Chapter 31 #2
Vaulted ceilings arched high above us, painted with golden lions locked in battle with dragons. Two colossal chandeliers hung overhead. At least four dozen embroidered banners draped the walls. At the far end of the long, gilded table stood the king.
Ugh. Just when I was having a nice morning.
He wore white and violet, black hair sculpted to perfection, his expression forcibly benevolent. He smiled at Quinn and pulled out the chair to his immediate right.
Of course he did.
Quinn hesitated, then crossed the room and sat with more poise than I could muster. A servant gestured to a chair intended for me, on the complete opposite end of the table, so far away from Quinn that I may as well have traveled back to Oronder.
Nope.
I grabbed the chair, dragging it right beside her, the screech of its legs against the floor echoing through the hall.
“Good morning, King E-prick, I trust you slept well,” I goaded.
The king’s smile tightened. “Edric.”
I smiled back. Broad. Toothy. Sarcastic enough to be considered an act of rebellion in a court this polished. “Isn’t that what I said?” I leaned back, settling into the chair, maintaining eye contact with his royal pompousness.
The king broke my gaze and rang a bell so dainty it barely made a sound—as though he were summoning a choir of birds rather than a horde of servants.
A moment later, they poured into the room.
Servants in matching black livery carried tray after tray of food.
The scents of roasted fig, spiced meats, buttery pastries, and something citrus-bright and sharp filled the air.
All for five people.
And one smug cat.
The sheer excess of it made my stomach twist. Not because it wasn’t extraordinary, but because this single table could’ve fed my entire village for a week. Maybe longer.
Quinn stiffened beside me, eyes tracking the servants as they passed. I followed her gaze—and saw it. The dark, puckered scars seared into each of their cheeks, shaped like the letter U.
Every member of the waitstaff had the mark of the ungifted.
The flicker of horror and sorrow in her expression was gone as quickly as it came, smoothed into courtly calm, but I’d seen it. I felt her sadness and anger quaver down the tether.
I wanted to reach for her hand beneath the table, to ground her, but the king was watching. Instead, I stayed still and pretended not to notice that her knuckles had gone white.
We ate, and the conversation was polite at first. Branrir praised the fig glaze on the ham.
Thistle speculated whether the table’s centerpiece—a miniature citrus tree blooming in midwinter—was enchanted or merely ostentatious.
Vesper leaned over to whisper that one of the scones was giving him a judgmental glare.
Halfway through the meal, right as I’d begun to believe we might escape breakfast without an ambush, Edric set down his goblet with a deliberate clink and turned to Quinn.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, voice velvet-smooth, every syllable shaped as though he’d hand-polished it before release. “About your spell. About what you’ve endured.”
Quinn’s hand froze. Without a sound, she lowered her fork.
“My parents cast it,” he continued, folding his hands.
“But I had no say in it. I didn’t know the extent of what they’d done—not then.
I was kept from the details. Protected from the consequences, as royals so often are.
” He paused, letting the silence stretch before adding, softly, “But I paid for it nonetheless.”
Quinn’s brow furrowed. “How do you mean?”
Edric inclined his head gravely. “The spell didn’t exclusively bind you, Quinnie.
My mother, Saints rest her soul, was a Time, one of the last of her kind.
Her final act of magic ensured I would live long enough to find you again.
” He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice to something conspiratorial, intimate.
“To make the spell…survivable. For both of us.”
A pit opened in my stomach.
“I’m just as cursed as you,” Edric said.
All of us stared at the king. None of this made sense.
He hadn’t been sealed in a tower or bound by centuries of forgotten sleep.
He hadn’t woken choking on loneliness in a cold, endless dark.
He’d been here—alive and aware—walking these polished halls, eating banquets, erecting statues of himself while she suffered alone.
“You’ve been able to actually live this whole time,” I stated. “That’s not the same.”
The room stilled.
Edric’s jaw flexed. He ran his tongue slowly over his front teeth, scraping away the taste of being challenged. “Yes, I’ve lived. But not freely. My lifespan is unnaturally prolonged. I’ve watched everyone I love vanish. I’ve endured decades of solitude.”
I wanted to laugh. Or break something. Maybe both.
But Quinn spoke first. “You believe our experiences align?”
“No,” he said, his voice forcibly gentle. “But it was meant to be. We were meant to reunite. To resolve it together.”
Resolve it together?
I didn’t like the sound of this one bit.
I wanted to resolve his face with my fists. He looked at her as if she were nothing more than a cog in the machine of his ego.
Edric continued, voice steeped in a sorrow too refined to be real, “My mother ensured we were frozen…waiting. Neither of us could be free until—”
He reached for her hand.
I nearly upended the table.
“The only way to end it,” he said, thumb brushing along the back of her fingers, “to break both of our curses, is to fulfill the spell’s original intention.” His smile deepened—desperately rehearsed. “To marry.”
My vision tunneled.
I was going to vomit.
Quinn stiffened, but she didn’t pull her hand away from him.
No. No, no, no.
“It will free you,” he went on. “And it will allow me to continue my bloodline. Together, we end the cycle. We forge the futures we have been denied for lifetimes.”
The king stood from his chair.
He dropped to one knee.
From inside his coat, he withdrew an obscenely large ring. A diamond the size of a quail egg flanked by two luminous opals. A bribe in the rough shape of a proposal.
He held it aloft. “Quinnie…”
I nearly snapped the leg off my chair.
“…make me the happiest man alive. We can end our suffering and start anew. I’ve waited centuries for this moment. Be my queen.”
Suppressing an audible scoff was difficult.
She wouldn’t.
She couldn’t.
Quinn kissed me this morning, slept in my arms last night. She’d looked at me like I was her future.
This asshole clearly couldn’t read the room.
I leaned back in my chair, excited for her to look into his smug face and say, “N—
“Yes,” Quinn whispered.
Edric rose, a victorious smile carving across his face. “Wonderful! I’ll announce it to the court this evening.”
Time cracked open.
The air was too thick. I tried not to pass out or punch a monarch. What was she thinking? Was this all part of some master plan she hadn’t filled me in on?
It couldn’t be real.
But the ring was.
Her answer was.
My fingers closed around the crystal goblet beside my plate, the delicate stem biting into my palm. I didn’t even realize I was gripping it that hard until—
Crack.
The stem snapped. The goblet slipped from my hand and shattered against the stone floor along with my heart.