The Necromancer ✓

Chapter Twenty

The rain fell hot and heavy, landing in thick globs against my skin. All around me the Fae were screaming angrily, yelling to be heard over the crowd. I didn't yell. I whispered, and the world fell silent around me.

"Zephan," I said. The crowd parted around me and I saw him standing in the middle of the field. I saw Jack collapsed on the ground near him and Kieran held firmly in the grasp of two of Zephan's lackeys. I recognized one of them as the man who'd thrown water over me, after I'd vomited on myself. I smiled viciously in his direction. Clearly, Kieran's speech had not gone well.

"Ah, my lady of death," Zephan called. "You're just in time to see me made king." He gestured a man who looked like a priest forward.

"No," I said. The priest stopped moving and turned to me. His eyes widened in fear and I knew that he was the first person there to realize that something had changed, that I wasn't the same person they had seen the night of the ball. I was so much more. "You will never rule this land."

Zephan laughed. I saw people in the crowd grow uneasy. It was only his arrogance that stopped him from seeing what I was. It was his arrogance that made him think he could get away with murder. It was his arrogance that would get him killed. I knew that, because I was the one who was going to do it.

"The land has called to me," I said, "and I have answered its call."

The rain grew warmer against my skin and someone in the crowd gasped. I raised a hand to my cheek and felt the suddenly hot, thick moisture there. I drew my hand away and looked at the crimson liquid coating my fingertips. Blood. Everywhere it rained but as the water touched my skin it turned to blood.

"What...?" Zephan asked, suddenly sounding unsure.

"You have broken the first law," I said. I started walking, slowly, down through the crowd towards Zephan. No one stood in my way. No one dared. "You have committed the worst of crimes. You have betrayed your people and offended the land itself."

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"You murdered the king," I said, bluntly. "As though regicide isn't bad enough, he was your grandfather."

"I didn't..." he began.

"Don't," I said angrily. "Do you think the walls were ignorant?" He looked at me blankly so I guess he did think that. "The entire court rested on the backs of the dead," I explained. "Their spirits were woven into the very walls. They see everything." I had a sudden flash back to the old man in the bed. The king. I remembered the way the veins stood out on the back of his hands as he struggled against Zephan. He struggled helplessly, unable to push Zephan away, unable to stop him. I remembered, all too vividly what it had felt like to be at the mercy of Zephan's hands. Mercy. As though he had any.

"But so long as there wasn't a member of the Deadly Aristocracy around, they could tell no one." I felt my mouth twist into a bitter smile. It was a smile that I'd never smiled before, because it wasn't my smile. It was a smile that came from all of the dead who were gathered inside me. All the victims. All the people who had been made into victims by people who thought they could get away with it. I smiled, but it wasn't the kind of smile that held an inch of friendship or kindness. It was the smile of a thousand victims banded together, as they realized that they weren't victims anymore. We're not victims.

I let the painful memories flood through me. They hurt, all of us hurt. We hurt so much that I could feel that pain leaking out across my lips. I wanted to make him hurt. I wanted to hear the land echo with the sounds of his screams. I wanted him to feel what he had done to me, only I wanted it to be worse. A thousand times worse, because he was the one who made me feel this way.