Blood Soup - Part #3 (Completion of Book 2 - Downfall & Book 3 - Restitution)
Kelly A. Harmon
Issue #7 (September 2008)
Amalric entered his father’s room without knocking, glancing around at the rich appointments: the large bed with fine wool curtains, the comfortable chairs by the fire, shelves containing more than a dozen books and trinkets from far-off lands. His own rooms were more sumptuously decorated, held many more treasures, but were smaller. Not the rooms of the king.
His father may have given him the throne, but he hadn’t given up his rooms, and that rankled. Amalric could fill his own quarters with all the wealth that wool could be traded for, but it wasn’t enough, wouldn’t ever be enough, until he wrested everything from his father, as his birthright.
Though now, it seemed, the throne wasn’t his birthright at all. His elder sister, his twin, was more entitled than he. And it didn’t matter that she was dead and gone, because that just meant that everything he had, everything he’d won, came to him by default, and not by right. The knowledge was dust in his mouth.
His father sat by the fire, hands wrapped around expensive crystal glass holding a deep amber liquid.
“I knew you’d come,” he said, continuing to stare off into the flames.
“Is it true?” Amalric asked. “Did I have a sister? Did you kill her, and my mother, too?”
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