Dark Throne, The

THE DARK THRONE

By

Raven Willow-Wood

(C) Copyright by
Raven
Willow-Wood
, May
2014

Cover art by Alex DeShanks,
May 2014

Smashwords
Edition

New Concepts
Publishing

Lake Park, GA
31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All
characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and
not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or
events is merely coincidence.

Dedication:

To Charlotte Irwin. Thanks for all
your help.

Prologue

He’d done it
.

Thirty
years ago, he’d
laid out his dreams in a plan. Laid them out, studied them,
calculated ways to attain his every desire.

And now, he’d done it
.

He shook his head at the thought
. His hair rasped against the pillow as he moved. All
the years of working had finally come to fruition. It seemed so
impossible and yet, it was true.

Calder wasn’t the rightful
heir to the Dark Throne and he’d always known that. He was
the bastard offspring of the last King. Royal blood coursed through
his veins, but it was blended with that of a serving maid’s. When
his half-brother had ascended to the throne, he’d felt nothing, no
jealousy or envy. However, when he’d produced that throwback, when
the fruit of King Charek’s loins had been borne with wings upon his
back, Calder knew he had to act.

The elven realms on Mearth could not be ruled by an
abomination
.

The idea of himself
reigning had whispered through his mind, and he'd liked the
image. It had become deeply rooted into his mind. He’d actually
started to envisage the coronation, the first council session as he
worked with ordinary elven to ensure their happiness.

It had seemed childish, foolish even
, but his mind had frequently wandered to, what seemed
to be, the impossible.

However, Calder was nothing if not fair
. He’d given his half-brother two years to
produce another child, a normal heir, the rightful heir to the Dark
Throne.

When the King had failed to do this,
Calder had taken action and decided upon a plan.

And now, success was within his
grasp.

It seemed incredible, implausible
. . . but, in truth, he was a hair’s breadth from
reaching all of his goals.

Soon the King would be dead, as would Fade,
th
e Dark Prince and
heir.

And he, Calder, would sit upon the
Dark Throne and take a wife. He’d beget an heir, a
normal heir, and this unfortunate period of history would soon be
forgotten by the elven people.

Calder would be King
.

It was more than just a dream now
, certain situations and plans were in motion and they
could not be stopped.

Plus, Keira was already dead
.

S
he had been the
King’s last hope. No other Royal house would betroth a daughter to
him, not when he soon beheaded them for failing to produce an
heir.

The abduction had been his idea
, and it had worked perfectly. He’d owed the hoonans a
favor. Now the elven realm was on the precipice of watching a real
Roban ruling it.

King Charek and Fade
might be Royals, but in no way did they match
him.

Soon all of Mearth would know
, and they would celebrate the new king.

Calder smiled at the thought
. Pressing his hands to the serving wench’s head, curling
his fingers into her waving flaxen locks, he pushed it down,
impaling her mouth on his cock.

His hips arched as thou
ghts of the future and of gifting this servant girl his
royal seed flushed through his mind.

Des
ire soon took first
priority. Calder roared his climax as the girl swallowed every
single drop of his essence. He patted her on the head in thanks,
released her, and then turned on to his side to sleep. With that
out of the way, he could now relax and sleep a little. More
preparations were necessary and he needed to be at his most best to
see them achieved.

And succeed
he
would.

His
endeavors were
most certainly ordained from above.

He
was blessed, and
Charek was doomed.

Chapter
One

Standing on a small rise before the hoonan castle he'd been
sent to infiltrate by the Kin
g, Fade Roban, Dark Prince and heir to the Dark Throne,
watched as hoonan and elf collided in a deadly dance. Each sought
supremacy, some achieving it only to be torn down by another enemy,
their lifeblood spurting out as they sank into the cerulean moss
underneath their feet, the soul slowly seeping from their eyes as
death took them to the next plane.

Fade
took it all in
with a clinical, calculating gaze. He could see the tactics were
all wrong and that the elven generals had completely cocked this
battle up, but above all that one thing stood out. Despite the fact
that before him there were different races with different practices
and different beliefs, hoonan and elven alike, their blood was the
same crimson. The irony didn't escape him.

Tightening his hands on the pommel of his horse,
Eowyn's
, saddle, he shifted a
little and trod a few yards to the left and then down to the right,
attempting to view the scene from every possible angle. It was
carnage. And for what? His father's ridiculous need to beget
another heir because the current one was unsatisfactory.

