Page 28

Rath

With the aid of a bevy of wyverns, nobles from the expanse of Monsmount and the house Taras, a merchant family once noble some generations ago until their dukedom had expired.

The family’s wealth had been maintained by right of merchantry and no expense had been spared for their children’s education.

The head of that family, certainly, had earned right to a dukedom once more.

They landed in the front gardens of the estate, the place poorly kept as he’d remembered.

The gold that Rath had given Vierbalt did nothing to upkeep the estate.

No groundskeeping, no new shingles on the roof, nor paint applied.

Milling employees stared, less fearful than before, but still wary, still as dingy and unwashed.

King Reigh dismounted his wyvern with the aid of his attendants and straightened himself to the wholly unnecessary fanfare and shout of his arrival. Rath rarely, if ever, allowed the theatrics, but they produced better results than how dragons announced their presences. Fire.

Rath sat straighter on Heckle and threw his head back, doing as necessary.

If Reigh needed to play a fanciful tune and have a crier announce his name, Rath needed fire.

Red. Red, wrathful, hateful fire billowed free of his throat, a stream of pure and molten heat that made the air around him thunder from rapid expansion.

And unlike any other magic he performed, it did not require conduction.

The light of his fire threw stark shadows across the courtyard and the king’s men flinched away only slightly. Tippen’s men recoiled and cried out as Heckle roared in agreement.

“Earl Vierbalt of Tippen Valley!” The crier pulled out a parchment as attendants scattered and Rath dismounted, tugging at his collar to loosen his cravat.

As the silk slid over his fingers, he carefully folded it and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket.

Just because he could afford another quite easily didn’t mean he enjoyed waste.

The jacket, though, was important to him, and he removed it, folding each stitch so carefully.

A quieting in the bustle around him and a hiss of displeasure let him know Vierbalt had presented himself and spied King Reigh.

Rath worked the buttons of his tunic down and pulled the linen from his breeches as scales traversed his pale golden-brown skin.

“Your Majesty! To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of such a retinue?” Rath turned as Vierbalt bowed low.

Armed guards marched forward and flanked Vierbalt, locking him in elbow to elbow as he shouted in surprise, rodent-like eyes darting from one noble to another as they shuffled off their wyverns.

“Earl Vierbalt Tippen! You have been visited by your peers and regent this day to discuss accusations made by former members of your household, King Rath of Sauria, and his new mate, a former ward of your keep.” The crier presented papers to Vierbalt as he took them awkwardly, arms still locked by the guards. He read them carefully, face paling.

“Do you wish to rebut?” King Reigh stepped forward, head held high as Rath leaned his head to the side, letting the vertebrae crack.

The posture of his body was all the sign Heckle needed to back away, snarling at the other wyverns in warning—Rath took up a considerable amount of space in his greater form.

“I think all this display and violence is wholly unnecessary. I—I didn’t realize Asha was an Ashen. I certainly wouldn’t have been as strict with him had I known.” Vierbalt twisted the parchment in his hands. All the charges laid out were ones that he’d not want another soul to see.

“And the charges against your servant girls?” Rath’s voice boomed. “I think my mate was far more concerned over your behavior there than he was over the vicious beatings.”

“His beatings were not vicious . They were appropriate to his—” Rath reached for his belt and extended a hand, a sack hanging by leather strings from his scaled fingers. Color spread wildly up his skin. “What is that?”

Rath threw the bag, and it landed heavily with a clink at Vierbalt’s feet.

He reached for the bag and opened it, fingers poring through the beaded shot, the bored bits of silver he’d purposefully put on the end of his scourge to leave the most damage on Asha’s flesh.

Only silver or gold would have hurt him so.

Vierbalt knew . No ordinary flail bore silver beads unless they were to strike against a magical being.

Vierbalt paled.

“Asha saved them. Every time you broke a scourge on him. Every time the beads spilled, he collected them. He told himself he’d save them up and use the money to leave this land.” Rath rolled his shoulders.

“I—this is far—I did not beat him this much. Silver was an unfortunate and unintentional choice, I assure you.” Vierbalt stumbled back, still twisting the paper in his hands.

King Reigh tensed his jaw. “So you do not deny scourging a Ramolian prince’s firstborn, an Ashen mate to a dragon king? You do not refute the other charges?”

