5. So, a king and a mage walk into a cell #2
“My liege?” the mage, or warrior, or whatever the fuck he was, asked quietly from his dark corner, and the king’s attention snapped over to him.
“Yes? What is—oh, Mina strike me. How rude.” He chuckled, and his unsettling gaze drifted back to me. “Miss Wynn, this is my high mage, Jasper.”
Jasper. The same name my first jailer had mentioned.
“You’re the one who helped deal with my wounds?” I asked, and his only response was a subtle dip of his head.
It was pretty fucking hard to see with his hood and the shadows and how my head was throbbing again, but mages were always a strange bunch like that. My father’s own council of high mages barely spoke to anyone, and they wore the most gaudy standards that made them impossible to tell apart.
“Well, thank you for that,” I felt obligated to add, but I forced my attention back to Maksym quickly. “When did your king die?”
He pursed his thin lips and cast his gaze upward. “Oh, let’s see. Three, maybe four turns ago, I believe.”
My lip curled at both his cockiness and the vagueness he clearly used with purpose, and I scoffed.
“You can’t expect me to believe that something as major as a king being killed happened that long ago, and word never made it to Odessa?
My father was apprised of everything happening on the continent. ”
Maksym’s dark eyebrows climbed. “Was he now? And what makes you so confident your dear father didn’t know, hm?”
“If he knew, my brother would have been informed when he took my father’s seat, as I’m sure you were about many pressing matters after you murdered your father.”
At that, Maksym shrugged in the most infuriating way.
Good thing I had plenty stirring around in my mind.
“Are you out to start a war for fun? Trying to prove some meager worth?” I shook my head and sank back into the corner.
“I cannot fathom why else you would feel the need to dupe my brother like this when we have left your people in peace for centuries. He’s as volatile as they come, and he won’t take kindly to being swindled out of the commodity I am to him.
He’ll be furious once he’s realized what you’ve done. Furious.”
The king fucking laughed.
“A war?” He wiped at his eyes, as if my accusation had been that humorous, and that was all he hung on to from what I had said. “Gods, no. I would never put the lives of my people at risk just to stoke the ire of some pissant boy tyrant.”
“Well?” I tossed my hands out to either side and regretted the move as my blanket fell and cool air wrapped around me.
“How do you explain it all, Your Majesty? Because it seems an awful fucking lot like all roads are pointing in your direction. Odessans would never stand a chance in a war against high or dark fae, and you know that.”
That sad truth had possibly tumbled out with less thought than I’d intended.
“Oh, Miss Wynn.” Maksym laughed, rising from his tiny stool with no urgency. “I’ve been dying for you to ask me my thoughts on the matter, because I’ve got more than a few.”
He picked up the stool and tossed it out into the cellblock aisle.
I flinched at the clatter as it tumbled across the stone floor and settled against the opposite wall.
The mage, Jasper, sighed as he went to deal with it.
The king seemed more occupied with stretching his limbs and rolling his shoulders—they really seemed to bother him.
“Here’s what I think has happened, Princess Enora of Odessa,” he finally said. “Either an enigmatic someone out there is fucking hell-bent on starting a war, maybe your brother, maybe not. Or…”
He fixed me with a lengthy stare, and I motioned for him to get the fuck on with it.
“Have you considered that your brother was so desperate to rid himself of his…commodity, he concocted this all? I mean, killing so many of one’s own citizens to rid yourself of a difficult sibling seems a little extreme, even by my taste, but—” He shrugged.
“We have heard grumblings of just how tense interpersonal relations have been for all involved since your dear father died.”
My jaw slackened.
Not only was it impossible to fathom my brother concocting such a thing—I was little other than a commodity to him—but most also considered Calder an idiot.
Then there was the heavy insinuating Maksym laid out that he was aware of what was going on within the walls of Caenleigh.
If we hadn’t known Grimmoria’s old king died years ago, but they knew the inner workings of ours from the last half a turn? Gods.
I would not touch the comment about killing so many citizens with a ten-foot glaive. There were far too fucking many pressing priorities vying for space in my mind for me to even consider the damned fate of my party.
“So let me get all of this straight,” I said with marked slowness, tracking the king as he paced a leisurely path from one end of my cell to the other.
“You think my little half-brother forged not only months of correspondence between himself and your late king, but then forged a marriage contract, and a treaty, and letters to myself?” For the first time in ages, I laughed.
“I don’t think my brother can get himself dressed in the morning, let alone weave the sort of web of lies you accuse him of. ”
Maksym stood with his burgundy-clad back to me for a moment that stretched on forever, the lean line of his shoulders heaving with a sigh.
I tossed a cautious glance at his mage, who’d taken a new post leaning in my cell entry, but his mouth was still drawn into a tense line.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the whole cloak and shroud thing was just something he put on for outsiders, or if the King of Grimmoria actually tolerated never being able to read his advisor’s face.
“If I had a copper for every time a woman ogled him when they didn’t even know if his fucking eyes were open…” Maksym chuckled, and my attention snapped back to him.
“I was not—”
He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, and I clamped my mouth shut.
“Look, Miss Wynn.” Maksym picked up the dagger he had tossed on my cot, slotting it back into its sheath on his thigh before he dropped himself down into its place.
Even though my limbs were achy and stiff, I pulled my legs as close to my chest and as far away from him as I could.
That earned me an annoyed sidelong glance.
“Let me make this clear. I am not in the business of capturing and imprisoning pretty women to start petty wars, alright?”
“Alright,” I drawled. “So that means I’m free to go, right? When can I leave?”
Maksym sighed. “If only it were so simple.”
I let my head roll back against the cell wall and shut my eyes. “I thought you said you weren’t in the business of capturing and imprisoning?”
“I’m not, but I have laws to uphold, and you have broken a few important ones.”
“Like what? Trespassing?”
“That was one of them, yes. Not to mention the egregious number of forgeries we found in your possessions bearing my crown seal,” he said as he patted the pile of letters. “We take both things seriously here in Grimmoria, and the council refused to let them slide unanswered.”
Of. Fucking. Course.
Only I could end up on the other end of the continent, accused of crimes that were not only laughable, but ones I didn’t even commit. A true Enora Wynn move.
“Ah, yes. Those alleged forgeries I did not have any hand in creating, of course,” I scoffed. “So, what are my options then, Your Majesty?”
Maksym shook his head and rose with the letters in his hands, as if he felt the need to drive his stature home with whatever labor camp assignment he was going to dole out to me.