Julius raised his glass upward. Hadrian picked up his, as did Venus. Grabbing a bottle of some kind of sparkling drink from the sideboard, Alex moved toward the table, eager to get closer to the king, and the glass in his hand. Aamir reached out to grasp the edge of Alex’s shirt, evidently trying to stop him, but Alex weaved out of the way. This was a prime opportunity, and he wasn’t about to miss it.

“To new beginnings, and a replenishment of our great nation’s essence!” Julius toasted.

The others around the low table chorused the sentiment, and Hadrian even managed to look almost pleased with the words tumbling out of his mouth. Alex had to give the man props; he was putting on a very good show. It didn’t look like the king suspected anything was amiss, though Alex’s eyes were drawn to Venus, who seemed remarkably more curious about the whole thing than her husband. From time to time, she would glance around, clearly absorbing her surroundings. Where Julius was outwardly vocal about his intellect, and undoubtedly had the evidence to back it up, Venus was quiet and stealthy with hers, though Alex could sense there was a deep pool of it within her, ever-ticking behind her serene silver eyes. More potent even, perhaps, than her husband’s.

It was Venus who looked at Alex oddly as he stood close to Julius. There was a warning in her eyes, but Alex thought he might be imagining things. She couldn’t possibly know what it was he planned to do, could she? He’d never even seen her before; she couldn’t know what he was. Still, it threw him for a second. It just so happened that, at that exact moment, he was pouring more drink into Julius’s glass while feeding imperceptible slivers of his anti-magic through the sparkling liquid, into the chalice that the king held in his hand. In his distraction, Alex vibrated the particles all wrong. Instead of shattering the glass, he only succeeded in shaking the molecules of the drink, causing it to spurt the fizzy fluid up through the narrow chalice, straight into Julius’s face.

The king was less than impressed, whirling around and grasping Alex tightly by the throat. It was all Alex could do to restrain the anti-magic inside himself, stopping it from crackling through his skin in retaliation. Julius oozed magical energy; it radiated from him in tangible waves.

“You little wretch! You did that on purpose!” Julius roared, spittle flying in Alex’s face. “Did you shake the bottle? Did you think it would be funny?”

“No… Your… Royal… Highness… I… just…” Alex croaked, unable to finish his sentence as Julius’s hand gripped tighter. It was a move Alex had seen the king use before, on the laughing prisoner back at Kingstone Keep. Suddenly, Alex was very aware of his mortality.

“I am your king, you cretin! I talk to you, I welcome you, I engage in polite, intelligent conversation with you, and you choose to repay me with this?” Julius growled. “Let me guess, it was your little friend that put you up to this? Or was it you, Hadrian, you stammering fool? Are you precisely like your father after all?”

Hadrian raised his hands in surrender. “Uncle, this w-was an unfortunate accident—I can assure you, it is no p-practical joke on my part,” he insisted, his voice tight.

“Then it must have been you!” Julius snarled, glowering in the direction of Aamir.

Aamir shook his head rapidly. “An innocent error, Your Royal Highness—I believe the bottle got too close to the window, and the sun increased the volume of bubbles within the bottle, due to increased speed of fermentation,” he replied hurriedly, the words pouring out of his mouth with such conviction that even Alex nearly believed him, though he was starting to feel like his head might explode.

It was hard to breathe, his cheeks puffing out, the veins at the sides of his head throbbing, and his eyes beginning to bulge as Julius continued to tighten the hand around Alex’s throat. With a surge of panic, Alex realized he was close to losing control over his powers. It was like drowning, feeling the pressure of blood pushing through the body, urging the sinking person to take a breath. Alex’s anti-magic was his survival instinct, and it was taking every fiber of his being not to use it.

Julius raised his hand, bringing it close to Alex’s face with such force that Alex thought he was about to be punched. The king stopped just short of impact, showing exceptional control over his own muscles. It was this kind of strange thought that kept Alex’s mind away from the sinking feeling that he was having, knowing he was about to be disintegrated from the inside out, until there was nothing left but a floppy husk.

Alex could feel the pressure building beneath Julius’s hand, the space between the king’s palm and Alex’s face growing unbearably hot. It was because of this man that the Spellbreakers and the mages had split apart, ripping up a potential treaty of peace in favor of violence and segregation. It was this man’s hatred for Alex’s kind that had signaled extinction for the Spellbreakers and brought about the Great Evil. In mere seconds, Julius would realize what he was dealing with, would know that the key to his own survival was standing right before him.

“Nobody makes a mockery of me,” Julius hissed.

With barely a sound, Venus stood and rested her hand upon her husband’s arm. She leaned toward him, her mouth close to his ear, and whispered something soft and soothing. There was a musicality to her voice that had Alex transfixed, even though he could only catch snippets of what she was saying. It sounded like a familiar poem—a sonnet, perhaps.

“Love is not love… that looks on tempests and is never shaken,” she whispered.

It was Shakespeare, and a poem Alex knew well—it was one his mother liked.

“Release him, my love,” she requested, her hands covering his. As if drawn by the desire of her voice, Julius’s hands lifted upward, away from Alex’s face. They settled on Venus’s face instead, his forehead leaning in toward hers, until they were nose-to-nose. A crackle of energy flitted between them, like static electricity. The way the king’s hands rested at the base of her neck still made Alex feel as if Julius could either embrace his wife, or strangle the life from her.

For a long while the couple stood that way, with their eyes closed, breathing rhythmically with one another. It was like a bizarre meditation, a still moment in the middle of a storm. Nobody dared to speak.

With a loud exhale, Julius let go of his wife’s face and straightened.

“Apologies for the outburst. I’m not one for practical jokes,” he said casually, sitting back down and taking up the glass once more. It was mostly empty after the upward surge, and Julius held it up to Alex, who was still recovering from the shock. “Wouldn’t mind a top off now, if it’s not too much trouble?”

