Vengeance made him a monster.
Love will make him my mate.

Deknol has sold his soul to The Deceiver. I can see it in the powers that he now wields. Far stronger than any magic present on Protheka.

It excites me.

Because he will use his power to rescue me. To protect me. To pleasure me.

The value of my life on Protheka is less than worthless. But when I stand next to Deknol, whose godlike powers crackle the air around him, I am a queen.

His queen.

With all of our enemies seeking to tear us down, one question keeps nagging in my mind. With all of this power, Deknol has a body that can fight, a mind that can do magic…

But does he still have a heart that can love?

Chapter 1

Deknol

“You won’t do anything! You’re cowards! Mindless slaves to the khuzuth!” I scream. “The evidence speaks for itself!” I’m standing in the guard station, arguing with two of the guards and feeling like I’m getting nowhere.

I ball my hands into fists. “Arrest the monster! We all know it was Arshico! He killed my sister! He killed her!”

The guards roll their eyes at me, refusing to listen to reason. “You have no evidence, zagfer,” Fibulvo says, sneering at the word. “You would try to drag down a respectable k’sheng!”

“She told everyone she felt unsafe working for him!” I argue back, ready to beat the guards into listening if I have to. “No one did anything about it! Do your damned jobs and arrest him!”

“Where is the evidence?” Grendral raises an eyebrow. “Show me a shred of evidence.”

“She told me that he was harassing her and wouldn’t take no for an answer!” I say, seething inside. “She felt unsafe! Next thing I know, she’s disappeared? That doesn’t sound like a coincidence.”

“It’s obvious you’re simply trying to further your standing,” Fibulvo scoffs. “You’re nothing but a stain on the carpet next to someone as respectable as Arshico.”

 Grendral’s eyebrows narrow as he speaks up. “Your sister probably just ran off with some wealthy elf to be his kept whore,” he sneers.

 “You bastards!” I hiss, narrowing my eyes as I try to hold myself back from lashing out. “You are content to sit there and do nothing, acting as though you have no duty to those lower than you because you’re part of the miou. Your job is to apply the law equally to all! You’ve become useless because you’re too cowardly to speak out against those above you!”

“The k’sheng are hardly above us,” Grendral laughs. “As miou, even the lowliest of guards has a higher standing than the wealthiest k’sheng.”

“Status is all you care about!” I point my finger at them. “As the warrior caste, your job is to protect the rest of us! You care to do nothing for my sister simply because she is a “lowly zagfer”, a servant! You’re dripirs! Nothing but filthy dripirs!” I scream.

“And you’re a gutter rodan,” Fibulvo snarls. “Always skittering amongst the refuse. You and your lot are all the same. You would try to advance your station by any means possible. We know this about you. Don’t deny that you’ve tried to accuse someone of improper behavior before, Deknol Warthizec.”

“That was different,” I say, running my hands through my hair. I’m getting nowhere and it’s only driving my frustration higher. “He stole from my mother and no one believed me. But I told the truth then and I’m telling it now!”

“Please. Get out of here with your wild accusations. You must really have a death wish to speak out against a hard-working merchant,” Fibulvo shakes his head at me.

 “He murdered my sister!” I shout, making a scene. Everyone around us is listening intently to the conversation. I hope my accusations get back to Arshico. I hope he knows that I know what he did. “Her blood is on your hands if you do nothing! You’ll be just as guilty! The gods will smite you down where you stand for letting a murderer go unpunished!” 

 “That’s enough!” Grendral bellows. “Time to dump the pathetic rodan back into the gutter.” He and Fibulvo advance on me, grabbing me by the arms and hauling me backwards through the station and out onto the street.

“And stay out!” Fibulvo yells as they toss me onto the pavement.

 “Don’t you dare come back here with your wild accusations unless you have actual evidence!” Grendral shouts.

 “We’ll report you to the Aldrirs if you continue to ruffle feathers over this,” Fibulvo adds.

I sneer at them, spitting in their direction before leaving, my thoughts racing and my heart aching beyond belief. Narnoni deserves better than this. She deserves justice dammit!

 Screw the miou. Screw the system. Things have always been stacked against us.

