Freebie: Avalon - The Fallen King: Chapter 5

Chapter Five

“What the hell do you mean by that?” Alice jerked her head toward Edrick, her eyes lit up with pure rage. The tears kept streaming down her face as she stared down her uncle. Bright colors of red blossomed on her cheeks. Even the veins of her arms started to light up with magic again and Hydrick grew even more fitful and restless above her father’s four-poster bed.

Edrick, for his part, looked taken aback by his niece’s sudden anger. He stumbled backward and held up his hands, trying to offer a surrender of sorts, but Alice wasn't letting him off that easy. She marched right up to him and got in his face.

“Go on then,” Alice screamed. “Tell me what you meant by that, Your Royal Highness.”

The honorific came out of her mouth absolutely dripping with venomous sarcasm. He tried to back up again, his words sputtering.

“I…uh…well I just thought that…erm…”

Edrick’s flustering was decidedly un-kingly but Alice didn’t care. She knew what he’d been thinking. She’d seen it clear as day in his eyes when he asked the question.

“Alice,” Asari said with a gentle, placating voice. “No one here would ever think that you would be capable of…” She hesitated, not wanting to say the word outright.

“Of what?” Alice snarled. “Murder? Of murdering my own father?”

No one said anything but now that the words were out in the open, the seriousness of what they meant really hit home. She looked up at her familiar, the pain inside her still so overwhelming she could hardly breathe.

“Come here, Hydrick,” she commanded, hard steel coloring each of her words. The thunderbird did as she commanded and started to descend gracefully toward her, shrinking as he did so that he could land on the arm she held up for him. When he got settled, she looked directly at her grandmother. “You, and only you, Grandmother, may examine Hydrick. It will be plain that once you do, you will see that Jeks and his power was not absorbed into him.”

Samara looked at Alice for a long time, as if searching for something. Maybe it was a way out of trying to determine if her granddaughter had a motive to murder her son. After Alice urged her again to come forward, she finally did. She looked at Hydrick for a full minute, assessing him as if he were a piece of living artwork. Then she ran one of her hands over the length of his body, keeping her palm about an inch away from him. She couldn’t touch him herself because his bond was with Alice, not her, but she could still feel the power inside it. Her own familiar, an enbarr, had shrunk to the size of a small dog and stayed by her feet. It shook its pale, blue mane and trotted around, looking agitated by all the sudden yelling. Every few seconds it would start to neigh, and as the tension in the room got heavier, so did the enbarr’s neighing.

“Quiet now, Lenore,” Samara whispered. Then she focused on Hydrick again. She could feel the magical energy coursing through him, and she could feel it tethered to Alice. Her granddaughter’s aura, her presence, was threaded completely through every part of Hydrick. But it was only Alice’s aura present. She felt no one else’s and definitely did not feel any of her son threaded into the fabric of Hydrick’s being.

She backed away, crying again.

“Alice is right,” she told everyone. “She did not inherit Jeks.”

“That’s not possible,” Edrick said. He looked at everyone, his eyes darting around the room. “She has to have him. Micah would have given her…”

“Stop!” Alice screamed, her throat going raw with how loud she yelled.

Every person in that room instantly quieted down. They stood there, each one a mage so powerful they were feared all over the world, frozen as if they were nothing but animals caught out in the open about to be taken down by some hunter.

“Just stop,” she said, sinking to her knees. “Don’t you get it. He’s gone. He’s really gone. And there’s nothing we can do to bring him back.”

She looked like she just had her entire world ripped away.

“Leave,” Alice said. “All of you. Get. Out.”

Edrick and Harlan were the first to go, falling back to their previous mission of tracking down Parthos, the senior aide for the whole palace, and the Prime Guardian. Viltrax walked next to Edrick while Harlan’s familiar, a long and slender dragon with red-black scales named Shen, slithered through the air on his left side. Asari took a moment to hug Alice deeply, and then she and her familiar also departed.

