Page 32 of The King has Fallen (The Kingdom of the Krow #1)

~ YILAN ~

Melek stayed in the tent most of the day. I didn’t want to think about why I felt relief at that.

He’d been so busy the past couple of days, I was surprised when he didn’t rush out to another meeting, but lay on his bed with a book. Then even more surprised when Jannus appeared to tell him that the Council was meeting and Melek replied that they should come to the tent.

Jannus was clearly shocked as well. His brows climbed nearly to his hairline.

“Mel… are you sure?” Then he glanced at me.

I gave him a flat look back and he winked, which was cute.

Melek ignored us both. “I can’t leave her unattended. I don’t want to call Gall in. And… it’s the Days of Peace. Tell them we’ll meet here. Hell, tell them all to bring something to drink.”

Jann shrugged and marched back out of the tent. I was staring at Melek, who had gone back to his book. But a few seconds later he spoke without looking up.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said, raising my hands and sitting back on my cot. “Nothing at all.”

But it wasn’t nothing. He’d been meticulous about keeping me away from their discussions of the front and their next steps. Even silencing messengers who started to relay anything to do with strategic movements, or questions for him.

“Your lips are thin,” he said absently.

I blinked. “I’m sorry, what—?”

“Whenever you’re stopping yourself from saying something, your lips press thin and you tilt your head. So, what is it you want to say?”

I gaped at him, but then the first of the Council arrived and he was immediately distracted, clasping arms, greeting, offering benedictions of peace, and hearing stories from the night before.

I noticed that he didn’t share any of his own.

Twenty minutes later there were four of them, and they waited for the fifth.

Jannus was just relaying a story about a prank he’d seen some of the ranks pull on their Lieutenant the night before—something to do with horse dung and boot polish—when the tent flap twitched and the temperature in the tent dropped. At least, that was how it felt when I turned to look at the man who entered.

The other two Nephilim who’d entered were warriors—one younger than Melek, one older. Both big, burly, and clearly fighters who’d earned their way through the ranks, just as Melek had done. They had spoken easily and loudly and stood with the casual grace that only men of immense strength and capability possessed.

The man who entered the tent next was an entirely different creature.

He wore a thick, hooded cloak so dark blue it was almost black. It was voluminous and dusted the ground as he walked so it seemed he had no feet. The sleeves were long, and widened at the cuffs. With the hood up, the cloak swallowed his entire frame.

When he first stepped into the tent, everything about him was dark—only his eyes peered out of the shadow of his hood, glowing with the bright, golden light of the Nephilim born within just one or two generations of the fallen angels.

He was still Nephilim. Still tall and imposing. But leaner than the others. And very obviously older. Gnarled and wrinkled, like an old tree.

He was steady on his feet, and his eyes were bright, but there was something disturbing about the way he moved. If he had been a warrior, his fighting days were long gone.

As the others looked up to greet him, he threw back the hood to reveal his face and my blood ran cold. Though his hair was lush and thick, falling in waves around his shoulders, it was gray throughout and framed a lined face, pocked with old acne scars. His eyes stared out of deep shadows cast by protruding brows, the sunken caves matching his hollowed cheeks. And his skin was gray.

“Hever, thank you for joining us,” Melek said with a grim look.

All the joking and smiles from the others ceased immediately. As Hever crossed the space to join them in that queasy flow, their faces grew stern and their eyes dropped to the map on the table around which they stood.

“I apologize for the delay,” the man rasped, his voice quiet and wheezy, like wind whistling through a canyon. But there were no more manners. No one commented as he joined them. His eyes dropped to the map Melek had spread on that table, and he began to examine it immediately, frowning.

There was no extra room on that little table, so the others were on the bed to be retrieved if needed.

“Is one thousand spears enough?” he asked Melek hoarsely as he put a finger to the map.

I saw Melek swell and hold, stifling his frustration. I didn’t know who this man was, but he was clearly someone Melek believed he had to please.

“Three hundred was enough to take it,” Melek said through his teeth. “A thousand—if they aren’t discovered—will hold the high ground easily until the rest can reach the peaks and—”

“The King believes we should move the additional ranks now, during the peace. Place them ready. Not just hold the summits of the Ravine, but make an immediate advance.”

“I have explained, there will be no advance if we do not win the swamplands first and get our ranks to the highest ground without discovery. We already risked everything to wait. It is too risky to move during the Covenant when they are not distracted by battle, so all they will be doing is watching.”

