If you're new to the Seven Deadly Sins series, this is the sixth story. You can find the order of reading on my profile, or if you'd prefer, the entire series in one story titled 'The Horsemen's Cycle'.

Avarice: Heroes of the Darkest Age

One

They called it the Blood Palace. It rose above the horizon, a sole image of ultimate power. Of strength.

They called it the Blood Palace because the pure white marble steps that lead up to the thrones were stained red. They called it the Blood Palace because it was the place the first blood of the revolution had been spilt {Mal walked out of the chambers. She held a sheet over her otherwise nude body and grasped the final key for revenge in her hand}.

Chad Charming had coined the term. The first servant of the Kings and Queens, shackled and dragged away in front of his mother, the wound in his leg leaving a red trail through the corridors. Chad Charming, shrieking, screeching, begging. Saying he'd never be a slave in the palace made of Ben's blood (he was wrong). And High Queen Mal just smiled, deadly, and laughed. Mouthed the words 'Blood Palace' to her lovers and nodded to herself.

{The new throne room was hideous. Animal skins hung on the walls, blood was always drying on the floor. The thrones were made of different materials- one thorn and velvet, a second an apple tree dripping with poison and held together by a ribbon, the third made with some rusted and aged metal with a lamp carved above the headrest, and the last steel and fur, made of 101 dalmatians.}

High Queen Mal continued using the phrase long after Chad Charming was forgotten, welcoming visitors and prisoners alike to the Blood Palace {one thing had to be said for the building, though. It was beautiful through its grotesqueness, stunning in its hideousness the blood and marble created patterns across the floor that the Queens would trace as they danced. The poison that ran from Queen Evie's chair eroded canals into the floor, glittering with strychnine. The walls, hung with pelts and jewels (courtesy of King Carlos) were deadly yet elegant. The fires that burned along the walls of the hall shone a light across the throne room that illuminated the scars scattered across the Kings' and Queens' faces}. And when Chad Charming grew too old to serve the still-youthful monarchy, they slew him, cutting his throat and leaving his blood to stain the floors, on top of the decades of torture that already discoloured the ground. But the horrors of the Blood Palace was nothing compared to what it housed. Slaves and thralls {Chad and Doug} dotted the corridors and rooms of the palace, some defiant, some willing {wanting} to serve. The guests of the palace each hateful and deadly in their own way {Alya, Miranda, Lei}. The prisoners, screaming and deformed. And the Rulers.

There was Queen Evie, of course. The Angelic. The fighter. The seductress. The succubus. A woman so beautiful you couldn't breathe in her presence, a woman who killed you if she kissed you, a woman fiercely protective of what was hers {Sal, Mikhail}. There was Queen Evie, with her blue locks and big, black eyes that begged and enchanted. Queen Evie, with her pale, strong limbs and her dresses and her knowledge making her powerful. Queen Evie, with the scars of the plastic surgery her mama had made her get. Queen Evie, who never wore makeup, to spite her mother. Queen Evie, who was a fucking genius. Queen Evie, with her strength and her power and her lust {AnaelVenusAphroditeFreyaHathorConquest boiled and fought inside her, their chosen} who wedded Elsa and Hayden, who started a school of magick and death to spite the Fairy Godmother, who had always thought she was more a pretty girl than anything else, who had poisoned Snow White and made her whole family watch.

Then there was King Carlos (the Deceitful, the one who'd made himself look weak and fragile when he was stronger than every boy in Auradon). King Carlos, who had once used technology to break the magick barrier. King Carlos, Set, with his unerring loyalty to Hathor and Horus and Anubis. King Carlos, who stood next to MinervaAthenaThoth with pride, King Carlos who wore his mother's skin as a coat and had skinned one-hundred-and-one dalmatians, who had skinned a bear and a panther and a wolf. King Carlos, who had sent Alice {not the Alice} to kill a pregnant woman because she'd been cheating. King Carlos, who spent his life as a King designing and inventing and creating. King Carlos, who requested a sacrifice from his people. King Carlos, with cigarette burns across his body, with marks where Angelique Mors had hit him too hard, with a limp in the leg that had been grasped by the bear traps his mother had put in his closet {where he slept} to keep her furs safe. King Carlos who looked upon the Feast of Fools every year, and smiled and laughed with joy.

