Chapter 32

Chapter

Thirty-Two

CALLISTO

"So…" I eye the man. Then I look at Silas, who is examining the man while Dandelion has a look of: "I'm going to fuck you up for looking at my papa."

"So… you're saying… that… you are actually the prince?" I ask.

"Sounds suspicious and worthy of death over," Dandelion says.

"Explain yourself," Silas orders.

"I know you're the ‘god of death,' Silas. While we never fought with each other in war, I followed my father around quite a bit, and I snuck in to speak with you one night while you were drinking. You got drunk enough that you exposed your face to me."

"If I didn't kill the prince, then who did I kill?" Silas asks.

"It's a long story," the supposed prince says. "I am sure you've all heard that I lack much magic, but the only magic I do know how to perform is that of illusions. When my father learned that the king was going to take me as his heir, he was furious. You see, if King Samuel were to die right at this moment, the crown would go to my father. Knowing this, King Samuel needed to make sure it wouldn't fall into my father's hands, which is how he came to the decision that I would take the throne.

"My father's love for dark magic led him to place a curse on me… It made me horribly ill, and of course, it didn't take me long to realize that I wasn't truly sick, but that it was something he'd done to me. I assumed it was just to kill me off, but instead of informing him that I knew, I went along with it. My hope was to survive until I reached the capital and ask my uncle for help because if I confronted my father, he'd surely kill me. Then my father's most trusted soldiers packed me up and stuffed me in a carriage. My illness forced some unplanned delays upon our travels and about a day or two from the capital, everything went dark.

"When I woke up, most of the soldiers had been slaughtered… and it appeared to have been by my hand. I heard someone coming, and out of fear that it was my father, I illusioned one of my father's cruel guards who was still in a stupor and hid myself. I saw you kill the man after he attacked you and then, Callisto, I saw you scheme up the ultimate plan and bury the man you thought was me. But you fucked up when you took my coat," Prince Eli says.

"Your coat?" I ask. I do remember finding his coat in the carriage and feeling like it helped me look the part with the royal crest on it. I rubbed some blood and dirt on it before taking one of the white royal horses and heading on my way.

The prince continues, "My father is always a skeptic, and he was determined to make the plan succeed no matter what, so he needed a backup in case I failed to kill the king when his curse caused me to lose control. His secondary plan relied on a coin that was found in the coat you took, much like the one you currently have. My father had heard stories of the coin you hold… and heard tales spun about the power it held, along with a promise for everlasting life. But when my father took the coin, he could do nothing with it… honestly, it seemed like nothing more than a chunk of metal.

"Confident the coin was a fake, he threw it aside and decided to make his own. Others are unaware that my father is actually a necromancer, something horribly frowned upon by the fae. Using his necromancy, he traveled the world and brought back to life the strongest magic users he could find. Using his power to enslave them, he forced them to create another coin… but this one that'd been created by the dead only knew death. He had created a coin that allowed him to control people, much like how he can control the dead. He knew that if his initial plan failed, the coin I'd be delivering to the king would make him vulnerable and almost ‘undead,' which would allow my father to control the king. And from there, all he had to do was flood the kingdom with his undead and control his brother."

I think about this for a long moment. I don't remember ever coming across the other "dark" coin, but I suppose I never looked. "So… you're saying I did all of this?"

The prince drops his illusion of an older man and shakes his head. He's around my height, with hair so blond that it isn't far off from my white color. When I'd seen his dead body, I hadn't thought it would be too hard to pull off, especially when no one at the capital had seen the prince since he was quite young.

"No. How the hell would you have ever known what it'd do? I didn't even fully grasp what it could do until I saw it happen that night. It wasn't until I saw the destruction of the capital and how the king acted that I realized what my father had done and connected it to the coin," he says. "I had to assume he'd gotten it there somehow before remembering that he'd made sure I'd taken that overcoat with me."

"What about the other coin, then?" Silas asks. "The one we've been toting all around?"

