Kai was surprised to see that the obelisk’s parts still glowed blue even after he’d shattered it.

It is reacting to you, King Marius had said.

Could inanimate objects really sense the power dwelling within him? Was it some sort of detector for his powers?

When standing on his injured feet became too much, he slowly sat on the edge of the desk behind him and lifted one foot to see that a few parts had embedded themselves in the sole of his foot. Blood dripped to the floor, drenching the other parts. There were shards in both feet, so by now the floor looked like a grizzly crime scene.

He reached for a shard.

King Marius seized his hand by the wrist.

Kai instinctively tried to jerk it away, but the King’s grip was stronger than it looked. His whole body reacted violently to his touch; it felt as if his body was going to rip itself out of his very skin just to get away from him. He shuddered.

“Don’t. It’ll embed itself deeper if you try to take it out,” he warned in that deep voice of his.

He remained quiet and so very still. Frankly, he was paralyzed with fear. It gripped him like an invisible force and held him in place.

It was a feat to look up into the King’s face, and when he managed it, he saw that the usual disdain and contempt by which he usually regarded Kai were not there this time. He wasn’t sure how to read the expression on Marius’ face. He wasn’t sure he wanted to read it.

He quickly averted his gaze.

“It has a safety mechanism. When broken or mishandled, it attempts to damage the one who damaged it,” he explained.

The obelisk was sounding more and more interesting by the second. Surely it had to be some sort of priceless artifact.

And like an idiot, he’d gone and broken it.

“It’s part of a set. All the parts need to be functional for it to work.”

So it was now useless, except maybe to pluck someone’s eye out.

He half expected Marius to punch him in the gut for damaging something that was surely valuable any second now. Heart thumping, he waited for the inevitable beating.

Marius released his arm and then did something that Kai never expected King Marius the Conqueror to do: he knelt before Kai.

He stared down at the top of the King of Nostraza’s head in absolute bafflement.

No way, he mentally breathed.

Wide-eyed and mouth slightly agape, he watched as the man who constantly reminded him of his lowborn half-breed status raised his open palm to Kai’s sole. The obelisk pieces glowed purple instead of blue.

Kai gasped.

He began to feel each shard push away from his skin, as if it were being pulled out by invisible hands. They clinked when they dropped to the floor, bloodied.

He performed the same witchery on the other foot.

Marius stood up.

He walked behind the desk and Kai heard a drawer open. When the King came to stand in front of him again, he tossed a white hand towel at him and he barely caught it.

“Clean yourself up.”

Kai stared at him dumbly, and then realized that he was staring like a pufferfish and quickly bent down to wipe the blood off his feet.

What was happening? Surely his struggle with the triplets had knocked him out and he was now hallucinating on the baths’ floor. Was Kai witnessing a new side to King Marius the Conqueror? A compassionate one?

“How did you do that?” he asked, concentrating on the task at hand. He was genuinely curious; he’d never seen anything like that. If he had to put what he’d seen into words, then he’d say that Marius’ hand had acted like a magnet, drawing the obelisk pieces out.

It appeared that the infamous King Marius boasted his own powers.

So why did he want Kai’s?

“We of the Royal House have powers of our own.”

“So why do you want mine?” Kai forced himself to meet and hold the King’s shark-like eyes.

“Do you really know nothing of your power?”

“I don’t even know how much I don’t know.”

Marius slightly tilted his head to the side and said while regarding Kai with narrowed eyes, “How baffling.”

Kai frowned. “What is?”

“That your father would leave you so defenseless and unaware.”

Kai looked away, and then down at the bloody pieces on the floor. Even Kai didn’t understand why his father had chosen for him to remain in the dark all his life.

“I never met my father.” Was his half-assed attempt at putting forth some sort of explanation that would justify his father’s actions. Why Kai was even trying to justify the actions of the father he’d never met was beyond him.

Perhaps he didn’t want the one to criticize his father’s parenting skills to be none other than Marius, the merman who had the emotional range of a clam.

“You look like him.”

That surprised him. It had caught him off guard. Why would Marius say something so sentimental to him out of the blue?

Warily, he looked back at Marius to see that he was being scanned from head to toe.

He’d forgotten about his peculiar, revealing outfit.

Heat climbed up his neck and suffused his cheeks a beetroot red color the moment he became aware of the King’s assessing gaze travelling up and down the length of his body. He felt like he was being eaten up alive; Marius had never looked at him like that before. He had a raw look in his eyes that made his skin crawl.

Instinctively, his hands moved to hide his crotch area, afraid that one or maybe two of the family jewels were peeking out from under the V-shaped belt. After all, sheer harem pants weren’t that great a cover.

A corner of Marius’ lips twitched.

Was it just him or did Marius almost smile?

He suddenly grabbed Kai’s face by the chin and turned it left and right. “I suppose I can do it if I want to.”

“Do what?” Kai demanded, glaring daggers at the hand holding his chin.

Marius released his face only to lift Kai off the table and into his arms in one swoop.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing? Let me down!” he growled, but his protests went unanswered.

Marius walked across his room, headed for his-

Kai’s stomach plummeted and he blanched.

Oh, no.

He was headed for the bed.

Kai struggled like a cat possessed, scratching and clawing wherever he could. But as expected, his attempts were futile. Marius was unbudging.

Just when he thought he was about to be dumped on the bed in order to be ravished, Marius veered away from the bed at the last inch. Instead, he approached a pile of luxurious cushions of all shapes and sizes he hadn’t noticed before, mostly because the daunting bed had kept him from seeing anything else in this section of the room.

Kai was unceremoniously dumped on top of the cushions like a sack of potatoes.

“Oomph!”

“From now on, this is where you sleep,” Marius said while looking down at Kai, and he added, “As the Royal Concubine.”