There was King Jay, the High King, the Avenger. The one who led armies to war and tore apart nations, the one who embodied Thor and Mars and Ares, the one who ruled and the one who killed, the King who slaughtered for his high queen. There was King Jay, with tattoos of snakes and demons and sigils that Queen Mal had created for him. King Jay, the player, the flirt, the defender, with split lips and broken bones that set wrong and puncture marks in his stomach where Maleficent's metal-toed boot had kicked him more than once. King Jay who wore red nail polish and armour and whose smile meant death. King Jay who had given his lovers everything, just like he'd always wanted to {you are a king and you will give your lovers everything they deserve and more when we reach Auradon}. King Jay who had fought Li Lonnie for her life {who had let Li win}, who had slaughtered Ariel's entire family because she betrayed them {gave her son to her worst enemy}. High King Jay, the djinn, the one who was loyal to Uriah {Aaron} because he'd granted Ursula those three wishes. High King Jay, a genius in his own right, because his mind held all the power and knowledge of an ancient civilization {species}.

And then. Then, there was the Highest of them all. The fae who had led them to victory. High Queen Mal. The powerful {all-powerful}. The woman with a scar running from her cheekbone to the tip of her ear, who wielded Maleficent's staff and the Faerie Godmother's wand, but didn't need to, because she was so powerful that a pure thought could materialise. There was Queen Mal who brought Death, because Death was a constant through every universe, through every civilization, every century, every pattern. High Queen Mal, who kissed her Queen with the anger that the Isle instilled in every Descendant but never died, who gave her High King free reign to kill, who gave her deceitful King everything he could ever want for and so much more, because his mother hadn't. High Queen Mal the Powerful, who killed Gianna Ratcliffe because she thought she could take on the Iron Court. The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, the Queen of the Fae, the woman who wrought an alliance with the HellQueen, who sold her body to feed her lovers and who still danced because she'd taken something she'd hated about herself and owned it. High Queen Mal, Creator of the Thrones, enslaver of Auradon {the fae who used the laws to her advantage}. Queen of the Unseelie Court. High Queen Mal, who cut off her husband's head while he was still riding out his pleasure, who brought Justice to the Isle of the Lost, who killed Maleficent and didn't tell anyone because she didn't deserve to be remembered. High Queen Mal, the fae who wore an iron ring to prove her strength to the world, who was scarred so that stars threw her face into a new definition.

The Blood Palace housed the four Kings and Queens, was their Mount Olympus, their Asgard {there would be a place, in each cycle, that was sacred to the Gods. And Mal, Evie, Jay and Carlos were gods}. It was their stronghold, and they'd never leave because this was where their family was, where their lovers were.

"Let them scream. It doesn't bother me," Queen Evie laughed. The screams of the prisoners of the Blood Palace echoed through the throne room, ringing in the ears of the Kings and Queens, complementing the gorgeous laugh of the succubus Queen {everything complemented the succubus Queen}. A particularly loud scream sounded, the voice it belonged to reminiscent to a friend of long ago, and the Queens smiled, leaning over their thrones to kiss each other.

The High King smiled at the display of affection, smiled as the fae Queen paled slightly {the effects of a succubus were smaller if she tried- not that Queen Evie tried often}, smiled as he pulled King Carlos closer on his lap. Rivulets of blood ran down the High Queen's chair to join the splatters on the floor, the blood of her fellow Queen running as Queen Evie accidentally grabbed the throne of the fae, covered in thorns {briars}. He smiled at the thought that they were finally getting what they deserved.

{Because this was their palace. This was their home. The entire land that had once been the United States of Auradon was theirs, the people were theirs. They'd lived off nothing but scraps for so long, because of those pathetic "heroes" who did nothing, who never tried, who wanted to defeat the one thing that will always survive. Evil. Darkness. That's the heroes of Auradon didn't survive- they didn't embrace the darkness that lived inside them.

The Kings and Queens, and their Blood Palace, and their Iron Court would survive. Because they were the greatest {you could be a hero, or you could be the best}, they'd brought about the darkest age imaginable, and they were the heroes and the saviours of their generation, of their people {the people of the Isle of the Lost}. They were the heroes of the darkest age.}