slifer274

15.7: Dakheng, Divided VII

Assess the situation. Identify your goals and how you will get to them.

Well, the situation wasn’t terribly tough. Most of what these commoners had going for them was their volume. And their training, in some cases. On that note, though…

“I fought some of these commoner...

15.6: Dakheng, Divided VI

“I’m going in,” I announced. “Don’t follow me.”

“I’m coming with you,” the kid who’d claimed to be a powerful oathholder said. “You said you were from Seb’s group, right?”

“I did,” I said. “Why?”

I didn’t need another person to join me. Accord...

15.5: Dakheng, Divided V

“Did you just do something?” Jasmine asked. “I felt a burst of oath energy from you.”

I had a white lie ready to go in an instant, but I paused with my mouth half-open, the falsehood not quite managing to make its way through my lips.

What had the entire damn crisis of the las...

15.4: Dakheng, Divided IV

Magic thrummed through my oath as I answered the call. Last time this had happened, my relocation had been sudden and completely unexpected, resulting from the collision of an enhanced mass of my magic with a bundle of the Clarsin primordial’s. That time, our meeting had been facilitated by Nis...

15.3: Dakheng, Divided III

The gunman was out of bullets, and the other two were downed. Not dead, because Jasmine had those silly little things called morals, but they weren’t going to bother us anytime soon.

Well, I had to reconsider that. I’d been telling myself it was just for Jasmine that I had been holding ...

15.2: Dakheng, Divided II

Crack-crack.

Another pair of shots landed almost immediately after the first, hitting from a different angle. Aimed at the window, I was pretty sure, but it stayed intact. It would take more than that to destroy a noble’s carriage.

“Shit,” Jasmine muttered. “I had not...

15.1: Dakheng, Divided

Light was filtering through the window.

I woke quickly, blinking the eyes out of my sleep—uh, sleep out of my eyes. Okay, I might’ve been a little woozy, but it cleared away soon enough.

As I fully came awake, I realized that I was still lying down in the great hall’s couch.

K.O: Kinslayer (Orchid) [END OF BOOK 2]

Orchid was having one hell of a night.

He hadn’t wanted to follow through with the plan. It had always been his father’s idea, the play to accuse some other nobles of treason and boost House Alzaq’s position. The plan had left a bad taste in Orchid’s mouth—it reeked of the plots a...

K.10: Kinslayer X

“Peace, Lily,” the Crowned King said, his voice still tinged with concern. “Take your time. We must examine your senses first.”

“We’ve just removed a strong mental compulsion,” one of the oathholders—the woman—added, stepping away from me and stretching. “A loyalty effec...

K.9: Kinslayer IX

Thirteen minutes. It only took thirteen minutes for Crowned King Edward to arrive. I had been counting the seconds up as an armored guard held my arms behind my back, doing my best to maintain the facade of a confused live-in who had wandered into an unexpected situation, and I was more than a li...

K.8: Kinslayer VIII

It was night already, but the grounds of the royal castle were still well lit. It wouldn’t do to have gone so far, to have used so many resources and so many opportunities just to be discovered now.

The Crown nobles were a solid hundred meters ahead of me, making their way down the long p...

K.7: Kinslayer VII

It was going to be a long ride to Dakheng. House Byron held dominion over the city of Amaka, a center of commerce for the kingdom, but it came with the downside of being over two hundred kilometers from Yaguan and almost that distance away from the seat of the Crown. Three or four hours away by o...

K.6: Kinslayer VI

“You just left him there like that?” Jasmine asked. “Not that I am judging you, but I am surprised you were able to do it so casually.”

“I attribute that to Lord Byron,” I said. “He taught me how to kill and how to divorce myself from the act. Jasper was my brother, b...

K.5: Kinslayer V

12 years ago

“Why are we doing this, again?” Jasper asked. “I thought we did enough damage to the leadership.”

For once, it hadn’t been me that asked. Lord Byron had insisted on taking Jasper and I along with him on his latest sojourn, and now the three of u...

K.4: Kinslayer IV

“As far back as then?” Jasmine asked. “A year and…”

“A year and a half before the biggest attempts, yeah,” I confirmed. “Nobility never connected the poisonings to House Byron?”

“The history books say it was one of the conflicting Houses,” Jasmine frowned. “Tho...