The last to leave was Samara and she did so only after she was able to gently pull Alice up from the ground and get her situated on a plush couch with accents of maroon and orange next to her father’s bed. Hydrick landed on one of the soft cushions next to her and immediately batted his head into her shoulder, almost like a cat. It was his best approximation of a hug and while she didn’t embrace him back, she was still grateful to have him there.

“I’ll be staying in the palace for the foreseeable future, sweetheart. If you need me, I will be here in a heartbeat,” she whispered. Then she hugged Alice, her tears dropping onto her granddaughter. She gave her a small kiss on top of her head, just like she used to do when she was a baby, and left. She knew the deep pain Alice felt because she felt it too. Her son was gone and she didn’t know how she would ever be able to make that pain go away.

Alice didn’t really notice her grandmother or aunt and uncles leave. There was just too much heaviness inside her. The weight of it had become oppressive and made her feel like everything was closing in on her. The walls of her father’s bedchambers. The ceiling. Hydrick. Avalon itself. She couldn’t breathe and she wanted her dad.

She looked at him, his eyes closed and his face at peace. There was even a ghost of a smile on his lips and it made her remember all the times he laughed at his own stupid jokes or smiled like a proud father whenever she did anything amazing, which was literally everything she did. She often told her cousins, who were her only real friends, that she could bend down and pick up a piece of paper and her father would gush with pride. She already missed that. And she regretted how she acted toward him the last few years and all the times he tried to spend time with her only to be rejected outright and coldly.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to him.

“Sweetheart?”

She wiped tears from her eyes and looked toward the room’s only door. Her mother stood there, a beautiful gown in her father’s colors of maroon and orange, draped across her slender frame. Her dark, almost black hair, was braided down the left side of her head and she stared at her daughter with great concern.

Evari Pantheon raced to her daughter and folded her into a massive hug. She rocked her back and forth and as she did, Alice let out all the emotions inside her in a near constant stream of tears, crying, and sobs so harsh they felt like seizures.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to her, fighting her own sorrow at the same time. She looked at her former husband’s corpse but despite it being right in front of her, she couldn't believe he was actually gone. “It’s okay. I'm here.”

Alice continued to sob and Evari did the best she could to console her.

“I hate him,” Alice told her. “I hate him for dying.”

Instead of saying anything, she simply held her daughter even more fiercely against her and cried with her. No one came to bother them for the rest of the night.

***

“I get she is feeling the loss of Micah pretty acutely but it doesn’t change the facts,” Edrick muttered. “If Alice did not acquire her father’s inheritance then who the bloody hell did?”

He was in the palace’s large throne room, sitting on his own throne clad in his colors of navy and gold. He was leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his fingers steepled underneath his chin. The others were there as well. Harlan, who was pacing back and forth by his throne of red and black. Winston, who stood next to his own throne of green and brown with his arms folded across his chest. And Asari, also sitting but on a throne of pink and gray. The throne in the middle, the one with Micah’s colors, was empty and seeing it like that made the High Royals’ depression that much thicker.

“Bring that up again and I will snap you over your throne like a twig,” Winston snapped.

“Idle threats now, Brother?” Edrick snapped back. He got up from his seat and Winston immediately walked toward him.

“Please, Your Highnesses,” a voice cut in. There was no hesitation or fear in it, and he spoke with a calm, unwavering politeness that spoke to years of dealing with royals of the Kingdom of Avalon. “Squabbles such as these are not productive and will likely cause further harm.”

The four High Royals glanced toward the voice. It belonged to a well-dressed man with short-cropped brown hair and a pair of black-framed spectacles.

“Any news you have been able to gather, Parthos?” Asari asked, her eyes landing on his. “And you, Prime Guardian Oxnar, what do you have to say on the matter? My brother has been killed on your watch.”

Next to Parthos, a woman wearing the slim, metallic armor of a Royal Guardsman stood there. Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, exposing her tanned skin. A glistening prosthetic of copper replaced her left arm but this did not weaken her appearance. If anything, it made her look even more intimidating. She looked up at the raised dais where the thrones of Avalon sat and stared at each King or Queen in turn.

