It was a lesson Darling would never forget.
He glared at the imperial guards and made note of the faces of the ones who’d dragged him home under his uncle’s orders. The ones who’d taken pleasure in assaulting and mocking him over the years when he’d been under their “care” and “protection.”
They were going to pay later.
For now…
“Notify the other aristos, there’s a new Caronese governor. And if any of you think you can overpower me later, think again. I was trained by Nemesis himself and I learned well. You come for me, you will die. All of you. There’s no one alive who can stop me.”
He gestured toward Arturo’s body. “And I promise you, I won’t be nearly as merciful. If you think Arturo ruled you with an iron fist, you ain’t seen nothing yet, bitches. Before I’m done, you will fear me as you’ve never feared anyone.”
Wanting one of them to try something, he pushed his way through them and made his way into the master suite of the palace.
It reeked of Arturo’s stench.
Even though it was almost midnight, he pressed the link for the housekeeping staff. “I want the sheets and covers in here dragged out and burned, and new ones brought in.” Tomorrow he’d have the staff throw out everything that had belonged to Arturo.
In the meantime…
He had more people to visit and kill.
7
“Darling has gone bat-shit crazy.”
Maris gave Caillen a “duh” stare through the vid screen. He was in his bedroom at the Caronese Winter Palace while Caillen sat in Nykyrian’s office at the Sentella’s headquarters with Nero and the rest of the Sentella High Command—Nykyrian, Syn, Jayne, and Hauk. And all of them were worried about Darling and what he’d become over the last few weeks.
Every day, Darling slipped farther down the insanity chain. At the rate he was going, if they didn’t stop him soon, he would be lost to them forever.
“You think I don’t know that, Cai?” Maris asked. “I live with him. He jumps at any sudden sound. Pulls a blaster on you if you so much as sneeze unexpectedly. And if that’s not bad enough, he’s walking around wired with enough explosives to take out half the capital city.”
Maris’s stomach tightened as he saw an image of Darling’s current sorry state in his mind. “Swear to the gods. I think he even bathes with it on… although, to be honest, I don’t think he’s had a bath in weeks. He looks like utter hell. Smells even worse. He’s planted dirty bombs all over the place, but he won’t tell anyone where they are. He has all of us held hostage by fear. If he dies and can’t reset the timers every few hours at random intervals that he alone knows the schedule to, they’ll go off, and we all go bye-bye in a nasty way. No one knows how he has them wired or timed or anything. He has lost his mind. Completely. Totally. Fully. I can’t even talk to him anymore. He just stares at me with these beady, creepy eyes through that garish mask that gives me the jumping heebies.”
Caillen arched his brow. “Damn, Mari, that’s some rapid-fire dissertation there, buddy. You practice that much or did it naturally roll off your tongue like that?”
“You’re not funny.” Maris glowered at him. “What are we going to do?” he asked Nykyrian. “He’s quickly ascending to the top of every hit list known and probably those unknown, too. At this point, everyone is gunning for him.” Literally. “And that’s just making him even more paranoid and insane. You should see the grisly monument he’s building in front of the palace of the idiots who’ve tried to kill him—he has Arturo’s decaying head mounted on a spike out there, along with those of the guards who beat him in the past. It’s like he’s some ancient barbarian warlord showing off his power and daring someone to come after him so he can add them to the pile. It’s as if he wants to die, and he plans to take as many of us with him as he can.”
Their eyes mirrored the same horror Maris felt.
Caillen bit his lip in frustration. “I don’t know how to help him. I don’t. You’re the only one of us he’ll let in the same room with him. He won’t take any of our calls. We can’t get the time of day out of him.”
That was true. Every time Caillen, Syn, Nero, Hauk, Nykyrian, Jayne, or Darling’s family tried to see him, he emphatically refused.
Darling had only spent ten minutes with Lise—long enough to assure himself that she really was all right, then the instant he saw the leftover limp she had from her injury, he was done. She hadn’t been allowed near him since.