K.3: Kinslayer III

“I killed her, but that was just the start of it,” I explained, my voice devoid of emotion. It was a painful memory, but memories were just that. They had no hold over me anymore. “For the next few weeks, it was a new lesson every day or two. First it was the ones that we’d purchased from...

K.2: Kinslayer II

“And then the guards beat me up for a while,” I said. “Not much to describe there. Came out of it with a broken spine, a missing eye, and some other stuff that’s not important. Slightly worse injuries than usual. I’m getting to an important point, I swear. This is relevant.”

Jas...

K.1: Kinslayer

The night was growing colder outside, but the warmth and light of the Rayes manor’s great hall could almost make me forget about it.

Jasmine had dragged me here against my half-hearted protests. I’d been slipping in and out of sleep on our way here, and I’d barely processed what was i...

14.AA: Her Father's Daughter (Adventurers)

It had been ten full minutes since far too many people had arrived at the Alzaq manor and Kyle wasn’t sure what was happening anymore. He’d been introduced to far too many people tonight, and the allegiances were beginning to get fuzzy. In his mind, he’d already slipped into calling people ...

14.A: Her Father's Daughter (All)

Jasmine, Kyle, and Alex had just about finished securing the unconscious bodies of the two Alzaqs when Lukas arrived, rounding a corner at a jog.

He looked harried. The fabric of one of his uniform sleeves had been ripped to shreds, and from the blackened bits still clinging to his newly co...

14.4: Her Father’s Daughter IV

Lord Alzaq stood a ways back from the fight, at least ten meters behind the oathholder that was furthest from me. Next to him stood one of the special armored oathholders that had accompanied him on his way out earlier. On a second glance at the soldier guarding the noble, I realized that the run...

14.3: Her Father's Daughter III

Three stories to the ground. The manor was expansive, its size befitting the arrogant noble family occupying it, so each story was a solid six or seven meters high. Eighteen to twenty-one meters to the ground, much of which was paved over with brick. Enough to kill many an unprepared soldier.

14.J: Her Father's Daughter (Jasmine)

It had been a hectic night, and Jasmine was growing rather tired of it. Things had been going so well, too! The girl that occupied far too much of her headspace had seemed happy enough to be with her, and the two of them had had a truly blissful moment on the dance floor.

She’d known it w...

14.2: Her Father's Daughter II

“So you did know,” I snarled. “You tortured your captive enough, huh?”

“On the contrary,” Alzaq sneered, not even looking up from his desk, apparently engrossed in some old tome that I didn’t recognize. “I find torture to be a uniquely ineffective way to obtain information.�...

14.1: Her Father's Daughter

I stood over Alto’s body, watching the light fade out of his eyes. Something that nobody ever tells you about opening someone’s throat is how messy it is. There was blood pooling under his head, flowing over the wooden floor, and I had to step back to keep myself from getting dirty. ...

13.7: The Royal Ball VII

“What did you just say?” I asked, my voice quiet but sharp.

“House Byron,” Alto repeated, stretching out the word. “Are you deaf? Must I repeat myself again?”

The cold hate from before was back, encompassing my entire mind before I could realize it. How could he know? Was ...

13.6: The Royal Ball VI

“In this very room,” Orchid said, his voice dangerously soft but still carrying throughout the massive room. “One of us is a fucking traitor.”

He was standing on top of a table, and though he looked a little ridiculous doing it, I couldn’t deny that he had presence as a s...

13.5: The Royal Ball V

“What the hell?” Alex said, half-shouting. “What is this?”

Almost immediately, shields manifested themselves at one door, an oily mixture of colors solidifying into translucent red and green after a moment.

The jester was in play, then.

At the other end of the room, thou...

13.4: The Royal Ball IV

We weren’t alone at the castle. A number of nobles had arrived before us, and there were still bound to be more behind. There was a small queue forming in front of the opened double doors, guards checking them in.

Well, “doors” was a bit of a misnomer. The entrance to the castle was m...

13.3: The Royal Ball III

Preparing for the ball had been more of an affair than I had thought it would be. I’d arrived earlier than I should’ve, slightly shaken from my run-in with the commoner mob, and even though it had been nearly three whole hours since my arrival we had still not finished my preparations.

...