By the time I get to the throne room, it is filled with guards. Some faces familiar and some not. Amelia is standing next to my brothers, a slight furrow in her eyebrows telling me that my brothers have not informed her about what is going on. Nonetheless, she will support us in whatever we are doing.

  The only other people I see in this throne room that are not guards or Magnificents, are Xavier and his friends. I walk past them as I head over to my brothers on the other side of the room. I make eye contact with June, who shoots me a deadly glare. I then glance over at Xavier who has a straight face but his pupils grow and light glistens in his eyes. I almost get lost in them until I remember where I am and who is watching me.

  I continue to walk forward and up the three steps, turn around, and then make eye contact with the guards standing before me.

  “May I?” I ask Amelia. Even though I know I don’t need permission, I still like to be polite to what seems like to be one of my only allies now. She nods in agreement and then I clear my throat, getting it ready to announce what has happened.

  “Thank you all for joining us here with cooperation. As you know, we usually don’t hold meetings like this. In fact, we don’t hold meetings with guards at all, but something tragic has happened today. That is why you are all here.

  As some of you know, these men,” I gesture to my side towards my brothers, “and I have been conducting research to find a cure for people who have turned to Darkness. We have captured four prisoners and unfortunately two have passed away today.”

  I can see the disinterest in many of the guards’ faces. They have no idea what I am about to accuse them of.

  “One of the prisoners that have died today was not an accident. One of these prisoners have been murdered. His throat slit so deep that his head was about to come off.” I see some of the guards cringe and Xavier and his friends all look green with disgust. “We know the murder is somewhere in this castle and we believe it to be one of you.” I point to the crowd of guards.

  Now I have their attention, as their heads snap up and their eyes widen with shock.

  “We would like for whoever killed the man to step forward and give your reasoning.”

  I scan the crowd and all the guards mumble among themselves. Trying prove their innocence to one another and some even accusing each other of doing it. The mumble is no longer that as they all try to talk over one another. A headache starts to form viscously on my temple.

  I rub circles on my temple before yelling, “Be quiet!”

  They all stop mid sentence and look at me. Shock still in their expressions.

  “Please, we need to know who did it and what their reasoning was.”

  All the guards do is just stare at me. Looking like doe when they hear their predator creeping slowly on them. No one responds though.

  “Whoever did it, come forward now and we can discuss your punishment in a fair matter.”

  Still no response. The pain in my temple grow viscously and I’ve had quite enough of the events that are happening today. The only thing that is keeping me from blowing up is when I look over to Xavier. The man I kissed a little bit ago. The man who confessed his love to me and the man who has melted my heart into liquid. I can see the shimmer in his eyes, and it gives me serenity.

  The serenity only last for a second because when I bring my attention back to the group of guard in front of me my blood boils. So much so, that I can no longer keep my snare hidden from the frustration I am feeling.

  I want whoever killed the man, my hope for the future, to come forward and confess what they did. And I want them to come forward now.

  My hands start to heat up and on my thigh I can feel the furnace they are creating. Red fills my vision as I grow impatient with the people standing cowardly in front of me.

  “You are all a bunch of cowards, you know that? You destroyed hope for a better future in our country. You are the sole reason that many more people will die,” I yell.

  Theon walks up behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder. He whispers, “Calm down, sister. We don’t even know if it was one of the guards who killed him the first place. Maybe we should-”

  I jerk my shoulder out of his grip and step forward. My hands burning hotter and hotter and eventually I feel a spark about to slip out of my hands.

  “I need an answer. Now!” A tiny spark flashes out of my hands. Tiny enough where no one could see it but I know when my powers are being used.

  Theon puts his hand back on my shoulder and subtly uses his powers to cool me off. He knows that when I get angry enough that my powers start to show without any control, and the last thing we need right now is our identity showing.

  The guards snap at the echo of my voice booming through the room and all stand straight up.

  One of the guards immediately stands out of the crowd, in a daze, admitting, “I did it Your Highness. I slit the man’s throat and left him chained up to die.”

  The guard doesn’t seem much older than Xavier and his friends. His face still has tight skin like a baby and his brown hair doesn’t have a gray strand in sight. He is good looking but now knowing that he killed the man with the gray beard, he is the ugliest man I have ever seen.

  “Why did you do it?” Strider demands.

  Theon’s hand is still on my shoulder and I can tell Strider knows that I need a minute to cool down, literally. I get embarrassed when my emotions get to the best of me, but sometimes I can’t control how my body is going to react to something. I hope that it never gets to the point of us showing our identities. We might have to kill everyone in the throne room in order to prevent the word getting out of the kingdom.

