hear me, little Prince. You will—“

“No,youhearme, sister dear,” Rhaif seethed in a voice that made even her bird stop squawking. His fingers tightened with her whimper, and he drew blood beneath his digging nails from her skin. “And listen closely if you ever want to hear your bird’s voice again.”

Zoria looked like she would argue, but she withdrew beneath Rhaif’s tilted stare with one look to her bird.

“Youwill find his window open at sunrise,” he instructed. “Andyouare going toscreamandcryand makesucha beautifully tragic scene that the Belwarks and Council will have no choice but to think he threw himself from this window.” He paused to stroke her cheek with a flaming finger. “You, Zoria, will go mad with grief for him, to the point that the Council will have no choice but to give me my rightful crown.” His grip tightened, pulling her further off the ground.

“Do I make myself clear?” Rhaif finished, his words slow, deliberate, and dangerous enough that Zoria believed him.

“Yes.”

Dorian cracked his neck again as he shuddered out the memory. It haunted him to know how Rhaif had once tried to protect his sister, and somewhere along the way grew too possessive and righteous. Too power-hungry to see that what he was doing was hurting her and not how he should love her.

That he was treating her just as Vasilis had once treated them both.

The thought enraged Dorian and pulled something from inside him that he’d only felt once before—when he’d thrown a suitor of Nyssa’s out the window.

Perhaps that wasn’t exactly how he should have reacted to someone breaking her heart. Still, Dorian went blind upon finding the man cheating on Nyssa with a servant in the stairwell, and he didn’t realize he was throwing the man out of the window until he heard his spine snap over the stone wall.

At least he’d only paralyzed him, though Dorian knew he was only a breath away from doing worse.

“Prince—“

Bala’s voice brought Dorian back to the present, and he realized his clenching fist was black at his side. He turned away from watching the doors closing behind Rhaif and Nyssa, finding Bala staring at him with narrowed eyes.

“Are you okay?” Bala asked.

A chill ran over his skin as he blinked himself out of his form. “Do you smoke?” he asked her.

Bala didn’t respond for a second, and Dorian felt his Prince-ly facade faltering as he pulled his pipe from his bag. He pushed his hair up and fluffed it, then locked eyes with Bala again.

“I do,” she finally replied.

He gave her a forced smile and pressed the pipe between his lips. “Come on.”

CHAPTER SIX

“YOU’RE FILTHY,” RHAIF noted as he and Nyssa walked.

“We were training,” Nyssa replied, pushing her arms behind her back, grateful that he had slowed his strides enough for her to keep up with him.

“You should know to wash that sand off before coming inside,” he drawled. “Willow will bebesideherself.”

There was a twinge of amusement in his tone, and she looked up as they reached the door of his study to find his lips quirking faintly. He opened his door and held it for her, allowing her to enter first. She slipped inside under his arm without commenting on his attempt at a joke, finding his fireplace lit, a few letters strewn over his desk, along with some open books.

She picked up one of the books as he closed the doors, and she began flipping through the pages. It was an old book written by the first Promised King on war strategy—not that the first king ever needed to know anything about war then. There were so few people in the world back then that everyone seemed to get along.

Or so the Chronicles told.