Tiger’s Destiny Read Free Page A

tried to change the subject, to distract him from his anger. Thinking that a man such as Lokesh would love nothing more than to talk about himself, I relaxed back in my chair, sipped my water, and said, “Tell me about your past. If we are to have a son, I’d like him to know his heritage. I already know he’d be half American.”
    “A fact I’d prefer to eradicate from my mind.”
    “Then tell me more about your background. Aren’t you proud enough of your own history to pass it on?”
    His face became mottled red again and he spoke between clenched teeth. “No one will judge me or my progeny and find them lacking.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “Alright. Then tell me.”
    Lokesh considered me for a moment and then sat back in his chair and began. “I was born the eldest illegitimate son of the Shu emperor during the time of the Three Kingdoms. My mother was an Indian slave girl who was captured in a caravan in the year 250 CE. She was beautiful so the emperor took her for himself. She died by her own hand a year after my birth.”
    “An emperor?”
    “Yes.” Lokesh smiled naughtily. “Our son will have royal blood.”
    “What was it like? Growing up the son of an emperor, I mean?”
    He snorted, “My father, in an uncharacteristic act of human kindness, took me under his wing and taught me what it meant to have power. He said that a truly powerful man listens only to himself because he can trust no other, takes what he wants because no one will hand it to him freely, and uses weapons others fear to wield. I watched his example carefully over the years and learned his lessons very well. He carried a piece of the amulet and taught me of the power it had.”
    I blinked and lowered my fork, the delicious crêpes forgotten, as Lokesh continued.
    “He told me I would only be able to wield its power if he died without a proper heir. From the moment I learned of the amulet’s existence, I lusted after it and thought of nothing else.
    “When I was just a boy, war came to our empire and for the first time we were on the losing end. Desperate, my father tried some last minute bargaining and offered to take a barbarian leader’s teenage daughter as his bride. He hoped that this would save his empire. I was disgusted by this. He’d become weak, fearful. He was not the man who inspired fear in others any longer.
    “His barbarian bride bore him a son and as the boy grew, I was dismissed from my father’s side. No longer did he confide in me. No longer did I have a claim to the empire. I vowed then that I would take the lives of my half brother and father. I was ten.
    “When my brother was seven and I seventeen, I took him out hunting. Dismissing the guards, we rode out following the tracks of a stag. It was an easy thing to push him from his horse. I rode back and forth over his body using his own horse until he was quite dead. Then I killed his horse, and took his broken body back to my father.
    “I told the emperor that the horse had thrown my younger brother and then went wild, trampling him until he was dead. Reassuring him, I said that the beast was now dead by my own hand. The fact that he believed my lies was a testament to how weak he’d become.
    “A few months later, I slipped a knife between my father’s ribs while he was sleeping and took the amulet. He didn’t even wake. When I ascended the throne, I immediately had my father’s barbarian wife killed and took the rings of the empire. My father had worn one and the barbarian princess wore the other one, the one he’d given to my half brother upon his birth. It was a symbol that he was to be the next emperor.”
    Lokesh twisted a ring on his right index finger. “This is the emblem of the Shu Empire and this,” he wiggled his pinky finger, “is the ring of the crown prince. The ring my half brother wore.”
    I swallowed my revulsion and asked, “How long were you the emperor?”
    “Not long. My father’s weakness had become an excuse for other