Crush the King (Crown of Shards #3)(69)

The sight of an innocent creature being slaughtered filled me with disgust, along with cold, cold rage. I turned my harsh glare back to Maximus, who stared me in the eyes, picked up the gold goblet, and lifted it to his lips.

Was he actually going to . . . The idea was so horrible that I couldn’t bring myself to actually think it through, although it happened anyway.

Maximus tipped up the goblet and drank the strix’s blood.

He slurped it down like it was a hot, fruity toddy. He kept his eyes on me the whole time, and I couldn’t look away. It was just that fascinating and horrible and sick and disgusting.

Maximus kept drinking . . . and drinking . . . and drinking . . . until he had drained the last drop of the strix’s blood out of the goblet. Then he lowered the empty glass and grinned, showing off his bloodstained teeth, and the coppery stench of his blood-drenched breath drifted across the table to me. Hot, sour bile rose in my throat. I managed to choke it down, although I couldn’t stop from shuddering in revulsion.

“Ah,” he murmured, placing the goblet on the table. “That’s always so refreshing. I’ll have another round later on. Now, shall we start the game?”

Start the game? We had never stopped playing the fucking game.

I sucked in a breath to tell him exactly what a vile monster he was, and a familiar scent tickled my nose, even stronger than the coppery tang of the strix’s blood.

The stench of magic.

My nose twitched. I discreetly drew in another breath, tasting the air, and I noticed that the blood and the magic had the same coppery notes. Strixes had magic, just like gargoyles and caladriuses did, so it made sense that their blood would contain the same power that the creatures themselves did.

Power that Maximus had just slurped down.

The stench of magic clung to him like a second skin, along with the blood on his breath, and a sudden influx of power sparked in his eyes, like fireworks exploding over and over again.

Shock blasted through me. Not only had Maximus proven what a heartless bastard he was by drinking the strix’s blood, but he had actually absorbed the creature’s magic.

I shouldn’t have been so surprised. After all, I could destroy magic, so it made sense that someone else might be able to channel it. In a way, Maximus and I were like two sides of the same coin, connected and yet completely opposite at the same time.

Perhaps absorbing the strixes’ magic was Maximus’s own personal mutt skill, the same way that throttling magic was mine. Perhaps he was even a magic master, like I was. Or perhaps his was a unique family trait passed down through the generations of Morricone kings and queens, the same way that Winter and Summer magics had been passed down through the Blair royal family.

Or maybe, just maybe, the Morricones’ power had always come from the strixes.

Legends said that the Blairs had dug so much tearstone out of Seven Spire that it had turned our eyes the same gray-blue color, and some of my cousins had thought our ancestors mining the stone was the ultimate source of our power, the thing that had triggered all the magic in our family. Just like Andvarian stories claimed that the Ripleys were the first family to ever befriend gargoyles. Maybe one of Maximus’s ancestors either bonding with or killing strixes was the reason why Morricones’ eyes were the same purple as the creatures’ eyes and feathers.

Most magiers, morphs, masters, and mutts augmented their power with jewels filled with magic and other glamours, but some people believed that wearing the bones or eating the flesh of certain creatures, like caladriuses, increased their own magic. I’d thought those were just silly legends, but apparently not in Maximus’s case.

And he had drunk more than just the strix’s blood.

My gaze flicked to the empty vial sitting on the cart, the one that had been filled with crushed tearstone and amethyst-eye poison. Tearstone could absorb and reflect back magic, and I was betting that a certain dose of the poison could do the same thing. Maximus must add the powder to his foul cocktail in order to help him soak up and then wield as much power as possible.

I wondered if he could also sense magic like I could. If that was the case, then Maximus had probably felt the power in the wormroot poison coating Serilda’s arrow, which had let him blast the projectile to pieces. It was probably a good thing I hadn’t tried to dose Maximus with the vial of wormroot in my own pocket. Instead of killing him, I might have inadvertently made him stronger.

However, perhaps the most disgusting and disheartening thing was that Maximus had only consumed about a cup of blood. He could have easily siphoned off that much of the strix’s blood without killing the creature. But no, he had slaughtered the strix outright. Just because he could. Just because it amused him. Just because he wanted to show us all how cruel he truly was.

I wondered how many strixes died on a regular basis to satisfy the Mortan king’s lust for power. One a month? A week? Every single day? The potential numbers horrified and disgusted me. And were strixes the only creatures he slaughtered? Or did he somehow do the same to gargoyles, despite their stone skins? And what about caladriuses? They had even more magic than strixes and gargoyles. Then there was the biggest question of all.

Did he do it to people?

There had long been rumors of slavery, labor camps, and other horrors in Morta, and I couldn’t help but think that those atrocities were linked to Maximus’s monstrous appetite. No wonder Maeven was afraid of him. No wonder all the Mortans were afraid of him.