Free King Hall by Scarlett Dawn

Dominic hadn’t been mated? That person can have it!” I shook my head. “I can’t do this. I won’t be able to do the Awakenings. It would be ludicrous to put me on the throne.”
    His sideways gaze held sympathy. “The power goes to who it’s supposed to. So it doesn’t matter who might have gotten it if Dominic hadn’t mated. You have it. It’s yours. There’s no passing the buck to someone else.” Antonio reached to open his glove compartment and pulled out a tiny, ancient book, dropping it on my lap. “Take a look at page fifty-four, third paragraph.”
    Gingerly, I picked up the leather book. It was flaking it was so old. I carefully turned the tips of the pages until I got to page fifty-four. Skimming down the page, I found the third paragraph, and read aloud from the handwritten chicken scratch, “ The unimaginable was proven tonight. They were wrong, and so, my son died in vain. All these years, I believed them. Joseph’s death justified. Needed. And now, I weep tears of torture, of anguish, for they were wrong. A hybrid can be used as a magical vessel for an Awakening. Joseph, my beautiful boy, I am so sorry. I will surely burn in Hell for what I let him do.” Immediately, I stopped, flipping back a few pages. It was a journal, dated May 31, year rubbed out, unknown.
    “It’s only a madman’s ramblings,” I mumbled, brows furrowed, gently closing the book and placing it back in the glove compartment, even as my heart fluttered. “Nothing more.”
    “You know it’s hard for us to conceive compared to Coms,” he glanced to me, “a hybrid birth even more rare with self-induced faction separation, but in my extensive searches I’ve found more journals with similar words inscribed as written proof. I don’t believe those accounts are all mere insane ramblings. I believe them to be fact.”
    “If they were true, then why would they continue killing hybrids?”
    “Fear, most likely. If you had kept reading to the end of that journal, you would have found that the father kills himself out of shame, much like all the other accounts I’ve found. Nowhere in them did the parent indicate they’d tried to enlighten their Ruler of their findings.”
    I stared blankly at the road ahead. “Even if that were true, I still don’t want to be Queen.” He obviously believed what he said, his words truth .
    Antonio huffed irritably. “It’s time to grow up, kiddo. We don’t always get to pick what we want in life. You just make the best of the life you’re given.” Golden eyes rested unbreakably on mine. “Your life has been picked for you. It’s time to own up to it.”
    Jaw clenching, I questioned, “Why have you been helping me my whole life, only to leave me, and then show up now?” My blue eyes held the same hardness he had given me. “You want me to own up to the truth? To reality? Then you can give me the same in return.” I waited, watching him closely, scenting the air.
    He answered simply, “Because I must.” Truth .
    I snorted. Nice evasive answer. “Who are you really?” He had left before I had been completely coherent after my first Awakening, last name an alias, and now, I could feel his power with my own humming in my Core, and his power was immense.
    He hesitated. “An Elder.”
    I blinked. “You were a King?” I hadn’t seen that coming.
    A gradual nod. “Yes.”
    I studied him even more closely. His age. My eyes unblinking, words measured. “You were a King fifty years ago when Mysticals came out.” The war. The upheaval. It all made sense now. How brutal he was at times. Everything he had taught me to keep myself alive.
    Another nod. “It’s time you knew.”
    “For being a King, you and Mom didn’t teach me shit about Mysticals.” My eyes didn’t venture away from him while I took in the fact that the King Mage, one of the four biggest bads during the war that had seized the world for ten years, had raised me, right beside my soft mom. It seemed so bizarre.