Alex’s hands shook as he attempted to pick up the bottle. Thankfully, before another catastrophic spillage could occur, Aamir swooped in, taking the bottle from Alex’s trembling hands and pouring out another full glass for the king.

“Didn’t scare you too badly, did I?” Julius scoffed.

Alex shook his head. “No… Your Royal Highness… not at all,” he croaked, his throat raw.

“Pity, I love a good scare,” the king remarked. If almost killing someone was the way he reacted to a perceived joke, Alex could only imagine how Julius would react to a real threat.

Venus placed her hand on her husband’s. “Now, now, darling, they’ll be trembling too hard to hold anything if you continue to terrify them with your terse manner,” she chastised. Something hypnotic seemed to have happened to Julius, who smiled lovingly at his wife, no hint of malevolence behind his eyes.

“Whatever you say, my precious sweet pea,” he cooed, like a teenager in the first throes of love. It wasn’t to last, as he turned to Hadrian, a steely look overwhelming the doe-eyed expression. “You really ought to have learned the proper way to receive guests by now, Hadrian. Honestly, this isn’t good enough—I expect you to keep this place spotless, and you turn it into a crass, uncouth dump. It wasn’t by chance that you received the finest haven, filled to the brim with all my precious things. I took a chance on you, and you have let me down.” He sighed dramatically.

“Come, darling, you were praising him a moment ago,” Venus said softly, though Alex could tell her comments weren’t appreciated by her husband. She dipped her head, knowing she had gone a fraction too far in her boldness. Alex guessed it was a delicate tightrope she walked, between saying the wrong thing and saying just enough. It was neither right nor fair, but Alex didn’t dare speak up.

Julius stared at Hadrian. “No, I really am most disappointed by your upkeep of this place. I won’t stay a moment longer,” he said, standing sharply.

“Now, darling, we mustn’t be rude,” Venus said, her tone soothing, but it seemed her charms had worn off for the day.

“We are leaving,” he snapped.

She tilted her head toward him, almost like a bow of reverence, as she too stood to go. Alex began to panic, wondering how he was supposed to get his hands on the required amount of royal blood if they left now, and yet he could think of no way to stop them.

While Alex was wracking his brain, Julius was gathering his own servants together by yelling loudly down the hallway. The two married royals seemed to have arrived with an entourage, which Alex supposed was to be expected, given their status.

“Are we ready?” Julius demanded, turning toward his wife.

She smiled pleasantly. “Yes, darling.”

“Well, what began with such promise has turned into something of a wasted visit,” Julius remarked, pulling up the edges of his high collar. “Nephew, I require… nay, I demand more essence from this place. These havens cannot expect to go on giving the bare minimum, and though you have displeased me, I dare say you have been the one to inspire me. More essence must be collected. You must increase your yield, and I would see you add to the number of children taken in the annual lottery. Let’s give first-born and last-born a whirl, shall we?”

Hadrian nodded reluctantly. “Whatever you wish, Uncle.”

“Well, don’t sound too pleased about it.” Julius scoffed. “At least I offered you a small sliver of the credit. I am a generous man, let’s not forget.”

“Of course not, Uncle.” Hadrian forced a tight smile onto his face. “You do me a g-great honor, and I will not let you down.”

Julius flicked away an invisible dust mote. “Very well, see that you don’t. I shall return in a few months’ time to check on your progress; I expect to see an entirely new intake among your ranks. The essence here is so puny anyway that you shall have to bolster your numbers, more so than any other havens, though they too will be receiving word from me about what I want from them.”

“I shall endeavor to m-make things more pleasant for your next visit, Uncle,” said Hadrian, teetering on the edge of what Julius found acceptable, from the flash of warning in the king’s eyes. Seeing the expression, Hadrian visibly retreated into himself, clamming up like a startled tortoise.

“See that you do.” Julius turned around and left the room with a dramatic swish of his long, cream-colored coat.

Venus followed, though she cast a strange look back at Alex, Aamir, and Hadrian. There was an apology in her expression, and she mouthed a word at them which looked a lot like “sorry.”

“Venus!” Julius barked, from the hallway beyond.

With a captivating smile, she swished the rich fabric of her kimono, and was gone in a haze of sweet-smelling perfume, hurrying after her cantankerous husband. Alex stood, frozen to the spot, as he watched his last hope disappear.

Well, not quite his last hope. A second later, Alex dived for the glass, hoping for some trace of something that he might use. Although he hadn’t managed to vibrate the glass properly, he had run some energy through it, though whether it had been enough to break anything, he didn’t yet know.

To his delight, he saw a hint of red at the very bottom. There was a chip in the base, and it looked as though Julius had caught his finger on the jagged indent. Gleefully, Alex raised the glass to the light, to get a better look, but his optimism soon died. There couldn’t have been more than two drops present on the jagged edge, and extracting what was there was a near impossibility; most of it had already dried up.

“Anything?” Aamir asked, standing over Alex’s shoulder.

He shook his head. “Not nearly enough.”

“You didn’t get what you n-needed?” said Hadrian mournfully, his whole body trembling.

“I got distracted. I missed our chance,” Alex confessed.

“But you must hurry on with your p-plan, Alex, before we are all left in r-ruin,” Hadrian warned. “You heard what Julius said—he wants more. If you don’t succeed, I will have to get him m-more. It’s in his head now. He won’t let it g-go.”

Alex frowned, wanting to tell Hadrian how unhelpful his words were, but the royal looked deflated enough as it was. “I know what’s at stake, Hadrian, but I can’t do it without the blood,” Alex said.

“There has to be someone else who can help us,” said Aamir.

A smile pulled at the corner of Alex’s lips, as it came to him. “I know just the person.”