Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
Elara
“Un-acc-epta-ble!” Miss Hampshire’s half-hand taps each syllable with scolding force, matching her angry steps toward the king’s chamber. “Taking His Majesty to the gardens without my approval. And not just anywhere in the gardens… Oh no, but the fountain of all places!”
I keep my eyes on the floor, counting the cracks in the stone as I take the scolding I saw coming from leagues away. “He needed air.”
“He needs rest,” she snaps, the tips of her words sharp enough to peel paint. “The man’s constitution is delicate, and his temper”—she exhales through her nose like steam escaping a kettle—“is hardly improved by this!”
I weigh my options: argue and lose, or apologize and lose slower. “I meant no harm. How was I supposed to know that the statue would upset him so?”
“That statue marks the place of Queen Ophelia’s coronation, girl!
” She turns sharply, skirts whispering against the wall as we take the corner toward the king’s door.
“You dragged him to the very spot where she bled—” Her words stumble, half-hand freezing mid-tap as if the syllables caught on a boulder in her throat.
Then her mouth shuts so hard her jaw clicks.
My stomach knots together.
So Vale didn’t lie…
For a heartbeat, the only sounds in the corridor are our footsteps and the faint hiss of torches fighting damp air.
“Bled by the healers’ counsel,” Miss Hampshire finishes tightly, as if she can stitch the lie over the gaping hole in her story.
Her gaze darts to me, sharp and assessing. “In her…final days. When she was sick.”
I lift my brow a little, just to pretend she spilled gossip rather than a secret about a curse I already know everything about. “It won’t happen again, Miss Hampshire.”
Interesting. Whatever happened in the royal chamber, whoever bled out on the wood… It truly wasn’t Ophelia, wasn’t Kael’s mother. Perhaps Vale is right, and this is a dead end, leaving me flailing for answers once more.
“Miss Hampshire!” The kitchen girl runs up the corridor, flushed and panting, hands wringing the hem of her apron. “You must come. The flour delivery.”
Miss Hampshire’s sigh carries the weariness of a thousand similar interruptions. “By all the saints, the flour will still be flour when I arrive. What now?”
“Thomas says he needs you right away,” the girl heaves, glancing at me, then lowering her voice. “There are people everywhere holding it up. Walls. Gate. Everywhere.”
Miss Hampshire pales to the same shade as her cap. She turns to me, caught between irritation and duty. “You’ll wait outside the chamber. Do not go in until I return.”
I nod, hands folded so she doesn’t see how tightly I’ve fisted them. “Yes, Miss Hampshire.”
And then she’s gone, her steps slapping sharp against the stone as she hurries after the girl. The sound fades fast, leaving me alone in a corridor too still for comfort. As things stand, I’d best do as told for once and wait. I don’t need—
Noise leaks through the silence.
A dull scrape.
A shuffle.
Another, louder this time, followed by a violent crash of something toppling inside the king’s chamber. Wood? Metal?
Pulse thudding against the bottom of my throat, I look at the door. What’s going on? He’s never that animated. No, that would require him to get up from that damn couch, and—
The king’s shout shatters my thoughts, bellowing with a strength I’ve never heard before. It sets me into urgent motion, feet stumbling toward the noisy chaos. He’s in trouble…
A hurried knock, then the latch gives way under my palm. Nervous candles dodge and duck the draft I let in. That, and how the king rises from the chair by the darkened window with an angry whirl. He grips the table in front of him before he hurls it into the room.
Wood splinters.
Ivory clanks.
Chess pieces scatter.
“Know your place, you bastard!” he roars, that last word thrown like a blade at the figure sitting quietly on the chair across. “Get out! Crawl back into the shadows where you belong.”
Vale rises from the chair with the silence of a grave. He doesn’t look at how the king whirls around to kick a splintered chair. Doesn’t say Majesty. He simply stands, smooths his cuff, and turns toward the door. Toward me.
A chill numbs my fingertips.
What is all this about?
Vale passes me without looking. His sleeve brushes the edge of my knuckles. His hand finds mine—one quick, treacherously warm squeeze. Then he is gone, the door’s sighing breath stealing him into the corridor.
The king doesn’t see.
He’s too busy spending himself.
“I won’t be outwitted,” he mumbles to the room, to the window he keeps blind, to the bishop rolling on the ground as he paces back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“I won’t be—” He stops. Breath jerks. Starts again.
Another kick sends the broken chair leg hurtling across the room.
“Not by a filthy snake in a clean coat!”
His roar trembles the air clear into my quivering lungs. This is insanity. Pure madness!
“Majesty!” I rush toward him like a hare toward a wolf. “Please calm down!”
“Do you think me cruel!?” he snaps, rounding on me as if I’m a chess piece that dared remain upright. His face is winter-stung and too thin for the rage that’s raising veins along his cheeks.
“Tell me. Do you think me inept?” When I only shake my head, he shouts, “Use your damn voice!”
“N-no.” A startle squeezes that out of me before I lift my hands in an appeasing manner. “I think you’re angry.”
“Angry.” He laughs. It’s a cracked thing, the sound of cartilage trying to remember humor before it collapses into a whimper small enough to be ashamed of itself.
“Reign of Rot,” he pants, as if the phrase were climbing him from the inside and cutting its way out through his teeth.
“Reign of Rot. They say it. They carve it into doors. They mutter it at the market with mouths…full…of…nothing!”
My breath stutters along my spine with how he stalks around me, the crown on his head far straighter than the state of his mind. “Please, Your Majesty, you have to calm down.”
“Every day…” he says, softer. Quieter. More dangerous. “Every day the poor knock at the gate with stubbed wrists. Coin. Food. Salvation.” He grips his crown, pulling it down on his skull as if he means the gold to crack through the bone. “And I turn them away.”
“You’re doing what you think is right.” I carefully wrap my trembling fingers around his arm. “Why don’t you sit on your couch? Then we can—”
“Leave!” He rips his arm from my clasp, hissing at the pain it causes his shoulder. “Get out! Go practice patience on some other carcass.”
Against the caution tensing my muscles and the anxiety stirring my guts, I don’t step back. I won’t let him chase me off.
“Camphor.” I grab the flask of oil from the nearby table. Uncork it. Carry it toward him. “It’ll help with the pain. If you would just—”
He swats the flask.
Not a throw, a slap.
The arc is small and petty, but it still manages to paint the floor between us in a glistening sheet as the glass shatters. “Get out!”
“Majesty.”
I step toward him. My heel slips on the oil, leg flying out from underneath me. The room tilts. A hit against my temple. Thud. The room turns away from me and disappears into the dark.