The Warrior King (Inferno Rising) by Owen, Abigail (reading a book txt) 📕

stretch his lips uncomfortably, Pytheios nodded. “Of course. A miraculous find, isn’t she?”

“Is she?” Volos asked, pale eyes narrowed with a blatant display of suspicion. “A find, I mean?”

Pytheios gazed back through his one still-good eye, the other giving him only a milky image behind cataracts. “You question me?”

To give him credit for still possessing some brains, Volos paled slightly, but he didn’t back down. Rare for the white king, the puppet Pytheios had been sure to put on the throne in place of Zilant Amon after he’d killed him. Volos had been so grateful that not once in five centuries had he questioned Pytheios like this.

Behind Volos, Jakkobah raised his eyebrows in what appeared to be mild surprise, but that was quite a statement from the man people nicknamed the Stoat—thanks to both his weasel-like appearance and other attributes, including being known for his lack of emotional responses.

Pytheios couldn’t have this. He already had three traitor kings to deal with. Until he solidified his position of power by draining those phoenixes dry, he couldn’t have the two remaining allied kings turning on him like rabid dogs.

How fortuitous that he’d already planned for this eventuality.

“Is the woman claiming to be a phoenix my niece?” Volos questioned in a voice with a slight tremble.

“Yes.”

Volos took a step back, shock twisting his expression.

“You expected me to lie to you?” Pytheios queried in a deceptively mild voice.

Volos shook his head, gaze skating around the room as if searching for a new reality to find purchase on.

You won’t find it. Pytheios settled inwardly. Ready to get on with what happened next. I am the solid foundation. Fix your gaze on me.

The white king swallowed. “If she is my niece, then her name isn’t Hanyu, and how can she be a phoenix?”

A question, rather than an accusation. Poor Volos. The man never had developed a spine. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

Pytheios waved at Jakkobah who, hands clasped behind his back, strode from the room.

“Shall we sit as we wait?” Pytheios lowered himself into the cushioned, wing-backed chair set by the fireplace. Though dragons didn’t need much extra heat, this was Everest, and March was still damn cold. His old bones ached with the chill that the low ebb of his own fire couldn’t hold at bay.

“I’ll stand, if I may.” Volos faced the exit Jakkobah had departed through.

Pytheios waved a careless hand. Standing or sitting wouldn’t change who walked through that door, or who held the power in this situation.

Ten minutes later—Volos visibly tenser with each passing second, his overwide shoulders practically twitching from the strain—Jakkobah entered with two women, not one.

Rhiamon, paler than she used to be, her white curls wilder, and her eyes more darkly shadowed, as though the magic lurked under the surface, no longer under her full control. Before, when she used her powers, her eyes would turn solid black with silver pupils and the black would appear to leech into the skin surrounding, like poison in her veins. Now it constantly marred her pale skin. Or perhaps death had filled her with such power, she could no longer disguise it behind human eyes.

Volos’s eyes widened, and Pytheios swore he picked up the pungent scent of fear in the air as Rhiamon entered, but immediately the white king dismissed her as the second woman appeared.

“Gods above.” The words jerked from Volos. “It is you. Though you look…different.”

Doubt again. The time had definitely come to find a new king for the White Clan.

“Uncle.” Tisiphone crossed the room to kiss her relative on the cheek.

For his part, Volos searched her face with a disbelieving gaze, like maybe if he stared long enough the woman would change to someone else. No doubt the man had been hoping for someone else. “What have you done to yourself? I hardly recognize you.”

Tall and slender, like most white dragon shifters, Tisiphone glided across to where Pytheios sat. She didn’t dare touch him, but she slid her arm across the back of his chair in a clear show of solidarity. “I have found a way to better myself, Uncle.”

“Better yourself?” Volos was sounding shell-shocked now. He dropped into the wood chair he’d occupied earlier.

Tisiphone gave her uncle a superior smirk. “As a female-born dragon shifter, you know my only prospect was to mate for political convenience and resign myself to never providing my mate with children. Possibly have to watch him use a human surrogate to bear us sons. Other options were never a consideration. Until now.” She curled her lip in a sneer. “Now you want to take away the only choice that makes sense?”

“Choice?” Volos’s deep-set eyes practically disappeared as his thick brows lowered. “When it’s all lies?”

“It’s not lies. Pytheios’s witch has made me into something new. Something…better.” Satisfaction coated each word.

“Better?” Volos’s repetition was growing old quickly.

“A phoenix,” Tisiphone breathed, and glanced down at her arms as though the glowing sign might appear at her will.

Volos spared a glance at Rhiamon, appeared to contain a shudder, then moved his gaze to Pytheios. “A phoenix cannot be made.”

Tisiphone slid a questioning gaze to Pytheios, who waved for her to go ahead with her sharing. “We won’t need the real phoenixes after Pytheios has drained them of their powers.”

As they had discussed, Tisiphone did not mention his plan to mate her, making her a permanent fixture as “the phoenix” at his side as far as the rest of the dragon shifter world was concerned. With no other phoenix to contradict his claim, because he’d kill them, and holding all that power himself, no one would be the wiser.

The plan was perfect.

But Rhiamon couldn’t know that piece on the board, or she might not act out her part for him if she believed he’d mate another. Not after the promises he’d made. Promises he’d released himself from the instant she’d died.

“What do you get for this deception?” Volos asked, voice thready.

“The High King has promised his witch can make me fertile when we succeed in shutting