Vierbalt’s face twisted in anxiousness, agony plain in his features. “Would it matter if I refuted? You’ve already determined I am guilty based on the word of this traitorous lizard.”

Servants gathered from the estate, peering from windows, whispering behind the corners of buildings and an errant carriage.

“Members of House Tippen!” Rath shouted loudly, so all gathered and incoming could hear. “How many of you know my mate? How many of you witnessed Vierbalt’s violence against him?”

Whispers milled around as Vierbalt turned in place, sweaty hand clutched to the unforgiving parchment. Wary eyes glanced from Rath to Vierbalt. Agreement hooded their reticent gazes. Not one stepped forward to defend him. None stepped forward to rebuke him, either.

“Would anyone like to refute his claims?” King Reigh glared around as one of his simpering sons strode forward, hands folded behind his back with an expression of mock pity.

“I’m sorely afraid Father did terrible things. He has no excuse for them. I fear his mind is not as it used to be. Perhaps his age or—”

“I’m not senile. Bel!” Vierbalt shoved at the portly male and glared at him. Vierbalt himself was a painfully thin male, a feature both of his sons didn’t seem to inherit. A lifetime of hedonism showed on their oily faces.

“Senile, syphilitic, mad, it’s pointless. You scourged poor Asha at least once a fortnight since I was a little lad,” Bel said, snatching for the parchment as he held his father back, reading the accusations.

Vierbalt fought back for the paper. “You plan on putting me down and slapping one of my sons into power?”

“Obviously, Father. Whitestone will be valuable again and you’ve flown too close to the sun and too far away from the law.” Bel straightened the paper and turned in time to see the last of the accusations, and frowned. “Since when was shaggin’ Lyss a crime?”

Silence spread among the servants and rustling nobles.

Leza, a slender but sicklier version of Vierbalt, snorted. “She’s a servant. Our whims are their orders. A servant is to want us served, and how we demand to be served is entirely ours to decide.”

“You not only assaulted this young woman…but you three shared her.” King Reigh’s crier balked out of turn, but nobody corrected him. Gathering women and those at the sills of windows bore glaring expressions. No woman in the castle had avoided their philandering.

“Not at the same time, of course. That’s a disgusting assumption,” Bel said.

Leza sneered at Bel and shrugged. “I hardly ever looked Lyss’s way. I favor the milkmaids a bit more.”

Said milkmaids weren’t present, but a few women around twisted their faces in disgust.

“Come now, don’t we all take liberties with our servants?” Vierbalt turned to a noble from the town over, his barony, the Lyskin flats, a thriving purveyor of certain seasonable vegetables and clays.

“Not unwilling ones, at any rate.” A mutter of disgust passed Baron Lyskin’s lips.

Muttered agreement passed as Rath readied himself to pass his desired judgment.

“In light of this information, Vierbalt, I am afraid you are far beyond the morals and values that we hold in the name of Baltheir in my kingdom.” King Reigh sighed heavily.

“Naturally, I assume I should take his seat—” Leza stepped forward.

“Your bloodline ends here. Would any stand and speak up for them? Would any servant vouch for Bel or Leza Tippen?” King Reigh held his chin high.

None did.

“And before your peers. Do you concur with their elimination from the House Tippen?” King Reigh shook his head.

The jostle of chain mail and clink of armor heralded a unanimous rise of hands. The king waved toward his crier and Rath.

“Then it is decided! On this forty-third day of the second season in the year of Baltheir’s Blessed generation 548, we have convened upon his province to find it no longer the esteemed valley it once was.

I hereby decree the land demoted to a barony, and as such, subject to the laws of favor.

Since House Tippen has lost my favor, I decree Earl Tippen be stripped of title and sentenced to death with his two legitimate heirs, who have participated in his debauchery.

” King Reigh stared down the pale, shaking forms.

Rath hadn’t eaten a human in years, let alone more than one. His stomach growled as he shed his breeches, letting the change overcome him.

The words and prattle of human lands meant nothing to him, ultimately.

Powerful sapphire metallic scales blossomed over his body, rippling over yards of toiling muscle. Fire burned in his heart as the world shrank so far below him, masked in the shadow of two great wings spreading.

Being in that form, a familiar comfort, reminded him just how small of a meal a man could be.

Screams pattered out over the sound of Rath’s snort, a lick of fire brightening the faces of all in his shadow.