CRASH!!
Arzhen's claws, partially shifted and gleaming like polished daggers, sank deep into the carved arm of his father's high-backed chair. With a crunch of splintering oak and tearing velvet, he ripped the entire arm clean off, holding the ruined piece in rage.
"What," he enunciated, each word a chip of ice dropping into the silent room, "do you mean you still can't find him?"
The men arrayed before the desk flinched as one. They were warriors, hardened scouts, elite trackers of the Vasiliev line. They knew their new king's strength, his ambition, the cold fire that had propelled him to seize the throne in the vacuum of his father's 'disappearance.'
Knowing it, however, did not make standing in the path of its full heat any easier. This was not the public-facing prince. Not the charming, decisive, the grieving son stepping into a burdensome role.