Never had Fade witnessed a battle from such a
perspective
. It was unusual to
be watching the proceedings from this position. He had always been
at the very thick of it. Using the knife and sword his mother had
gifted him when he was a mere boy to protect both himself and to
defend his father's kingdom. In all of his thirty-two years, the
weapons had protected him. Even as battle-hardened as he was, Fade
knew that in death his mother was still protecting him, and, with
the father he had, he needed every ounce of help he could
get.

Unfortunately, that was no more
. The protection had come to an end that very night as
he'd plunged his sword into a hoonan. The man had died still
impaled upon the metal tongue which had bitten into his body. When
Fade had attempted to retract it, the blade had simply splintered,
leaving a part in the dead man's body and the other half still
attached to the hilt.

He'd risked
his life
by jumping to the ground to pull the splintered metal from the
cadaver. He'd then headed to the hills in search of another sword.
Once there he'd been ordered to stay until the foot soldiers
cleared a path to the hoonan castle where the King's future bride
had been sequestered after her kidnap.

Fade
normally would
have ignored the order. He tended to do whatever he wanted. It was
only by denying him a weapon and ordering all soldiers in the
vicinity to guard their swords on pain of death if they failed to
retain their saber that he'd obeyed.

The blood red drapes of his father's
colors surrounded the King’s favored four
generals. They were there for a show of force rather than to work.
It was quite pathetic really - or Fade felt so at any
rate.

From a tactical point of view, this stronghold
wasn't
strong.
The hoonan fort couldn't have
contained more than six hundred and the King had sent a force of
one and a half thousand fighting men, plus the throwback heir to
the throne. It was more than pathetic in actuality.

Ten years ago, he would have understood and eagerly
attempted to save and protect his father’s
intended
, but he’d learned a
lot in that decade. The wool had certainly been dragged from his
eyes. That experience made him hope that it was in fact
too
late for Princess Keira.

H
er fate was held in
kinder hands at the moment than it was within the hands of his
father. The hoonans were bastards, evil through and through, but,
if King Charek wed himself to another wife who failed to produce an
heir, then Keira would experience more kindness in the hoonan camp.
Fade was tired of watching the executions of his
stepmothers.

Nine beheadings he’d had to witness
.

Nine
.

He’d visited each of his father’s bride
s within the Royal Dungeon. He'd attempted to
ease their suffering prior to the event by bringing them gifts of
sweetmeats and flowers and then comforted them as they finally
faced their fate. Each and every one of them, even though they knew
their predecessor’s fate, believed the King would come to his
senses. Fade had comforted them, when they had realized the King
was an evil old bastard and that death was stalking their
heels.

He was here, fighting the hoonans, because the race were
scum and they’d behaved abominably by daring to abduct a royal
princess
. The battle between
elf and hoonan had been raging since Mearth’s Dark Ages. The truth
was, he enjoyed killing the hoonans, plus it honed his already
fearsome skill on the battlefield. That he would prefer Keira to be
slain by the hoonans rather than face the hangman didn’t really
enter into it.

It was well known that
the King was cursed and had been since Fade’s birth. The
last of the winged elves had died some eighteen hundreds years ago.
Fade was considered an abomination. If a
normal
child were
to be born from the King’s loins, then that child would gain the
King's title, superseding Fade's right to the Dark
Throne.

His eyes flitted left and right, watching over the
fight
. He was disgusted to
realize that while his father’s army should have decimated the
small hoonan holding they were doing anything but. If the situation
wasn’t deadly serious, then Fade would have laughed. The Royal Army
was running about the field, barely holding formation at
all.

“
Center right, Sire Gerauld
,” Fade called out. When he failed to hear a response, he
stood on Eowyn’s stirrups and attempted to peer into the shaded
tent. What he saw had him gritting his teeth. He rode quickly over
to the makeshift pavilion, almost walking Eowyn into it. “Sire
Gerauld. We’re losing. Your men are all over the Gods-be-damned
place. Sort them out!” he yelled.

Jolted awake, Gerauld studied the battlefield with bleary
eyes and then blanched
. He
coughed, spluttered, and then wheezed out a cry. “Signal the
Lieutenants!”

Fade glared in
disgust
at the other generals who were each as lax in their duties as
Gerauld. “Apparently you wish to lose Princess Keira to the
hoonans.”

General Horaxe wiped his chin
which glistened with the ripe juices of the preal fruit.
“The King has already warned you. Do not tell us how to do our
jobs,” he grunted.