The three other males watched Melek and Hever like two wolves about to fight for dominance.

Hever’s eyes never left the map when he spoke. Melek’s never left Hever. There was a very strange dynamic here that I didn’t understand.

But I understood the battle strategy and Melek was correct.

Every army would enjoy the Peace. And expect their enemies to be moving during that time, even if they didn’t attack.

Without battle to take attention and resources, focus would turn to scouts and trackers. Not to mention that those at the mouth of the ravine were now sitting ducks. They could only retreat. Yet, it would take only one scout to catch a glimpse—or to disappear because the Nephilim caught them—to raise the alarm, and then all their element of surprise would be lost.

Archers appointed at the ravine would pick the flyers off before they did more than clear the canopy of trees. And the Nephilim ranks would be lost in the hundreds.

Rage simmered in my chest, along with an even deeper certainty that their King was doing this on purpose—setting Melek up. Most likely to fail. But there was a small chance they would get through, in which case the King’s commands would be celebrated as his clever decisions, not Melek’s.

I should have resisted, should have stayed out of it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t let Melek continue to waver and deny—at least outwardly—the danger he was in if his foe was his King.

So, I sent him a vision. Not one to consume him as I’d done when he was in the bath, but a suggestion. Relaying an idea.

It was simple—first an image of the Nephilim, crouched and advancing on the Ravine—and being discovered. Then an image of them holding the high grounds, and cheering Gault.

Melek’s eyes never moved from Hever, but he stiffened, then rolled his shoulders and stretched his jaw like he was making room for his rage.

I listened to their discussion and didn’t interfere again, but he was too careful about not looking at me. It was no surprise when the others eventually left—with no actual change to the plan—when he took his time packing away the maps to give them time to be well away from the tent before he turned on me, his eyes dark and face tight.

“What the hell game are you playing?”

“I’m trying to help you. We both know sometimes it takes an objective eye, looking in from the outside, to see the true picture—”

“Objective? Yilan, you name yourself my enemy. You speak treason on my King!”

“I’m trying to help you—”

“Why?” he rasped, then came at me, stalking across the tent like a predator ready to pounce. “I didn’t ask for your help. Why should I believe that’s what you’re doing?”

I shrugged, trying to disguise the squirm because I knew what he was really asking and I wasn’t going there.

“If you Nephilim defeat our neighbors for us, we will only have one battle to fight to win the entire continent,” I said casually, though my Kingdom had no intention of going to war, except in defense of our own borders. “You kill all the others, we have only one enemy left. You.”

“The strongest one,” he pointed out.

“Perhaps.”

He reached the cage and put a hand to the top of it, leaning in as he huffed. “We have routed most of the continent, and in these battles our biggest obstacle is the landscape, not its people. Soon we will take them as well. What possible evidence could you account to suggest otherwise?”

I didn’t answer him, because he was right. But it aggravated him.

His jaw went tight and he leaned in, muttering at me through the bars. “I am not stupid, Yilan,” he said quietly.

“Debatable,” I said lightly, teasing.

But he bristled. “I know you let me see you that first day. Now you’re helping without being asked. You kissed me in the lake—”

I leaped to my feet. “ You kissed me at the lake!”

“And you kissed back!”

I folded my arms. “Still—”

“Look, that isn’t the point,” he growled sternly. “The point is, if you don’t want me and won’t have me, why help me? Why give yourself up, only to help? Is all of this a… a manipulation, Yilan? Do you plant thoughts in my head and feelings in my body? Are you deceiving me even beyond the things I know?” He was growing more and more agitated, gesticulating as he snarled. “Why did you cage yourself again? What game are you playing?”

“This is no game,” I said seriously.

“No, game, yet you’re playing with fire.”

I raised my chin. “God is in the fire with me.”

His eyes narrowed. “What were the words you used? Oh, right… What a fucking cop-out.”

I tensed, but at that moment a messenger called from outside the tent flap, asking Melek if he could enter.

Melek stared me down a second before answering, then bid the man to enter.

It was the young, lanky messenger again, looking a little intimidated. His eyes widened when he found Melek glaring at me through the bars and obviously already upset.

He swallowed hard as he saluted his General. “Sir. The King has heard of the… the battle plan and requests that you bring the Fetch to him.”

Melek went very, very still at that, his eyes still fixed on me in a blazing scowl. But I knew… I knew how the nerves hit him in that moment. Because they hit me too.

Adrenaline in a sharp, electric jolt. And not the good kind.

What did the King want with me?

And why now?