A Den of Tricks (A Shade of Vampire #54)(51)

The king’s palace towered over us, its shiny black walls reflecting the amber flames burning below. We were less than fifty yards from a massive swarm of daemons that had gathered outside the palace steps, where armed guards had lined up—about twenty of them at the base and another twenty at the top of the stairs.

“I think it’s best if we get as close to those stairs as possible,” Jax whispered, as we watched more daemons joining the others in the main square.

We had a good viewing angle from our spot. I could see a large, rectangular space in front of the palace stairs, lined by servants, who kept the rest of the crowd at bay.

“Got it,” I replied. Caspian squeezed my hand tighter.

He guided me back out into the main street, and the others followed. We walked on the edge toward the gathering. We reached the main square and slipped through the crowd, and Caspian got us closer to the palace steps. We came to a halt at the sound of massive drums beating somewhere behind the upper line of armed guards. The rhythm was solid and intense, each thud loud enough to send shivers down my spine. The daemons growled and roared around us.

They all grinned, excited and restless as they waited for something.

“Fall back,” a daemon shouted, his voice echoing across the square.

The armed guards at the top obeyed and split into two groups, leaving room in the middle of the platform for a group of six large daemons to come through. They resembled each other, as far as facial features were concerned, and were uniformly dressed in black leather, with fur coats hanging loosely on their shoulders. They carried bejeweled broadswords on their gold belts, and gold threads were woven on their twisted horns.

Royalty of some kind…

“All hail the Six Princes!” the same voice announced. I used my True Sight to scan the area and found the drummers, along with a daemon dressed in dark red, somewhere behind the giant columns framing the main entrance into the palace.

“Wait, six? I thought there were seven,” I whispered. There were several feet of space around us, and the crowd was far too loud for anyone to hear me.

“There are seven princes. I guess one of them isn’t here,” Caspian breathed, then shushed me, pulling me closer. I could feel the warmth of his body seeping into mine. I kept myself glued to him, watching the scene at the top of the palace stairs unfold before us.

The princes nodded, and the commoners and the crowd erupted in cheers and whistles. Judging by their reactions, the king’s sons were quite popular. But not as popular as the king himself, I noted, as silence fell heavy over the square.

King Shaytan emerged from the palace, and roars of adoration and worship exploded from every single daemon around us. I could see it on their faces—the broad smiles, the flaming red eyes, and the feverish hand gestures. Whatever the king said, they gobbled it up. It didn’t come as much of a surprise, though. The guy was… huge. King Shaytan was bigger than all the other daemons I’d seen so far, including the massive ones lugging Imen cages around. His skin carried a bronze tan, his muscles perfectly sculpted on his enormous frame. He wore golden chainmail around his waist, snugly strapped with a bejeweled belt just below his narrow hips. A giant piece of animal fur rested on his back, a thick gold chain keeping it over his shoulder—whatever animal it had belonged to, it was either extremely rare or even extinct, as I’d never seen that zebra-like pattern anywhere else. The black and white contrast definitely made him stand out, though…

A sturdy and beautifully crafted gold crown rested on his head; his long salt-and-pepper hair was braided into thick dreadlocks, sewn with gold thread, and caught with a thick gold bangle at the back. His horns were significantly longer and thicker than the others’, twisting twice as they curved downward, nearly reaching his buttocks. He held a long, slim staff made entirely out of gold, with a large, oval red garnet crystal mounted at the top. It looked as though two golden claws swirled around it. It had a peculiar glimmer, amplified by the fires burning in copper wall sconces behind him.

His arms, his chest, and his abdomen were covered in black tattoos, a myriad of geometric symbols displayed in vertical rows, dancing over the ropes of muscle with every move he made. I gripped Caspian’s arm tighter, my fingers digging into his flesh; he returned the gesture by wrapping his spare arm around me. I was genuinely scared at the sight of the daemon king—and with good reason, too.

He was, by far, the strongest I had ever seen of his kind, and his people adored and obeyed him. We are in so much freakin’ trouble…

King Shaytan raised his arms slowly, prompting the crowd to go quiet all of a sudden.

“For too long have we kept to the underground,” he spoke, his voice low and downright seductive. No wonder he had no trouble getting new wives every year! “For too long, we’ve allowed others to consume the souls that are rightfully ours.”

The crowd went wild, cheering him on, before he raised his hands again to demand silence—they sealed their lips shut in response.

“Rightfully ours? Seriously?” I whispered, mostly to myself. Caspian squeezed my shoulder, reminding me to keep quiet.

I lifted my head to get a better look, and noticed a large, empty space at the bottom of the stairs. King Shaytan clapped his hands once, and the ground started shaking beneath us. My blood froze as I used my True Sight and spotted the source of that instantaneous mini-earthquake. About a thousand large daemons marched from the side, filling the space I’d just seen in front of the palace stairs.