Heart of Ash (The Dark Arcane Series: Book 1)

Chapter Eleven

Darius sank into his chair, leaning back into the hard, polished wood, the picture of serenity and contentment, with his arms spread wide, resting beside him on the chair.

His father, seated two chairs down from him at the centre, leaned forwards and placed both hands on the table. His broad face was furrowed underneath the crown that always adorned his head, and crisp with anger.

"The witches..." he lingered on the word like it had stuck in his throat. "Their insolence has far breached the limits I generously set when the new age began."

A dozen court members sat at the table, and looked on in silence. Darius knew most adopted the trait of looking at the space just above the emperor's head, never directly at him. It was hard to look into the emperor's deadened eyes and not feel the coldness deep into your own—and that was him saying it.

The emperor shook his head and a small detached smile stitched its way across his face.

"I will not have it," his deep voice snapped like a whip across the room, several court members blinked, barely managing to hide their flinches.

He had to praise the man for how he commanded a room; no one else even came close.

"The attack on my castle last night was a detrimental move on their part, a suicidal move. Their outright defiance has made up my mind. I want the past years of burnings, and hunting of witches, to look like leniency- and it was leniency, wasn't it?" His voice grew thoughtful.

Not a question.

"I allowed their families to keep their lives, I didn't lock the witches away and torture them for years on end, I didn't even hunt them when some fled to the next four lands, but even so, they still aren't grateful." The emperor looked up with emotionless brown eyes, tone soft. "I will have them grateful."

His father's precious Captain of the Guard, who sat at his right hand side, closer than Darius even, raised a slow hand. "What would you suggest happen now, your majesty?"

He never donned the black Elite uniform, instead choosing a white with the tree emblem stitched in black on the centre of his chest. Whether he had been cursed with whatever made an Elite an Elite was hard to tell. The only time he ever hinted at a human nature was when he played pyesheu with Queen Mayeve.

Captain Adar had only just returned this morning, the day after the attack, from a visit to the soldier's camps.

The emperor didn't snipe, didn't cut at the Captain's question, as he would have done if it were anyone else who spoke. Instead he spared a glance at the man, and said, "I want them culled. Extinct. Find any blood relatives—no, no, just find any relatives," he amended, lifting his finger, "of witches, in the past or present, and their acquaintances. Find the people the witches spoke to in town, those in the house she passed in the street, the people she gave passing glances to as she walked by. Find them, and burn them. I want it done, tomorrow at dawn."

An even more tense silence froze over them, although they had all known this was the only outcome when they sat down.

Darius raised a hand, immediately catching the attention of his father, who's eyes snapped over.

"Yes, prince?"

It was not often Darius spoke in meetings, the topics rarely of interest and his opinion unwanted, which perhaps explained the frostiness in the emperor's voice.