Chapter 25 He Is So Vile
Brea's POV
Morning light came through the window and settled across the room like nothing had happened.
I was still on the bed beside him. My fingers were resting lightly on his chest, where his heartbeat should have been, and I was watching his face the way you watch something you are not ready to stop watching.
He just needed time. That was what I told myself. That was the only thing I let myself think.
The door opened without a knock as the servants came in. Three of them. They moved differently than servants moved, they were already reaching for things on the side table, already stripping the arrangement of flowers from the windowsill.
"Stop," I said. "He's resting." They hesitated for exactly one second. Then continued.
My guardian stepped forward from her position by the wall where she had been standing all night, silent, still, watching everything. She placed herself between the servants and the bed without a word. Just moved there.
The servants stopped. She looked at them with the particular expression of someone who does not need to raise her voice to make a point and they looked back and then found other things to do that didn't involve moving closer to the bed.
I watched her. She had been there all night. I hadn't noticed until now. She hadn't slept, hadn't sat. Just stood in her corner and watched the room like she was reading something the rest of us couldn't see.
Then, there was a slow clap from the doorway.
I turned and it was Prince Kaelen. He walked in like he owned the floor beneath him. The injuries from the courtyard were gone, healed, and he moved with the relaxed unhurried ease of someone who had been waiting for a particular door to open and had just heard the latch give.
He looked at Rayne. Then he looked at me.
"You're still here?"
I didn't answer. He stepped closer. "I suppose grief makes people irrational." He tilted his head. "Your husband is dead, Brea."
The room was very quiet. "Which makes you mine."
I stood up. My legs were unsteady and I didn't care. "Don't touch me."
"You don't have a say anymore." He reached for my wrist, immediately ny guardian moved.
She was between us in under a second, one hand up, her body angled between mine and Kaelen's with the practiced stillness of someone who has done this before and doesn't find it complicated.
Kaelen looked at her for a long moment.
Then smiled. "Guardian." He said it the way you say a word you find mildly amusing. "Your prince is dead. Your assignment is void. Step aside."
She didn't move. "I said step aside."
"My orders," she said quietly, "were given by the prince. They stand until he revokes them."
"He can't revoke anything."
"Then they stand." Something flickered in Kaelen's eyes. He looked at her the way people look at an obstacle they haven't decided how to remove yet.
Then, he stepped back slightly and shifted his attention past her to me, choosing to wait rather than push.
For now. "Step away from her." I could hear the voice of Queen Nikolai in the doorway.
Then they were more footsteps. Behind her, past her, around her. Nobles I recognized. Guards, but not her guards. Different formation, different eyes. They filed into the room and took their positions and not one of them looked to her for instruction.
Kaelen didn't move. "It's done," he said simply..
"My father won three wars for this empire," he said. "Three. You know what the Covenant gave him after the last one?" He glanced around the room.
"A feast. Very nice words. A title that sounded important enough that he couldn't publicly complain about it." He tilted his head slightly. "Then sent him home." Nobody said anything.
"We were here before your family had a throne to sit on." Not loud. Just matter of fact.
"We didn't negotiate our way into power. We didn't make agreements. We fought for every inch of this empire and handed it over because that was what we were told the honorable thing to do was." Something crossed his face.
"My father believed that. Genuinely believed if he served well enough, long enough—"
"But, guess what...he died waiting." One of the nobles shifted. Kaelen didn't look at him.
"I'm not my father." He looked at Rayne's body for a moment. Then at me. "I'm done waiting."
Queen Nikolai looked at the guards. At the nobles. At the arrangement of bodies in the room that had already answered every question she was about to ask.
"I am still your Queen." Nobody responded as an elder near the back stepped forward.
"You were." He added as I watched her face. Her guards hesitated and looked at each other.
Then stepped back, she saw it happen. She didn't look away from it.
My guardian hadn't moved. She was still positioned between me and Kaelen, still watching the room with that same careful stillness, reading something in it I couldn't read. I saw her eyes move across the new guards, count them, assess the exits. Her face gave nothing away.
Kaelen moved to the center of the room.
"The Dreadborn retreat at sunlight. Which means we have time to rebuild properly." His eyes settled on me. "And to correct certain mistakes."
He reached for my wrist again. Harder this time. My guardian's hand closed around his wrist before he reached mine.
Kaelen looked down at her hand. Then up at her face. The smile was gone now.
"Last chance," he said quietly.
"You're welcome to remove me," she said. Just as quietly. "But I'd like to see you try."
For three full seconds nobody moved.
Then two of Kaelen's guards stepped forward and it was four against one and she was good.
I could see that immediately, the way she shifted her weight and read them coming, but four was four and they had her backed against the wall in under a minute, not roughly, just firmly, efficiently.
She didn't fight past what was useful. She let them hold her and looked at me across the room with an expression that said clearly.
'I'm still watching. This isn't over.' Kaelen straightened his sleeve. Looked at me.
"Where were we." he asked as He spoke loud enough for every noble and trembling servant to hear. “Correct certain mistakes,” he said.
“Starting with the dead prince’s whore. Guards...drag Brea to my chambers right now. Strip her naked, chain her to the bed, and prepare the oils. Tonight the entire court will watch me fuck the memory of your precious son out of her, Queen Nikolai. I’ll make sure she screams loud enough for his corpse to hear.”
Queen Nikolai, Rayne’s mother flinched as if struck. Her voice cracked with regal fury. “Kaelen, you vile snake. You will not touch her."
Kaelen cut her off with a lazy wave. “Your son is rotting meat. Drag the girl past his dear mother. Let her watch what happens when weak bloodlines fall.”
Two guards seized my arms. Queen Nikolai moved first. The elegant woman vanished—replaced by a vampire queen in full fury.
She grabbed the nearest guard by the face and slammed him into the wall so hard his skull exploded in a spray of bone shards and brain matter. Blood painted the stone red.
The second guard swung at her; she caught his arm, twisted, and ripped it clean from his shoulder in a wet, tearing crunch. He screamed as blood fountained across the room, soaking the nobles who recoiled in horror.
She finished him by driving her claws straight through his throat and out the back of his neck.
At the same moment, my guardian exploded into motion. She had been waiting for this.
Her claws slashed across one guard’s belly, spilling loops of steaming intestine onto the marble with a sickening slap.
The next she grabbed by the jaw and yanked upward, tearing his head half off in a fountain of gore that arced across the ceiling.
Two guards dead by the queen’s hand, two more butchered by my guardian in seconds—bodies twitching, limbs severed, blood everywhere.
Kaelen’s face twisted in rage, but he still smirked. “Even queens and dogs bleed when cornered.”
Then the air itself seemed to freeze..Faster than anyone could react, his left hand clamped around Queen Nikolai’s throat and lifted her effortlessly off the ground.
His right hand seized my guardian mid-strike, hoisting her up beside the queen as if both women weighed less than air. They dangled there, feet kicking.
Blood dripped from the corpses on the floor. The room was silent except for wet, choking gasps.
Kaelen voice came out, but threaded with something older, colder, monstrous.
“Take her to my room.”