Crush the King (Crown of Shards #3)(96)

The guard eyed the king’s fists. He swallowed again, then lifted his head and looked up at Maximus. “Don’t worry, Your Majesty. I’ve already sent the riders out on the older strixes with the usual nets and ropes. The other birds couldn’t have gotten far, especially since most of them are not yet fully grown.”

The guard reeked of desperation, and he spat out the words one after another, almost as if he were trying to find the right combination of sentences that would cool the king’s anger. He sucked in a breath and kept going. “We should be able to catch at least a few of them before the end of the day, but if we can’t, we can always send back to the capital for more—”

Maximus snapped up his leg and kicked the other man square in the chest.

The guard let out a loud, strangled cry and crumpled to the floor. With one hand, he clutched his ribs, which were probably broken, but he held up his other hand in supplication, silently begging for mercy.

Maximus studied him with cold, dispassionate eyes, then stepped up and kicked him again. And then again, and then again . . .

The Mortan king kicked his guard over and over, viciously driving his boot into the other man’s chest, arms, legs, even his face. The guard’s nose broke with a loud, audible crack that rang across the terrace like a clap of thunder announcing the full extent of Maximus’s rage.

That sound snapped me out of my shock, and I started forward to do . . . something, but Sullivan grabbed my arm.

“You can’t stop it,” he whispered. “That’s his guard, not yours.”

Guilt flooded my body, but he was right. I couldn’t intervene, and neither could anyone else.

Everyone fell silent, and the only sounds were the steady thud-thud-thud of Maximus’s boot and the guard’s sharp, answering cries of pain. No one said anything, and no one moved to intervene. In less than a minute, it was over, and the guard lay dying on the terrace, struggling to breathe and choking to death on his own blood.

Maximus finally stopped his brutal assault and stared down at the guard with the same dispassionate expression as before, as though he were looking at a cut of meat in a butcher’s shop instead of his fellow countryman. Then the king snapped up his hand and blasted the guard with his cold lightning.

Maximus was far stronger in his magic than Mercer was. The guard’s head snapped back, and he didn’t make another sound as the cold lightning zipped over and then froze his body. Brittle bits of ice flaked off his now-purple skin, and the chilly stench of his frostbitten flesh filled the air. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Driscol clamp his hand over his mouth, as though trying to keep from vomiting at the horrible sight.

Maximus focused on the second guard, who was still kneeling on the terrace. The second man hadn’t moved a muscle while Maximus had beaten and frozen his compatriot, but his left eye was involuntarily twitching in a nervous, jumpy rhythm, and the stench of his fear poured out of his pores, right along with his sour, nervous sweat. He thought the king was going to execute him too.

Maximus snapped his fingers. “Get up.”

The second guard swallowed, but he did as commanded. That twitch in his eye picked up speed, and the rest of his body trembled in time to the quick beat.

“Return to camp, get on your strix, and find my fucking pets. Every last one of them,” Maximus hissed in a low, dangerous voice. “Failure is unacceptable. Do you understand?”

The guard opened his mouth to answer, but not so much as a squeak of agreement escaped his lips.

“Do you understand?” Each word Maximus said was as sharp as a dagger slicing through the air.

The guard still couldn’t bring himself to speak, so he bobbed his head instead.

“Then why are you still standing here?” Maximus snarled.

The instant the king finished speaking, the guard stepped over his fellow guard’s body, sprinted across the terrace, and ran down the bleacher steps as fast as he could.

The quick, staccato rhythm of the guard’s frantic footsteps faded away, and that tense, heavy silence dropped over the terrace again. Maximus seemed completely unconcerned by the silence and the shocked stares, and he sat back down in his seat as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

He glanced over at Nox and Maeven, but they both looked back at him with blank expressions. Neither one of them said a word or moved a muscle, but I could smell their worry and fear. They didn’t want to be the next victim of his wrath.

Maximus glanced around the rest of the terrace. Eon, Ruri, Cisco, Zariza, Heinrich. The other royals were regarding him with a mix of disgust and wariness, and the ogre on Zariza’s neck was baring its teeth. Driscol still had his hand clamped over his mouth, although Seraphine seemed as calm as ever.

Everyone knew about Maximus’s capacity for cruelty, something that he had reinforced by slaughtering the strix and drinking its blood at the ball. But killing one’s own guard at such a public event was something that just wasn’t done, not even among the most vicious royals. Everyone was staring at Maximus as if they had just now realized there was a rabid animal in their midst, instead of a reasonable, rational king.

I was glad that Serilda and I had been able to free the creatures, but more guilt filled me at the fact that my thwarting the king’s scheme had cost an innocent man his life.

As if he could hear my dark thoughts, Maximus turned his cold gaze to me. I didn’t know what he saw in my face. Disgust, probably, mixed with anger and guilt over the guard’s death, but his eyes narrowed, and the scent of his rage intensified, so hot and strong that it felt like my nose was on fire. Maximus knew that I was the reason he’d lost his precious pets.