Chapter 12 Stark #2
The hall is packed when we arrive, the air hazy with smoke and the moisture of too many people’s bodies in too small a space. The minstrels are set up on a small stage in the far corner of the room, plucking at stringed instruments of various sizes.
“Who are all these people?” I ask Noemi, looking around at the motley collection of courtiers, most in some stage of drunkenness already.
“Cousins, second cousins, third cousins, cousins’ cousins…” Noemi catalogs, looking around. “Cousins’ wives, cousins’ ex-wives, sons and daughters of cousins…”
“I get it,” I cut her off.
“Anyone who’s vaguely related at all shows up for these things,” Noemi says. “They know that Father values his music, and they want to at least seem to like the things he likes…”
“Aha.” I weave around clusters of cousins, trying not to wince at the slightly off-tune harmonies drifting across the room.
Sweetness of life personified
My lady love so wondrous fair
The marriage knot we two did tie
My wife, who had the roving eye
Noemi squeezes her eyes shut as if that will somehow drown out the warbling voice. “Not this one again. He loves this misogynistic bullshit.”
I struggle to make out the words, and my mouth twists in distaste as the song continues.
… my brother’s mouth upon her thigh
Her fingers tangled in his hair
My untrue wife just moaned and sighed
My wife, who had the roving eye
Brother, this marks our last goodbye
My wife with you I will not share
Lock her away in tower high
My wife, who had the roving eye
Seven tears that woman cried
I laughed to see her deep despair
But ne’er did she apologize
My wife, who had the roving eye
I manage to shut out the words, focusing instead on studying the people in the crowd, committing their faces to memory so that I can later gauge how many of them come to the coronation.
Blessed relief finally comes when the lurid song ends and the gathered audience bursts into applause.
I stand up, ignoring the confused looks that morph into fearful glances as people recognize me and whispers start in my path.
“Whether or not they’re done playing, I’m done listening,” I growl, not bothering to keep my voice down. “We need to deliver our message and get back on the road.”
Noemi rolls her eyes but stands to follow me. We pick our way through the crowd toward where her father sits. He’s a reedy, thin man in his midfifties, with peppered gray hair. His face is blotchy and red from years of overindulging.
Seated next to him is his current lady—wife number eight, if I remember correctly. The first seven didn’t give him any sons, so he had them killed. The lady is about Noemi’s age, plump and blond. She somehow looks simultaneously bored and on edge.
I let Noemi push in front of me and take the lead.
“Ah, Noemi, we heard you were paying a visit,” Lord Eisenfall says distractedly when he finally acknowledges us. He doesn’t offer us a seat or any food. “Did you travel far?”
“No, my lord.” Noemi’s voice is impressively calm. “It was barely more than a day’s ride on wolfback.”
“I trust your wolves have been well cared for?” His concern for the direwolves seems to eclipse that for his own daughter. “How’s your mother, by the way?”
“Still dead,” says Noemi.
My fists get so tight that knuckles crack, and I swallow back words I might regret later. Disrespectful fuck.
Lord Eisenfall is steadfastly ignoring me, looking at his daughter and swishing his emberwine around in his glass.
“Yes, yes, of course. Well, to what do we owe this visit?”
“We need your confirmation that you’ll attend Queen Meryn Sturmfrost’s coronation,” Noemi says, voice still level.
“Well, I’m not so sure about that,” Lord Eisenfall says slowly, then purses his lips. “After all, the Eisenfalls have been loyal to the Valtieres for as long as anyone remembers.”
I stride forward. “Cyril Valtiere was beheaded for his crimes, and Killian Valtiere has fled. Queen Meryn Sturmfrost is the heir of the true, original royal line of Nocturna. Our country needs a leader, and we have one. She wears the true, ancient crown and wields awe-inspiring power.”
The young Lady Eisenfall stares at me, mouth open. Lord Eisenfall just shakes his head, taking his time cutting a bite of food and chewing before responding.
“I’ve received word from Rabenfrost that they’re sheltering King Killian from the usurper and they’re looking for others to join their cause. It’s a compelling argument.”
His words echo Killian’s proclamation made yesterday over the bonds. I hope more Bonded aren’t defecting to that spineless fuck…
With the Dire Blade still broken, though, the wolves seem to be in disarray, rudderless. My teeth grind together.
“You’d run to a Siphon pretender instead of supporting the true queen of Nocturna?”
Lord Eisenfall takes another bite of food, then pulls a piece of gristle from his mouth. Disgusting.
“Yes, I’ve heard the girl’s accusation about the rulers being secretly Siphons all this time,” he says, pulling apart a piece of bread and dunking it into gravy until it’s sopping wet.
“A bit dramatic. But then women are so often prone to flights of fancy. What can your upstart queen offer me that Valtiere cannot?”
My hand flies to the hilt of my sword, but movement behind the lord makes me pause. A drunken, red-cheeked, weasel-faced young man comes stumbling over from his seat a dozen chairs down, his glassy stare directed at Noemi.
“Cousin,” he slurs, “what are you going to do now that the king is dead?”
Noemi just looks at him, face stony.
“Will you spread your legs for this new queen, too? I hear you like that, but does she? Have you already tasted her?”
