They Drugged Me Into Darkness, Now I Am Its King novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Light Beneath Pluto
At a family breakfast in Pluto's great hall, Aquas playfully dares Lucien to eat a sugared plum before Aerial's monsters burst through the cavern gate; Lucien shields him as the creatures attack, but Aquas's skin splits with gold-white solar fractures and a concussive pulse of light destroys the monsters and chars the ceiling, after which Lucien carries him through the smoking hall as a thin gold fracture shines beneath his closed eye.
Aquas lifted the sugared plum between two fingers and held it to Lucien's mouth.
The goblin elders went silent over their bowls.
'Eat it,' Aquas said softly. 'I dare you, dark prince. In front of everyone.'
Lucien's eyes did not move from his face for a long moment.
Then he leaned forward and took the plum from Aquas's fingers with his teeth.
The hall erupted.
Goblin Elder Mossbeard slapped the table so hard his spoon jumped. Captain Durn let out a bark of laughter that echoed off the obsidian walls. The werewolf twins howled. Even the vampire court, usually so composed, exchanged looks of open delight.
'He ate it!' someone shouted.
'The dark prince ate the little sun's plum!'
Aquas felt his face heat. He had not expected the entire hall to react like a festival had been declared.
But this was Pluto.
This was his family now.
He looked down at his bowl, the porridge barely touched, and felt the familiar pressure building behind his eyes. It was absurd. It was so absurd. A sugared plum, and they cheered. His own father had not cheered when Aquas completed his moon-blood rite at seven. His own father had nodded once, formally, and moved on to the next item of court business.
Here, they cheered for a plum.
A tear slipped down his cheek.
Then another.
He wiped at them quickly, embarrassed, but the damage was done. The entire table had seen.
The hall went quiet again, but this time the silence was heavy with alarm.
'Little sun,' Captain Durn said carefully. 'Why are you crying?'
'Did the prince do something in the night?' Mossbeard demanded, his voice rising. 'Did he make you cry? I will write a letter. I will write a strongly worded letter to the sun court, the moon court, every court in Ethens.'
'I will help you write it,' Temik said from his seat, showing his fangs in a grin. 'I am excellent with strongly worded letters.'
'I am not crying because of Lucien,' Aquas managed.
'Then why?' Durn pressed.
Aquas opened his mouth to explain that he was crying because they had cheered for a plum, because they had called him little sun, because he had never in his life been loved so loudly and so pointlessly and so completely.
But the words would not come.
He reached for Lucien's hand under the table instead.
Lucien's gloved fingers closed around his.
'I am simply happy,' Aquas whispered. 'That is all.'
The tension at the table broke into a warm, rumbling murmur. Mossbeard grumbled something about the moon court and their cold manners. Durn shook her head and went back to her breakfast.
And then the cavern gate exploded.
The sound came first, a shriek of tearing stone and twisting metal. Then the heat, a wave of it rolling through the hall. Then the shadows, moving wrong, splitting away from the walls and taking shape.
Monsters.
They poured through the breach like oil, black and glistening, with too many limbs and eyes that burned a sickly green. They moved fast, faster than anything that size should move, and they moved toward Aquas.
He knew it instantly. Not toward Lucien, not toward the elders, not toward the guards already drawing weapons.
Toward him.
Aerial.
It could only be her. She had sent killers before, but never like this. Never into the heart of Pluto itself. She must have learned of his happiness, must have seen it from whatever dark mirror she watched through, and it had driven her past caution.
She wanted him dead.
She wanted him dead so badly she had risked war.
Lucien moved.
One moment he was seated beside Aquas, the next he was standing in front of him, shadow-dark rising from his shoulders like wings unfurling. The darkness poured off him in sheets, cold and absolute, and the first wave of monsters hit it and screamed.
'You will not touch him,' Lucien said.
His voice was quiet. It carried through the entire hall.
'That is not a request.'
The monsters came anyway.
They came in waves, throwing themselves against Lucien's shadow barrier, dying in droves and being replaced by more. The hall filled with the sounds of battle, goblin war-cries and dwarf hammers and the wet tearing of vampire claws. Temik was a blur of silver and green. Durn swung a forge-hammer the size of a small tree.
But Aquas watched Lucien.
He watched the strain in his husband's shoulders, the way the shadow-dark flickered at the edges, the way his jaw tightened with each impact. The monsters were not strong enough to break through. They were not meant to.
They were meant to exhaust him.
And they were succeeding.
A monster slipped past the barrier, low and fast, and lunged for Aquas.
He did not scream. He did not run. He went still, exactly as he always did when frightened, and his eyes searched for Lucien.
Lucien was already turning, already reaching, but he was too slow. The monster was faster. Its claws were inches from Aquas's face.
And then Aquas's skin split open with light.
It started at his chest, a thin gold-white fracture like a crack in volcanic stone. Then it spread, branching across his arms, his neck, his face, until he was covered in a web of burning light. The monster shrieked and recoiled, blinded.
Aquas did not understand what was happening.
He only knew that something inside him had been waiting, had been buried so deep he had never known it was there, and now it was awake.
And it was angry.
The light detonated.
It burst outward from his body in a concussive pulse, gold-white and blinding, and it hit the monsters like a wall of fire. They did not scream. They did not have time. They simply came apart, dissolving into ash and shadow and nothing.
The pulse hit the ceiling and charred it black.
It hit the walls and left scorch marks in the obsidian.
It hit the gathered court and dropped every creature in the hall to their knees.
Even Lucien.
Even the dark prince, who had never knelt to anyone, went down with the rest of them, one hand braced against the floor, his shadow-dark rising to meet the light and pressing against it in a perfect, impossible equilibrium.
For one long moment, Aquas stood in the center of Pluto's great obsidian hall, burning like a second sun.
And then the light went out.
He felt himself falling. The floor rushed up to meet him. His body was empty, hollowed out, every drop of strength burned away in that single blinding pulse.
Lucien caught him.
Strong arms closed around him, lifted him, held him against a broad chest. He could hear Lucien's heartbeat, fast and hard, could feel the tremble in those steady hands.
'Aquas,' Lucien said.
His voice was rough. Frightened.
Aquas tried to answer, but his mouth would not form the words. He could only lie there, limp and weightless, as the hall slowly came back into focus around him.
The goblin elders were still on their knees. The dwarf captains were staring at him with something like awe. Temik's fangs were showing, but he was not smiling.
They had all seen it.
They had all seen what he was.
He did not know what it meant. He did not know what he had done, or how, or why. He only knew that Aerial's monsters were gone, and Lucien was holding him, and he was so tired he could not keep his eyes open.
'Stay with me,' Lucien said.
Aquas wanted to. He wanted to stay with him forever.
But the darkness was rising, soft and warm and patient, and it pulled him down.
The last thing he saw was Lucien's face, dark eyes wide with fear, and the smoking ruin of the great hall behind him.
Lucien carried him through the wreckage, past the kneeling elders and the stunned captains, past the charred remains of the monsters that had come to kill him.
And beneath Aquas's closed eye, a thin gold fracture still shone.
It did not fade.
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