Page 1 of Serpent and Shadow

1

Resurrection

The room fell silent when the Dark King entered the dusky hall.

The Black Tower’s banquet area, or “throne room,” as it was sometimes informally known, rose some sixty feet at its highest arch, and nearly eighty in length.

Malefic’s grandfather had told him once, while he was still young, that Raughloch Bones, original builder and designer of The Black Tower, envisioned the hall as a temple modeled after European-style churches that sprang up during the height of the Holy Roman Empire on Earth. Raughloch liked the grandiose style, and the seeming permanence of such structures.

Therefore, he not only replicated it, he kept it at scale, and made it one of the three massive wings of the house.

The same vision manifested in Eustacia Morwormer Hall at Malcroix Bones Academy, where Raughloch truly felt he perfected the vision. With its high, arched ceilings, enormous statues, and magicked ceiling, it put the previous structure on that site to shame.

It also served as a quiet reminder of that original hall’s intended use.

Malefic supposed he could ask Raughloch himself about some of those design choices, now that he had been resurrected inside the body of a twenty-year-old mage. Many questions might be revisited with his newly resurrected ancestors, once the more pressing issues of their family’s future and legacy had been settled.

For now, he had other things on his mind.

Recent events would have brought the vultures watching and hovering, looking for any perceived weakness on either side of the opening rift. It had been that understanding, even more than legitimate concerns about assassination attempts against him inside the Gaol, that caused Malefic to push Sergius and the others to free him from the Pyramid sooner rather than later.

Malefic now had the advantage once again.

He had just demonstrated that to all of Magique with his swelled ranks of magical fighters, and what they already managed to destabilize in such a short time. Sergius and the others not only freed him from the Gaol, they annihilated it. He had broken into Malcroix Bones Academy and reclaimed his heir. In the process, he’d stolen the heirs of numerous other Magical families who dared to spurn him.

Those facts would no doubt cause fear to reverberate through the halls of the Ethnarch’s Temple of Apollo outside Paris, and the King’s Palace of Lions.

The loss of his arm still rankled.

Had he been allowed to deteriorate inside the gaol much longer, he might have lost everything, even apart what his disloyal bitch of a wife had done.

Ironically, that was even more true now, given the temperament and ambitions of his own ancestors, Raughloch among them, and perhaps first in line to assume leadership in Malefic’s absence. His great-grandfather, Valefor Bones, would be a close second.

Malefic would need to monitor both of them for loyalty, even now.

All eyes watched him as he strode through the arched doorway.

His presence effortlessly parted the crowd, but he gauged their auras for sincerity, submission, deception, weakness, judgment, reverence, cunning, and any breath of hidden resentment. He kept his physical frame utterly straight, despite the disgusting deformity he’d been cursed with. His arm would still not hang naturally, even now, after he’d manipulated and contorted it under layers of spells.

Being home, he could perhaps fix that, as well.

For now, he ignited his magic, pushing his aura larger to compensate.

He would compel their gaze, despite what that mongrel cunt had done to him.

His son’s new wife would pay the price for her abomination later.

The last thing he could show now was weakness, no matter what the Pyramid had done to him in those weeks, no matter what the poisonous hybrid had done to him before he arrived. The humiliations would all be repaid, and with interest.

His closest followers knew better than to try and capitalize on what had been done to him. He would ensure the newcomers quickly learned that lesson, as well, no matter who they were to him, in blood or otherwise.

A whisper of satisfaction gleamed in the eyes of one of his more loyal scions as Yoric Orrin noted the blood spatter on Malefic’s elegant black jacket and waistcoat. Those eyes traced the evidence of where Malefic had just come with luxurious glee, all the way up to Malefic’s silk shirt above his ornate vest.

Malefic knew it might be slightly unseemly to enter the hall unwashed, but for strategic reasons, he wanted them to see. He walked to the brightest part of the firelight for that purpose, for those who hadn’t been looking for it the way Orrin undoubtedly had.

Thicker streaks of scarlet decorated his pale, dangling fingers, particularly those belonging to the hand that still had full function. Now he lifted that hand higher, to draw more eyes. He tugged the pristine, white handkerchief from his breast pocket with a slight flourish, right as he reached the apex of the room.

He shook the handkerchief out, then clumsily held it still with his bad hand so that he could wipe the blood off his fingers.