"I… don't know about that coin. Unable to use it, my father deemed it nothing more than trash, but how could something that had such a story behind it be nothing more than trash? My theory is that he can't get it to interact with him for some reason."

"Then why did you give it to me?" I ask as I pull it out of my pocket and toss it to him. "Here, you get it to do something."

Prince Eli catches it and examines it. It's probably best that we don't tell him that Madden had been holding it in his toes and trying to stuff it in Silas's mouth not that long ago. "Why you? Because it's drawn to you," he says as he flips the coin up into the air. It hovers for a moment before landing right before my feet. "I was playing with the coin when I realized that it kept rolling in a certain direction. So… I followed it and it led me to you. I saw that night as a perfect opportunity to give you the coin. I stole the appearance of a man who was supposed to arrive that I'd found passed out drunk at the local tavern, and handed it over with the hopes you could do something with it."

"Why didn't you confront the king?" I ask.

"Because I didn't know who I could trust… I still don't," he says as I stoop down and pick up the coin. It sure didn't seem to come running to me whenever I dropped it… but I suppose when Madden did, it had rolled over to where I was bound near the steps. "I've heard my father is searching for my body, telling me he's suspicious whether I really did die or not. He probably wants to see the body for proof that I can't swoop in and take the crown if my uncle is killed. I think he's afraid if he kills my uncle, I'll return to take the throne and the citizens won't see him as the savior that he plans to paint himself as. But I think you can make everything right with this coin."

"Well, it's nothing more than a paperweight in my hands," I grumble. "And I'm literally nothing. I'm not a prince or a soldier… I'm nothing, so why would some ancient magic coin pick me?"

"Being royalty isn't everything," Prince Eli says. "I might be a prince, but I'm also a coward. My father is royalty, but he's nothing more than a monster. Maybe the coin chooses who it thinks can stop this."

That's a foolish idea. "Well, it's not me. I'm not some secret love child of the king or some nonsense. I'm just some asshole's kid who lived in the shittiest fae district with the shittiest father who turned out to be a useless thief."

"Why do you think you have to be some prince to accomplish anything?" Silas asks as he reaches over and gives my hand an affectionate squeeze. "Why can't you just be you? And why do you like to focus on points that don't even define you?"

I'm caught staring at that hand, but I still feel uncertain about the whole thing. "Hmm… Silas, maybe it wants you," I say as I try to pass it to him, but he won't take it.

Instead, he keeps his attention on the prince. "So your father's plans are to control the king from a distance, throw the kingdom into war, and then what? Swoop in and take over when all hope is lost?" As he talks, he forces my hand closed around the coin that I was hoping someone else would take.

The prince seems uncertain. "I guess. I'm really sorry that I don't have anything more for you. Right now, the kingdom is in turmoil. They have no true way of knowing what's happening in the capital. All they know is that the ‘king's men' are harassing them, breaking them down and tightening a noose around their necks. They have the memory of the war weighing them down, and I bet most would go to any lengths to avoid it. So when my father steps forward, he can ‘free' them from the king's cruel clutches. I wish I knew more, but I do know that we need to stop the king before he destroys this whole kingdom… and I can't do it alone."

"You can place illusions on people," Madden says. "So can you place an illusion on us and get us inside? Once we're in there, we just have to get the king back on track, right? Easy."

Easy, my ass. Madden didn't see the way that mist could just slaughter and turn everything to stone.

"So easy that I'll just wait out in this shed for you guys," Madden teases.

"We need you to scout the path," Silas says. "Does the king have any pets?"

"Not that I know of," I answer.

"It's fine, a bird will do," Madden says, and while he takes a seat in a quiet corner, the rest of us keep talking.

"I… wonder if things will go back to normal if we get the dark coin out of there," Prince Eli comments. "Then the hold over everything would lessen. My father has his own men, including multiple necromancers spread throughout the army, but if the king were to escape his control, the win would be effortless."

"I can't even get close. There's something stopping me," Madden says as he reluctantly looks over at us. "I… I think we're going in blind."

