Chapter 5 #2
I stiffen, uncomfortable with being this open in front of anyone who isn’t Jace. But I force myself not to pull away. If I want peace between our kingdoms, the first step to that is by showing everyone we can trust each other. That I trust our enemies to know my one weakness.
Even so, I check for Jace in my peripheral.
Seeing he’s on guard yet relaxed, I lean in and kiss my wife.
Her lips part for me, her tongue darting out to dance with mine.
Cupping her breast, I breathe into her, feeling her chest expand with me.
Her nipple pushes into my palm. She’s so easy, my wife.
Too trusting, too pure for this fucked up world I’ve dragged her into. How long until Raza breaks her?
“Incoming,” Jace murmurs.
I pull back from my queen immediately and turn to greet the unofficial head of my Court. Her long black hair is piled atop her head in her signature bun, complete with lethal hair pins stabbed through it. Her dark-red jumpsuit matches the bloodlust in her eyes.
“Your Majesty,” Dragon Petre says as she stops in front of my wife and raises her hands in greeting – bending them at the elbow, then flipping them over to show empty palms. “I was hoping you’d have lunch with the Court today, while King Morningstar is at the market.”
Arienna blinks. “But I’m going to the market too.”
She smiles. “Of course.” She inclines her head. “I meant after the opening ceremony.”
“Oh. Well, thank you for the invitation… baby, but I was hoping to browse the stalls with him.”
Arienna’s use of a nickname because she can’t remember Petre’s actual name isn’t lost on me, and I’m suddenly quite happy my wife is so shit at lying.
Though I must hand it to Petre. She doesn’t so much as purse her lips at the insult. She merely says, “As a member of the Court, it is my job to make sure you do not make a fool of yourself. I would not advise you being there today.”
“And why is that?” I cut in softly. I already know she’s trying to separate us so she can whisper poison in my wife’s ear, but what if there’s another reason?
King Dravr and his wife will be walking the market with me today. If the Court wants to take us all out together, it would be the perfect time to strike. Especially with Arienna –a queen they can manipulate– safe at their side.
“Look at the tension in this hall, Your Majesty. You and King Dravr hand-picked these people as the ones least likely to attack each other, and still, revenge bleeds in every eye. How many loved ones have we lost to the Vylians? How many have they –”
“Enough.” If it’s anger she wants to stir, she’ll have to try harder than that. “Six Dragons will walk the market with us. If you wish to talk to Arienna, you may do so there.” And if there is an attack, I’ll shove them into the crossfire.
She smiles sweetly, no fear in her silver-and-green eyes. But she always was good at lying. “Of course, Your Majesty. I shall let the others know so we may change our plans.”
She leaves us, and I carry on down the hall.
I need to find King Dravr, Echo, and Prince Nicholas before the opening ceremony.
My brother is overlooking the organisation of the market stalls, and he’s been stressing over it for weeks.
The Vylians can’t be on the outskirts of the square or it’ll look like they’re not wanted here; then Razians might get it into their heads that it’s okay to antagonise them.
But their stalls can’t be closed in by Razians on all sides either or they’ll feel too threatened; then they’ll see danger everywhere and will lash out in fear.
Desperate to solve the puzzle, Nicholas was still tweaking the layout of his plans this morning at breakfast.
I find my brother in the stock room, making sure there weren’t any thieves in the night.
The Vylian merchants arrived at the castle yesterday, before the celebratory ball, with all their wares in tow.
They stayed here as our guests. I did not trust them to be put up in any of our hotels.
Did not trust them to walk our branches and survive until morn.
Peace, it seems, is still going to require us to fight a war. Just a colder one – hopefully.
“Are there any issues?” I ask as we approach.
Nicholas shakes his head. He keeps his eyes down, his focus on the notebook he has in his hand. He writes down a number, then looks up at me. “So far, everything’s here, but I’m not quite done yet.”
“We don’t have long until it opens.”
“I know.”
“The merchants will need access to their wares.”
“I know.”
“It should’ve been checked first thing this morning.”
“Then you shouldn’t have planned it for the day after the ball,” he snaps. “I only woke up three hours ago.”
“I didn’t think you’d attend.”
“Yeah… well…” He writes down another number, his pen scratching hard into his pad. His shoulders are tight, and I wonder what happened after Arienna and I left.
Knowing he won’t want to have that conversation here though, I simply say, “I’m glad you were there.”
He nods.
“Fabia was happy too,” Arienna says brightly.
His pen stills. Then my brothers rounds on me. “Tell me what you want so I can get back to work”
“Show me the floor plan for the market.”
He flips through his notebook, opens it on a sketch, then passes it to me. “Any concerns?” I ask as I study it, clocking where each Vylian table is. If the Court is going to hit me today, they will do it around one of them. Our enemies will make easy patsies.
“Not now. Echo’s been to see me, and she had me remove one of the stalls.”
“Vylian?”
“Razian.”
Better her than me. If I did it, my own people would hate me for taking care of foreigners rather than our own.
The market, after all, is being paid for by the royal treasury.
But no one’s dumb enough to question Echo.
I doubt my brother even asked her what the issue was. She’s too damn scary to talk to.
Hundreds of years old, she hasn’t merely lived through centuries of fighting on Raza’s front lines. She was sent deep into enemy territory with a squad of women, who are now seen as mythical heroes of legend.
Before each mission, they killed themselves, then were resurrected by a necromancer.
The influx of magic in their veins made them near immortal for the next few hours, allowing them to massacre entire cities on their own.
But being brought back that many times fractured their souls – leaving them broken in ways no healer could fix.
Most of them eventually went mad. When two of her squadmates, women she’d fought alongside for decades, attacked their own… Echo was the sole survivor.
After that, the practice was abolished. Unfortunately for us, Echo didn’t retire though. She became the head of the Royal Guard, finding “joy” in training the next generation: our generation.
My body aching with phantom pain just thinking about her, I nod. “Did she say anything?” I ask, happy that I no longer have to seek her out. Either she told Nicholas about any issues to pass on to me or she didn’t have anything to report.
“Nope,” he says.
“Which stall did she remove?”
She will have already put a guard on the family if she deems them a danger, but I want to know about everyone who might be a danger to my queen.
You’ll never learn all those names. There are too many.
Raza will take her from you eventually.
Ignoring that voice and the fear in the pit of my stomach, I finish my discussion with Nicholas, then head out to find King Dravr.
But fuck, he doesn’t give me any reasons to leave my queen here either.
A large part of me wants to do it anyway, keep her safe within the walls of the castle. But I can’t shelter her forever. She will not survive in a gilded cage; she has too much love for the world. So I will bring her with me.
And pray that the feeling of crows circling overhead is just my paranoia.