The man’s mouth opens to say more, but whatever vile words he intended next are silenced forever with an angry swipe of my hand.
Sometimes it takes effort to impel, but the power comes to me now without a thought, slamming into him like a brick wall.
He’s pushed up and back, and the luxe tapestry behind him isn’t enough to cushion the blow as his head thwacks into the wall and splits open like overripe fruit.
Lord Eisenfall and his court look on, stunned, as my power releases him. His body crumples onto the serving table below, displacing several full goblets of wine that spill and tumble onto the floor. A wide slash of red and an accompanying splatter mark the spot where his head met tapestry.
I gesture at the stain. “Hope that’s not a family heirloom.”
Lord Eisenfall swallows audibly. I look over to Noemi, and she gives me the smallest hint of a nod.
I keep my voice flat and level, knowing I have every ear in this hall. “What I’ll offer you is your life and your freedom, and if you don’t fall in line, you will have the full force of the Bonded bearing down on your fiefdom. Are we clear?”
The silence is profound, until finally the lord merely nods. “We’re clear. I’ll be there, Alpha Stark.”
Turning, I lead Noemi away through the shocked, silent crowd. And then a buzzing, electric connection unfurls in my head, a dam that’s been opened wide.
It’s never happened before, and still, I know what it is instantly.
Fuck.
“Stark?” Meryn’s voice calls in my mind. “What’s happening? Are you okay? I… felt something.”
Noemi and I push out of the doors of the great hall. “Go pack up,” I tell her. “I’ll be down there in just a moment.”
She gives me a bewildered look, but she shrugs and heads toward our guest rooms. In the now-empty passageway, I focus my mind back on the surging connection that Meryn has torn open between the two of us.
Our connection has lived inside me from the moment she and Anassa bonded, but with Cratos’s barriers up, it’s been easy enough to ignore. I’ve never sought it out or attempted to use it.
It’s been like the sun: a fact of my life that I don’t have to pay attention to because it simply is.
Now my vision has been directed into it, and I can no longer avoid it because I’m being blinded by its warmth.
With Meryn’s voice comes a slow leak of her feelings, too—something she should be able to safeguard me from if only she was better at this. Meryn and Anassa are still working on the finer skills of mental communication after blocking each other out for so much of the Trials.
She’s on edge, concerned.
Concerned about me.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say quickly. “It’s nothing.”
Her frustration pours through the connection. “That was a blatantly suspicious response. You were angry about something, angry enough that it reached me. Tell me.”
That’s not good. I’ll need to do a better job of keeping her out, or at least of leashing my temper.
“Is Eisenfall refusing to come to the coronation?” she asks, uneasy.
“They’ll be coming,” I say. “I was pissed because Noemi’s family are behaving predictably toward her.”
Meryn might be all strong bluster on the outside, but I’ve seen the woman beneath it now.
The unending concern for others—now extended to an entire kingdom.
The way she bottles up every bad thing that happens to her, locks it away, until it begins to eat her alive.
And the way she would let it, time and time again, if it meant sparing the people she cares about.
It would be admirable if it wasn’t deeply unhealthy.
Even the hardest things can break with enough pressure. I’m in no hurry to push her toward that edge.
“Okay,” she says slowly, and I can tell she’s trying to parse what that means. “I was just worried for a second that you were doing something reckless like killing people out there.”
Well, shit. So much for sparing her.
I’m not sure what to say, so I just shake my head and go in the same direction as Noemi. As I get into my room, Meryn pipes in again, accurately reading into my silence.
“Stark, you’re not killing people, right? Like, the people we’re trying very desperately to convince that my claim to the throne is legitimate?”
“I told you not to worry,” I say, throwing my few unpacked things into my bag.
“Stark!”
“Meryn.”
I pause, annoyed. She might not want any blood on her hands, but intimidating the nobles to attend by any means necessary is why I’m here. You can’t agree to use a weapon and then get mad when it cuts. She’s being fucking obtuse.
“Do you want the nobles to attend or not? I didn’t kill anyone important. Just an insignificant cousin. The Eisenfall nobles will be at the coronation, and we’re leaving for Nachtfall now.”
“So what’s the plan, then?” She’s growing agitated. “A whirlwind murder tour? Dead nobles in every fiefdom, but at least we’ll scare them all into showing face?”
For someone with a vicious streak, she’s really naive sometimes. “Yeah, possibly. Is that a problem?”
“That’s not what I want, Stark. They should come because they believe my claim, not because my brutal enforcer has them worried for their lives.”
I’ve heard people call me worse things. I’ve believed worse, in fact. The words shouldn’t smart.
But they do, worming their way under my skin, peeling away at the tenuous alliance the two of us have started to build.
“All these nobles have heard about you is a horror story,” I seethe.
“No one is coming unless it’s for self-preservation.
You don’t want to rule through fear? Great.
Prove that to them when they get there for your coronation.
In the meantime, leave me alone to do my fucking job of getting them there in the first place. ”
There’s a knock on my doorframe. Noemi’s in the hallway, her bag over her shoulder. “Ready?”
“Let’s get out of this shithole,” I respond.
I slam my mental connection with Meryn shut—rebuilding the dam, looking away from the light, and hoping that it keeps her out for good.