"Not the first time," Silas responds before turning to the prince. "If you're lying and leading us to a trap, I will come back for you and make you regret every moment of it."

"I understand," he says. "I've been watching the capital. Some of my father's men left hours ago. If I illusion you to look like them, you can simply pretend that you were unable to leave yet."

The prince reaches out and presses a hand against Silas's forehead, wiping a smudge of something dark across it. Within a second, Silas's appearance changes to that of a man I don't recognize. The prince changes each of us into different people before changing our mounts—including Dandelion—into looking like horses. It's a pretty impressive trick, and even knowing that they're not what they've been illusioned to look like, my mind wants to believe they are.

"Now the illusion will last for a while, but if you want to drop it, you can simply wipe the ash I rubbed on your forehead away and you'll drop the illusion," Prince Eli explains.

"Well, wish us luck. If we die, we will come back and haunt you," I decide.

"I believe in all of you," he says.

"Do you really?" Madden asks.

"Kind of," the prince says.

"Fantastic," I mutter. "We better get rewarded after this."

"Of course!"

The three of us get onto our mounts and head straight for the capital.

"This is one hundred percent going to get us killed," Madden says. "I vote that we sneak in and pick them off quietly and if things look dicey, we wash our hands of it and trot on home."

"We'll be fine," Silas says, the epitome of calm and collected. Is it just the face he wears? Nah, he's always so confident, and I'm over here positive I'm going to fuck absolutely everything up.

"Dandelion, am I sexy?" Madden asks as he pouts, which looks absolutely ridiculous on the face he's currently wearing.

It makes me laugh and even makes Silas lose a bit of his composure. Since Dandelion is in his bestial form, Silas and I can't hear him, but he must say something because Madden starts laughing.

"Dandelion said that I look like a creepy neighbor who likes to stare too much," Madden says. "But the real question is… am I a sexy creepy neighbor and am I staring adequately?"

Silas snorts before shaking his head. "Stop. Don't make me break our cover. We don't know how far out they're watching."

"I don't know about you, but I've never wanted to peruse Callisto's body as much as I do right now," Madden says with an eyebrow waggle.

"Why? What do I look like?" I ask as I look between them before looking down at what I can see of myself.

"Sexy sexy," Madden tells me.

"I'm sexy?" I ask.

"So sexy," Madden says.

"And yet your tone makes me feel like I'm the furthest thing from sexy," I grumble.

"Dandelion said to tell you that your face makes him grimace. And then he tossed a ‘Papa' in there like that'll make it better," Madden informs me.

"Even you?" I cry.

Silas shakes his head. "Enough. We're focused individuals and paying attention to our surroundings and—stop looking at me with that face, Callisto."

I gape at him. "Is it that bad?"

"It's pretty bad," he teases.

"The real question is, would you still want him if his face remained like that?" Madden asks.

"I would put a bag on his head, and everything would be just fine," Silas assures us.

I glower at him. "At least you still like me," I mutter to Titus.

"Don't even get me started on what Titus said!" Madden comments.

I eye Madden, then Titus, before glowering at Madden. "He would never ."

"Focus. The quicker we focus, the quicker I can look Callisto in the eyes again," Silas says.

I grumble as I decide that I will ignore all of them and assume Titus still loves me. I give him a little scratch which he leans into, quite pleased… while probably cussing me out.

Together, we reach the capital gate where soldiers are stationed. They appear to be the king's soldiers and look absolutely terrified as they see us. They step back and, without a single word, let us inside.

Inside the wall surrounding the capital, it's like a ghost town. The bustling city has been reduced to rubble in some areas, and in others, townsfolk flee and hide the moment we ride through.

It's clear the men who have moved in have taken complete control over the city. I haven't seen people look or act like this since the war. How could the duke want to drive us back to this point of desperation? Was it just because he never dealt with it personally that it never bothered him what became of others? Or did he thrive off the destruction of it?

I can't fathom how he could be like that.

When we reach the palace, there's a whole line of guards who must belong to the duke. They seem surprised to see that we're back, but Silas stares down at them with no hint of fear. He dismounts, so Madden and I do as well.