 We were born and raised here in Vhoig. Though our parents were poor, they gave us a happy childhood. Papa suddenly took ill when I was only fourteen and Narnoni was nine. Mam died two years later.

 We know she died because Papa was gone. He was the love of her life.

 I did the best I could to support the two of us but when Narnoni turned thirteen, she insisted on getting a job herself.

It was painful to be away from her after years of it just being the two of us. We did the best we could to get jobs that allowed us to remain near each other, or to see each other as often as possible.

I protected Narnoni as best I could, even still. So when she came to me and told me that Arshico was making advances on her, I tried to tell her to just keep her head down and ignore it.

Even when she told me he was getting increasingly cruel and violent towards her every time she rebutted him, I thought that it was best for her to simply let it go.

            A sob breaks free from my throat. How was I to know that Arshico would murder her over this? I didn’t think he was capable.

 I also truly thought that if we tried to stand against him, one or both of us could lose our jobs. These were the best jobs we’d had and I was afraid that we would never get positions this good again.

Additionally, we don’t have many rights as zagfer. If we took the risk of speaking out, or going up against him, we not only risked our jobs but we risked other penalties. Anything from stiff fines to jail time, or worse.

Everything I said to Narnoni was in her best interest, or so I thought at the time.

Deep down I now know that I was being selfish. I’d worked hard to get the head chef job for the Aldrir family and I didn’t want anything to jeopardize it. But now I realize that no job was worth trading for my sister’s life.

Pacing the pavement, I feel rage bubble up. My rage blackens my heart as I realize that no one is going to help me.

Hatred consumes me.

Hatred for myself, for not protecting Narnoni better.

Hatred for the system we live under that meant that she could be harassed and killed for not giving into her employer’s advances.

Hatred for Arshico Soshri, the man responsible for her death.

As I make my way through the streets of the city, my thoughts turn to what to do next. Without the support or help of the guards, I’m lost.

 I can’t do anything on my own. If I were to act on my own, I still risk being imprisoned with no further shot at vengeance for her.

On the other hand, I can’t simply sit by and do nothing. Narnoni was my sister, the only family I had left. And I was indirectly responsible for her death through my inaction.

In order to get justice, I have to rely only on myself. If I take matters into my own hands, perhaps I can make sure that Narnoni’s killer doesn’t walk free. That’s the thing—I have to do this on my own.

No matter what, I’m not about to let the slimy, repugnant monster get away with what he did to my precious baby sister. There were only five years between us but sometimes those five years felt like a lifetime.  

I felt more like her father sometimes than her older brother, especially after our mother died. I failed as a father-figure and a brother by putting her in danger and not protecting her.

But I won’t fail her again. I will do whatever it takes to avenge her at any cost and make Arshico suffer.

I find myself standing on the bridge over the river, staring into the inky waters below. Arshico deserves to suffer as much as he made my sister suffer. He needs to be tortured until he’s a shell of himself, then methodically stripped of his flesh until he looks like the monster that he is.

Then he should be paraded around children, so that their screams may haunt him through the rest of his days. May the pain torment him into madness.

I long to see his face when he realizes that he’s at the end of the line, that he’s cornered like a rodan in a trap. I want to be the one to bring him down so he knows that he has gotten away with nothing.

He’s purely evil and deserves a fitting end. I’m not sure how I’m going to do it. All I know is that if I want justice, if I want vengeance, I have to do it myself.

Filled with a newfound resolve, I continue wandering the streets. I need a plan. I need to find a way to bring him down. I want to ruin his life in every way, so that by the end, he’s begging for the sweet release of death.

Which will be slow and painful.

No more than he deserves. He has a reputation, even amongst the zagfer. Everyone knows to watch out for Arshico. Unfortunately, he’s not only sleazy and pernicious, he’s intelligent too. He’s smart enough to have found a way to get away with murdering Narnoni without a trace of evidence.

 I just have to be patient and methodical. And I might need outside help. I don’t think I can do this alone. Something inside of me has snapped. I no longer care about myself, about whether or not I live or die.

The only thing that matters anymore is taking my revenge on the man responsible for killing my sister. Whatever I have to do, however low I have to sink, no price is too great to pay if it means ending him.