The peasantry would countenance no departure from their glad fantasies of an emperor who had become one of them, though. The media’s discovery that Nick Goode was still making payments on his student loans had sealed the deal.
“…paint you in full regalia for your portrait in the gallery inside the Hall of Kings,” the wealthy tribesman currently twirling Nick around the dance floor blathered on. “That your ascendency to the throne will be temporary and brief matters not to history.” The bastard smiled, self-absorbed importance dripping from his every word. “I’ve lobbied the council to delay your abdication ceremony until the portrait is completed, so we must arrange your sitting for an appropriate artist rapidly.”
Annoyance fresh and hot, Nick made noncommittal noises.
Until his family’s remains had been identified and decently buried, Nick would abdicate nothing, a point he’d made clear to council elders. Locating the graves hadn’t been a problem. Although Nick had no memories of the place and could recall nothing of the executions before reaching the top of the Ural mountain range during his march to freedom long afterward, the burial site had been engraved into his dad’s psyche. Dad had taken Nick to see it before the tribes closed the borders to humans while Nick was still a boy. So Nick, at least, would know.
No one else did.
Headlines occasionally blared rumors of the imperial family’s ultimate fate, but those in the tribes who had known the secret had perished in the war. The only survivor of the work crew that rebel soldiers had drafted to bury their sins, Dad had maintained his stubborn silence, because revealing what he knew would have endangered Nick. Dad hadn’t trusted the tribes with his newly adopted son. Nick hadn’t trusted them, either.
Dad had spoken about the executions only once, during their lone journey into tribe territory to visit the gravesite. Nick remembered little of the night his family had died except his fear. Pain. His mother’s scream before gunfire drowned out her last breath would echo in his ears forever. Because Nick could count his scars, he knew he’d been shot seven times and jagged white lines traced where bayonets had torn into him. What he couldn’t recall, the damage done to his body testified to all he’d suffered, but he knew nothing of what transpired after the shooting had started.
Only his dad did. Paul Goode had pitched a tent with Nick near the burial site, and after his dad led him from the grave, he’d told Nick everything. What he’d seen and heard. Who had committed each inexcusable act. How the rebels had stripped all of the bodies and fondled his dead sisters’ breasts. They’d castrated his father and Toly. Nick could only be grateful he’d been young, unimportant, and lost in such a large group of victims, because the rebels had intended to behead and dismember the entire imperial party, burn the pieces, and scatter the ashes before the rising sun broke the darkness and spotlighted their shame.
The soldiers hadn’t counted on the rigors of their task, however. Even for tribesman equipped with sharp claws, ripping apart a body was hard, tedious work. By dawn, the rebels still had Nick and two of his youngest sisters left to desecrate. Behind schedule, fearful of local peasants discovering them, the rebels had created a pyre with only half the corpses, which had burned the evidence of their crimes poorly, and they’d forced a human work crew selected from a nearby labor camp to bury the bones and remaining bodies whole.
Including Nick’s.
Paul Goode had been chosen for the work crew. Having invested months in scheming a possible avenue of escape if selected for work outside his prison camp, Nick’s dad had taken advantage of post-execution chaos to slip away from his fellow prisoners, which had saved his life because rebels had lined up the other humans and killed them in a spray of bullets once their task had been completed. No one would have faulted his adopted dad for running then. Fleeing would have been smarter. Paul Goode didn’t run, though. Couldn’t.
He’d noticed the subtle rise and fall of Nika Marisek’s chest before tumbling him into the hastily dug grave, had felt the slight whisper of Nika’s breath.
As soon as the soldiers had gone and Paul had judged it safe, he’d emerged from the forest and circled around the fallen men he had worked alongside throughout his imprisonment. He’d grabbed a discarded shovel to pierce the loamy soil. Buried alive, Nika Marisek had nevertheless died that day because the horrifically injured child Paul Goode had dragged from the earth had become Paul’s son, Nick.
And Nick Goode didn’t give two shits about formal regalia and hanging his portrait in the Hall of Kings.
He had tolerated the string of parties only while he waited for the team that had retrieved his family’s remains to finish identification. The process had been complicated by the bones of the human work crew killed there, and flash flooding at the site had disturbed the grave, too. Search and recovery had taxed the tribe’s forensic anthropologists to such a degree, the ruling council had swallowed their collective pride to open the border to human scientists who had offered to help. Sorting the bones, many of which were only fragments, and assigning each to the correct victim was nevertheless slow.
“You’ll need to shift, of course.” The oblivious tribesman smiled. “No portrait would be complete without a representation of your beast.”
The tribes had been trying to force him into a shift to parade the white pelt of Nick’s wolf since he’d arrived in the territories. His answer stayed the same. “No.”
“All the emperors were painted with their beasts,” his dance partner chided him. “Don’t be shy. White wolves have been gone from the tribes many seasons. Your people long to see you.”
“My people haven’t seen a white wolf because they murdered every white wolf they could during the war.” Nick stopped, finished with this dance and this conversation. He shrugged out of the tribesman’s arms. “I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.”
Before he’d taken more than a few steps, Rolan joined him on the dance floor. “Okay?”
Grim, Nick nodded. “I need a break.”
“Let Lydia charm the high muckety-mucks for a while.” Rolan jerked his chin at her, still waltzing nearby, and grasped Nick’s arm to guide him through the throng. “She’s surprisingly skillful at it. Better than you and me.”
Though thoroughly schooled in the art of diplomacy from birth, Nick agreed. Ruthlessly sweet and engaging, Lydia was a force of nature Nick was grateful to have on his side. “She’ll cover for me.”
Rolan smirked. “By the time we return, she’ll have rallied the elders to support striking a commemorative coin in your honor.”
A bark of laughter caught Nick by surprise. “Hasn’t she already?”