• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Guess Z talked to you already,” he said, because there was no reason not to call a spade a spade.

Wrath put the magnifier down and leaned back behind his Louis XIV desk. “Shut the door.”

Phury closed them in together. “You want me to talk first?”

“No, you do enough of that.” The king lifted up his massive shitkickers and let them fall on the dainty desk. The pair landed like cannonballs. “You do plenty of that.”

Phury waited for the list of failures to get rolling out of courtesy, not curiosity. He was well aware of where he was at: trying to get killed out in the field; assuming the mantle of the Chosen’s Primale but not completing the ceremony; being overinvolved with Z and Bella’s life; not paying enough attention to Cormia; smoking all the time. . . .

Phury focused hard on his king and waited for a voice other than the wizard’s to run down his fuckups.

Except none of it came. Wrath said absolutely nothing.

Which seemed to suggest that the problems were so loud and obvious it was like pointing at a bomb exploding and saying, Boy, that’s really noisy—going to leave a crater in the pavement, too, huh?

“On second thought,” Wrath said, “tell me what I should do about you. Tell me what the fuck I should do.”

When Phury didn’t reply, Wrath murmured, ’’No comment? You mean you have no idea what to do, either?”

“I think we both know what the answer is.”

“I’m not so sure about that. What do you think I need to do?”

“Take me off rotation for a little while.”

“Ah.”

More silence.

“So is that where we’re at?” Phury asked. Man, he so needed a blunt.

Those shitkickers knocked together at the toes. “Dunno.”

“That mean you want me to fight?” Which would be a better outcome than he could hope for. “I’d give you my word—”

“Fuck. You.” Wrath stood up in a quick surge and came around the desk. “You told your twin you were coming back here, but dollars to shit piles you went to see Rehvenge. You promised Z you’d stop with the slayers and you didn’t. You said you’d be the Primale and you aren’t. Hell, you keep talking out your ass about how you’re going back to your room to get some sleep, but we all know what you do in there. And you honestly expect me to take your word about anything?”

“So tell me what you want me to do.”

From behind the sunglasses, the king’s pale, unfocusable eyes were searching. “I’m not sure time off and a fuckload of therapy is going to help, because I don’t think you’ll do either.”

Cold dread curled up like a wet, wounded dog in Phury’s gut. “Are you going to kick me out?”

It had happened before in the history of the Brotherhood. Not often. But it had. Murhder came to mind . . . shit, yeah, he was probably the last one to get the boot.

“Not as simple as that, is it,” Wrath said. “If you get curbed, where does that leave the Chosen? The Primale has always been a Brother, and not just because of blood-lines. Besides, Z wouldn’t take to that well, even as pissed off at you as he is now.”

Great. His safety nets were saving his twin from a head fuck and being the Chosen’s man-whore.

The king walked over to the windows. Outside, the summer trees swayed in a gathering wind.

“Here’s what I think.” Wrath popped his sunglasses up off his nose and rubbed his eyes like his head ached. “You should . . .”

“I’m sorry,” Phury said, because that was all he had to offer.

“So am I.” Wrath let the glasses fall back into place and shook his head. As he returned to his desk and sat down, his jaw was set along with his shoulders. Popping open a drawer, he took out a black dagger.

Phury’s. The one that had been left in the alley.

Z must have found the damn thing and carried it home.

The king turned the weapon over in his hand and cleared his throat. “Give me your other blade. You’re off rotation permanently. Whether or not you see a shrink or how the shit shakes out with the Chosen is not my business. And I’m out of advice, because the truth is, you’re going to do what you’re going to do. Nothing I demand or ask of you is going