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  “I was doing what I was told to do and trained to do. Have followers of Darkness turn is nothing new and I was only doing my job,” the guard responds, tremors shaking in his voice. That’s the only thing giving away that he is scared. His body is straight and his chest is out as if he is not afraid of what might happen to him.

  He doesn’t know that I want to kill him. I want to kill this man for ruining he experiment. For setting us back steps that could have been prevented. Now we are going to have to find a whole new temple of Darkness and capture more people. We have to wait for them to turn and then experiment with them. That could last a whole month and so many people will die because of him.

  I want to kill him because he is killing so many people by killing just one man. He is the reason so many families are going to lose loved ones and that everyone will cower in fear. He is the reason for all of this misery and I want to kill him because of it.

  “And what do you think a reasonable punishment is? Execution? A man’s life for a man’s life,” I say.

  I can hear Amelia gasps behind me and my brothers freeze. I glance over at Xavier and his friends and June’s face has such an extreme scowl on her face that you would think it is stuck like that. She steps forward from the line her friends made, ignoring the protest from her boyfriend and walks in front of the crowd.

  “If you are going to kill this man for killing someone who has turned, wouldn’t it be fair that you get killed as well? You killed my father because he turned. You didn’t have the heart to chain him up and try to save him. You killed him with your own two hands and it would only be fair if you got the same punishment as this guard,” she states.

  A smirk is on my face and I slowly walk down the steps and get into her face. “Let me make this clear. Your father attacked me out of nowhere. What happened to your father was self defense. The difference between that and what the guard is admitting is, the man was chained up. He wasn’t hurting anyone and we made sure of that. There was no reason for the man to have gotten killed. Now, get back to your friends or I will throw you in a cell myself,” I say in her face.

  June scowls at me even harder, but listens to what I said and walks back to join her friends. I can slight hear Pierce scold her from challenging me, a Magnificent.

  “Please, Your Highness, I beg you to have mercy on me,” the guard pleads.

  “Don’t you think you are being a little extreme, sister?” Strider whispers into my ear.

  I clear my throat. “Do you have a better idea of a punishment?”

  The guard trembles in place but doesn’t answer.

  “Perhaps we should let your fellow guards make the decision for you. I will leave it up for discussion,” I say, lifting my arms out into the crowd in front of me, encouraging them to talk among one another.

  I can hear slight mumbles of conversations before I see a hand fly up into the air. I make eye contact with the guard, smile, and nod my head for him to say what his idea is. “Maybe we can just terminate his ability to work here anymore. No need to kill him, Your Highness.”

  “How is that going to stop him from entering the castle? He could easily sneak in at night, working with any of you, and hinder our experiment even more,” I reply.

  Everyone just stares at me, hopelessness in their eyes. Desperation is on the guilty guard’s face, pleading me to spare his life.

  “Well, if you truly don’t want to die, suggest you choose a better option soon before your time runs out,” I say calmly.

  The guards talk among themselves once more and then another hand reaches up into the air. I once again nod my head giving the silent permission for the person to speak.

  “Is there any way you could spare his life, Your Highness? He is a good friend to some of us and we would hate to lose him,” the guard says. He seems to be around the same age as the guilty guard and what I see in his eyes shock me.

  True love.

  Not the kind of love where there is lust or romance but the kind of love that tells me that he wants his friends to live a long happy life. The kind of love that shows that he would do anything to keep him save. The kind of love where he would sacrifice himself if need be in order to save his life.

  “I suppose there is,” I say. The guilty guard’s face snaps up in attention and his eyes pin me down, begging to tell him what I am thinking. “The other option for you is to be exiled. You are no longer permitted to step onto Chopver’s territory. You have two days to pack all your belongings and begin your journey out of the country, and if any of us see you on this land again, there will be orders to kill you on the spot. Does that sound like a deal?”

  The guards hopeful expression turns sour before falling like an animal falling off a cliff. Tears start to well in his eyes and his bottom lip begins to quiver. “Yes, Your Highness. I will begin packing at this moment.”

  “Good, you are dismissed. All of you are dismissed.”

  The exiled guard turns around slowly and begins walking out of the room. He parts the sea of guards in front of him as he heads towards the door. The guards who are his friends show like candle light in the middle of the night. Their faces show just as much pain as the exiled guard walking past them.

  Now that I am cooled down, I have realized what I have just done. I just threatened a man for doing what he has been trained and ordered to do. We never told him specifically that we were holding the old man with he gray beard hostage for experiments. He saw a person turned to Darkness and was told to disable the person from being able to do any damage to anyone.

  But by saving people, he has doomed so many more in the future. And I can not let that mistake happen again.