Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
At the end of the hall, there was nothing but a stone wall.
Or, to anyone else, it was nothing.
To him, only to him, it was something.
No.
Not something.
Everything.
He could see immediately his half-brother, Arnaud, had been told this tale.
He could also see further proof Arnaud had never been the rightful king of Sky’s Edge.
There were vicious scrapes and black blast marks marring that wall. A great number of them.
He’d tried to get in.
And he’d failed.
Tanyn simply stood there for perhaps two seconds before all the lights in the room illuminated red.
When they did, he wasn’t practiced at it and the muscles of his mouth found it odd, but even so, they moved to form a smile.
It was then the stones started ticking.
The one at eye level moved out, then up. Then another. Another. A fourth. A fifth. Then the sixth, seventh, eighth.
More.
Until those stones formed an arch around a doorway that led into a crimson-lit stairwell that went in one direction.
Down.
Tanyn took a deep breath.
He thought of his mother.
He did not think of his father.
He moved through the arch.
And descended.
Chapter 1
Pride
Catla
Three Weeks after the Midnight Masque in Night’s Fall…
The Sky’s Edge king’s UtiliSport hovered over Mom and Dad’s landing bay at the back of their house on the toney Horn Island, off the coast of the city of Nocturn in Night’s Fall.
I sat in the back among a three-male security detail I did not (yet) need, waiting for the bay doors to open.
They did.
We descended.
I heard the whoosh of landing, the craft powered down and my door whistled open.
Not looking at any of the males in the craft, I put one sleek black patent leather spike-heeled pump to the steel floor of the bay, tucked my slim black patent leather envelope clutch against my ribs and alighted.
I immediately saw Johnson, my parents’ human butler, standing just inside the door to the bay.
He was frowning disapprovingly at me.
This was an expression I was used to from Johnson due to the fact he’d been running my mother and father’s household since I had memories, and I had been doing as I pleased since I emerged squalling from my mother’s womb, two weeks late.
Yes, late was a thing for me. Doing things on my time was a thing for me. And doing things that annoyed the hell out of my father (not always intentionally, but full honesty, sometimes it was intentionally) was further a thing for me.
What could I say?
I was half demon.
This expression on Johnson’s face was because I was late for the upcoming family meeting.
Twenty minutes late.
This time intentionally.
And it wasn’t to be a bitch or anything.
It was to make a point.
Johnson (and no doubt my parents) knew it.
I wanted to have this meeting like I wanted to have someone dress me in pink.
Demons didn’t do pink, as a matter of course.
I didn’t do pink, as a matter of principle.
We could just say, I had baby pics where Mom had put me in pink and frills, and even when I was incapable of speech, ambulation or feeding myself, I had a sour look on my face due to my distaste of my clothing.
And this had nothing to do with the fact that pink seriously clashed with my coppery hair (well, not nothing, but that was only a minor factor).
“Your parents are in your father’s study,” Johnson intoned.
Of course they were.
Dad couldn’t pull his whole Master of the House thing if we weren’t in his study.
The door to the elevator that led up to the house slid open at my approach, and I headed through it.
Johnson entered with me.
Luckily, King Tanyn’s males stayed behind.
And the doors slid closed.
“Will you be joining us for dinner?” Johnson asked.
Absolutely not, I answered in my head.
Oh yes.
I was nursing a serious grudge against my father and would continue to do so if this situation didn’t correct itself the way I needed it to, maybe forever.
“I have plans,” I said.
“Of course,” Johnson murmured.
Did I detect a hint of understanding in the butler’s tone?
He revered my dad. He adored my mom. And even though I tried him on a variety of occasions through the years, I knew he felt the same for me (when I wasn’t vexing him…or Dad).
And he was human, so he didn’t understand the situation I was in.
Even so, I did detect that hint.
The doors slid open.
Johnson hung back and I strode into the house I’d grown up in.
Mom had done a full décor overhaul two years ago. Gone was the modern, streamlined design she’d crafted just over a decade ago when I left home and went to uni, and she’d needed something to turn her mind to because “my baby is all grown up and heading out into the world on her own.”
She’d struggled with that, Mom did. It hurt to watch.
I’d always been super okay being an only child. Until then.