“I can assure each of you, Your Highnesses, that this palace is one of the safest places in the twelve lands. An attack from within is near impossible. In speaking with my investigators, we have come to the conclusion the First King must have been exposed to something outside of the palace. Something innocuous. Seemingly safe.”

“Safest place in the twelve lands?” Harlan said, growing angry himself. He walked down so that he could face the Prime Guardian directly. “What about my brother being murdered makes our palace safe? Or Avalon itself for that matter?”

He turned and addressed everyone.

“Our enemies will see his death as an opportunity to strike at us,” he said. “And I will not let Micah’s memory be further tarnished by seeing Avalon crumble. We have to stay strong in the coming months. And above all else, we need to find out who murdered him. They must be punished, severely, for what they’ve done.”

“Parthos,” Edrick suddenly said. “Prime Guardian Oxnar.”

Both the senior aide and the chief of the royal guard looked at Edrick and bowed.

“Yes, Sire?” they both asked, almost at the same time.

“Find as much as you can about who might have done this. I must confer with the other High Royals and I would like to do so with no other ears listening in,” he ordered. “Leave us now to our discussions and for the time being, keep word of the First King’s death confined to the palace. If I find out that it has spread to the citizenry, you both will find yourselves dirt farmers near the Rim. Understood?”

“Yes, Sire,” they both said.

Parthos was the first to leave, already accustomed to the High Royals and their varying personalities. Prime Guardian Oxnar, however, had to control her rising anger. Her record as Prime Guardian had been exemplary ever since she took over the position from her predecessor almost seventeen years ago. She was positive all threats to Micah or any of the other High Royals had been evaluated and dispatched well before they could catch even the faintest glimpse of the Elysium Palace’s beautiful arches, towers, or walls. She felt she needed to plead her case but seeing the three kings and the queen in their present emotional upheaval made her think twice. She bowed again, turned, and then left the room, closing the doors to the Grand Chamber behind her as she did.

Winston was the first to speak and he did so almost as soon as the doors banged shut.

“This is Under Guild,” he said. “Has to be. They are the only ones with people skilled enough to get close to Micah. And if it’s Under Guild then the contract definitely came from that spineless queen in Jarea. I’ve told you all, repeatedly, that underworld syndicate of murderers, thieves, and worse needed to be dealt with. Not one of you listened to me and now look at where we are. Micah is dead. Dead!”

“We don’t know for sure Jarea or the Under Guild had anything to do with this,” Harlan said. “Jumping to conclusions like those could lead us to a war we are not prepared to fight.”

Winston scoffed at that.

“We have one of the most powerful armies in the twelve lands,” Winston assured him. “Let them come if they think us easy targets.”

“Enochia and Kaizure will ally with us,” Edrick chimed in. “The reparations with Enochia have gone over well since everything our father did to their country. Xarosa, Ravgaard, and the Free Federation will most likely stay neutral. The Lehtians are only out for themselves and their Divine of Holy Light. That leaves Jarea, Draza, and the Mediites. Jarea might try something but we all know the Mediites don’t care about the wider world outside their deserts and Draza has a bad history with Jarea. Even at our worst, our forces alone would be more than adequate in stomping Jarea into the ground. I don’t anticipate an attack from them, at least not at this juncture.”

“Then why?” Asari suddenly asked, eyes watery. “If they don’t want to attack us then why go through all the trouble of killing Micah now. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I fear it will only make sense in the end, when it’s too late to stop what’s been put in motion,” Harlan said.

“I think right now, we need to table further discussions on who might have done this. Without evidence, all we have is conjecture. What we need to focus on now is Jeks. If Micah did not give the inheritance of his power to Alice, then who did Jeks go to?”

They all went silent, each one musing over that question. After several minutes mulling over different options, none of them were able to come up with any sort of answer.

Almost an hour later, there was a knock on the Grand Chamber door.