Chapter 27 Aldric
Chapter twenty-seven
Aldric
“Again!” he barked at the farm boys lying in the yard at his men’s feet. Panting. Sweating. Bruised. But they’d receive far more than merely bruises on the front if they didn’t shape up quickly.
Calix took up the call and shouted, “You heard His Majesty! On your feet! You can rest when we’ve retaken Arlund.”
His Majesty.
It had been one week since his kirei had declared to the world that he was the rightful King of Drakmor. One week since she had stood there in the middle of her study, shouting that Edmund was a worm, a pretender, a bastard. That he, Aldric Hargrave, was the only king she recognized.
And that she was his queen consort.
Heat coursed through him again at the memory, consuming what was left of his good sense. This woman was going to get him killed. His wild kirei. His mad, pretty wife.
Mad.
She was mad. Completely mad. And here he now stood, burning for her, wearing a blasted crown of all things, ready to fling himself into battle the moment she told him, “Go.”
So what did that make him?
A sharp whistle from Rakon immediately snapped him out of his thoughts and back to the present. He jerked to face the large man.
His Son tipped his head toward the south. “Trouble, boss.”
Hoofbeats clattered against stone. Curious shouts went up from the drilling soldiers.
Almost reluctantly, Aldric turned to watch the pair of men riding their horses into the ground as they shot through the palace gates at a dead gallop and blew into the courtyard.
The one thing his kirei didn’t need was more trouble.
But he could tell, the moment he took stock of just who the riders were, that Rakon had been right.
This was trouble.
His jaw clenched. His gaze lifted back toward the balcony where Seraphina stood with her pet rat, watching the soldiers. Watching him. She looked so pale, bundled up within her dark furs. Her cheeks blanched paler still when her eyes met his.
He could almost taste her mounting anxiety from there.
“Leif,” he barked, already in motion, “keep the boys drilling. Calix. Rakon. With me.”
Leif gave a careless salute.
The other two fell in stride on either side of him, providing a buffer for the growing crowd now swarming around his wife’s peacock and former champion as the two men drew their horses up short and dismounted.
A familiar pang of guilt lanced through his chest when his attention fell on Tristan Dacre, the young knight he had almost killed that day on Nerina Reef. He heard the man now suffered from debilitating headaches. A part of him felt like he still needed to apologize for that.
But the more time that passed, the less he knew what to say.
“Beaumont!” he called out to the baron.
Sir Tristan looked his way at once. His eyes ticked between the crown on his brow and his face.
Tiberius pretended as if he hadn’t heard.
Instead, the pretty man hailed the nearest servant.
“Inform the queen I have returned,” he instructed, as if Sera couldn’t see good and well with her own two eyes that he had returned.
“And that I must speak with her immediately. It is a matter of great urgency and importance.”
Aldric ground his teeth together until his jaw ached. “Beaumont,” he bit out again, enunciating each syllable.
Calix lifted his voice and announced like a court herald, “You have been hailed by His Majesty, Lord Beaumont. Twice now. You will not be hailed again.”
The murmurs of the crowd surrounding them fell silent. The soldiers stepped backward by several paces, giving them room.
Like a man carved from wood, Lord Tiberius stiffly swiveled to face him. He gave a tight smile. “This is no king of mine.” His gaze shifted toward the crown Sera had forced him to wear; his eyes narrowed. “But I see the rumors are true.”
Bouncing his leg, Sir Tristan looked up at the balcony and simply shouted, “Olivia!”
Aldric glanced upward just in time to catch a glimpse of his wife and her Spymaster disappearing back inside. No doubt they would both be joining them soon.
“What is it?” he demanded, his attention returning to Tiberius. He might as well learn something useful before they arrived. “What’s happened?”
An infuriating smile curved the other man’s lips. “My message is for Her Majesty and Her Majesty alone.” Taking a single step closer, the peacock lowered his voice to hiss, “You may have married her, Crow, but that doesn’t make you king. Certainly not my king.”
Calix rumbled low in his chest.
Rakon reached over and grabbed the half-Kunishi by the back of the neck before he could manage to do something they would all regret.
Tense moments ticked by. Silence blanketed the yard.
“Aldric!” Sera’s voice suddenly winged toward him, slicing through the quiet, sweet and bright. Turning his head, he watched his wife hurrying toward him as fast as she could walk before she was officially running.
A muscle in Tiberius’s jaw ticked.
Aldric presented a tight smile.
“Aldric,” she breathlessly expelled again the moment she swept in close and came to stand at his side. “What has happened?” Her hand fell to his shoulder, resting there as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Just touching him. In front of everyone.
In front of her once “favorite.”
His thoughts scattered as the warmth of her nearness chased away the biting cold of the day like mist burning up in the light of the sun. Focus. Trouble. There was trouble.
“Beaumont was just about to tell us what happened,” he rumbled, keeping his one-eyed gaze fixed on Tiberius. He wanted to savor every moment of the other man’s discomfort. His irritation.
The way the muscle in his jaw continued to tick with each passing moment.
The way his eyes fixated on the sight of Sera’s hand resting atop his shoulder.
If only another person’s foul mood was something he could bottle to experience again later. Tiberius’s would have made for a particularly good vintage.
While Sir Tristan slipped off just a little ways with Mistress Olivia, the two huddled together like a pair of conspiring thieves, Tiberius finally spoke again to admit, “I had hoped to speak to you in private, Your Majesty.” The insufferable man spared a glance for the watching crowd.
His voice lowered. “This is not a matter made for public ears.”
His kirei’s attack rat lifted her head from her huddle with Sir Tristan. Expression suddenly hollow, she asked, “Permission to summon the rest of the war council, Your Majesty?”
A shiver traced down his spine unbidden when Sera’s grip on his shoulder tightened. “Permission granted,” she whispered, her breath ruffling against his hair with each word spoken. “And Lord Beaumont? Your request for a private audience has been denied.”
The look on Tiberius’s face darkened further when his mad, beautiful, utterly intoxicating kirei added, “But His Majesty and I will receive you in the throne room in exactly five minutes.”