"Why are you back?" the man asks.

"Issues," Silas says, keeping it brief as they look over at me as though I'm going to tell them something different. It's not like I'm going to give away the fact that we're here for nefarious reasons—or is it not nefarious when we're suddenly the good guys?

Then Silas just starts walking right through, but one of the guys stops him with a hand on his chest. "You think that's an adequate response? That's all you have to say?"

I brush my hand against the man's bare wrist, feeding him just enough poison to make him feel ill. He's so focused on Silas that he doesn't even notice it.

When the man staggers back, I pretend I'm picking at something on Dandelion.

"Just… fucking let someone else deal with them," he mutters, looking a bit pale.

"What's wrong?" the other guard asks, but the one who'd been bitching at us just waves his hand around and Silas takes that as an excuse to step on through, leading Banks after him. The rest of us follow up to the front doors of the palace where the doors hang open. They appear to have been broken at some point, likely when the king had been losing his mind.

"Let's go," he says. "Dandelion, can you wait out here with Zepher and Banks? You can tell Madden if someone heads our way. If they do, warn us immediately."

Madden looks at Silas. "Dandelion said he wants to be with us."

"Yes, well, walking in with a horse or tiger beast will instantly raise suspicion, and they're watching us, so he can't shift right here," he says. "Just stay as lookout. The instant anything is wrong, you can rush right in."

Dandelion clearly isn't pleased, so I give him a rub and he huffs. The rest of us head inside the grand palace as I look over at the stone statues of people frozen in time. If we break the spell, will they come back or will they forever be gone?

Moving farther into the room, I find King Samuel seated on his throne. He's slumped down, and at first, I can't quite figure out whether he's alive or dead. At his feet, the mist hovers around him.

He doesn't even seem to notice us as I start toward him. The room is eerily quiet, but as soon as I get close to him, the king lifts his head. He seems to look right through me, his eyes fixated on Silas instead, and when I look over at him, I realize the illusion he'd been wearing has dropped away. Was there something on the doorway that destroyed it?

I hold the coin tightly in my hand and question how the fuck this is even supposed to work. Do I just like… slam it against his forehead and call it a day? Do I need some spell with it? I really wish the damn thing had come with some instructions!

I stop as I hear movement a moment before the doors leading into the building fill up with soldiers and undead. None are people I recognize, making me guess that they're the duke's men.

"I'm going to take care of these guys, so I need you to keep going," Silas says. "If you don't look over at me, my magic won't affect you as much."

The room starts to go dark as Silas's magic works its way throughout the room. I turn to see if he needs help as I watch the first man go down.

I'd seen him use his magic as a child, but since then, he's tried his best to shield me from what it can do. The thing is, I'm not afraid of him, and I just want him to understand that.

Even though the magic is doing nothing to me, I can see the men lose their resolve as they near him. Their confidence is shattered as each person who gets near him is hit with a dark orb, dropping them to the ground.

The undead are unaffected, but Madden keeps them back with ease as he uses a sword he seems to have stolen from one of the knights, like they've done this a thousand times, and maybe they have. These two have clearly been through a lot together; it's like they're moving in sync with each other. Madden seems to be familiar enough with Silas that he appears to know how to work with Silas's magic, even if the magic is affecting him a little.

As one of the undead grows close, Dandelion comes rushing in, tearing them to the ground as I realize that I need to focus. I need to stop getting distracted.

But when I turn back, I see the king rise up out of his throne and start down the hallway.

"Fuck, fuck," I mutter as I hurry after him. They're all doing their part; I need to do mine. I need to fix this… but if I can't… what do I do? I can't kill the king.

Should I poison him? Just enough to knock him down? Or in this state, would he not even notice? He doesn't look like he's affected by much. His clothes hang on him, his face is gaunt, and he doesn't appear to have eaten or done much since I left.

Feeling like I'm fumbling with absolutely no idea of what to do, I race after him, leaving the others behind.