Chapter 76
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
S omewhere between her soft skin and her unwavering confidence, Rowan had almost convinced me that we would leave the Obsidian Palace without incident. That we might still find a way out of whatever Iiro was scheming.
Until the screaming started.
Had Iiro decided to attack outright? But, surely, he wouldn’t have started with a woman.
And the only rooms that close to ours were…my father’s.
Der’mo .
My heartbeat pounded in my chest. I wanted to tell Rowan to wait in our rooms, but that was time wasted on an order she would never follow, so I reluctantly accepted that she would follow me into whatever awaited us in the hall. Unarmed.
Edging myself in front of her, I wrenched open the door with one hand, already reaching for my sword with the other. Whatever awaited us, I would have time to push one saber into her hand while I drew the other. She wouldn’t be unprotected.
Assuming there was danger, and not just my father flying off a handle from twenty-year-old grief that felt brand new to him.
I froze when the hallway came into view, stopping just short of drawing my sword.
It was my stepmother who had screamed, who was still wailing in the awkwardly held arms of my father’s newest personal guard. Mikhail and Andreyev had emerged from their own quarters to assess the scene, both still and uncertain in the light of her hysterics.
Did they think she was prone to them because she was a woman?
Only I knew she was down to the barest echo of humanity. That there was almost nothing and no one that could have garnered this reaction from her.
And my father was not here.
He hadn’t been summoned by her screams, hadn’t added to them with his own. There was no sign of him at all, though the door behind her was ajar.
My breath seized in my lungs.
Ava was so many things, nearly all of them despicable, but on her worst day, she wouldn’t have risked the dukes finding out about my father’s condition. It put her own position in danger—and her life, for that matter—if the other clans believed us to be weak.
So why had she left the door open?
“What’s happened?” Andreyev’s voice sounded far away, past the unsteady beat of my own heart pounding in my ears.
Ava finally straightened to her full height, pulling herself away from the, now obviously relieved, guard, wringing hands that trembled in a way she couldn’t have entirely feigned.
“I went to the sauna,” she choked out. “And when I returned, I found him…”
Found him.
If she had found him injured, she would be at his side, playing the part of the concerned wife I could never quite tell if she believed or not.
If she had found him in another pile of wreckage of his own making, she never would have alerted the entire palace.
So she had found him?—
“This was you,” she spat at me, but I ignored her, my feet carrying me unbidden to the room that was too quiet and too still and suddenly too small to house the man in question.
For all the carnage I had witnessed in my relatively short life, I should have been prepared. Hell, I knew it was coming from the moment I pushed open the door and the metallic scent of blood accosted me.
And it shouldn’t have bothered me.
His still body. His empty eyes, pale blue and shot through with blood. His bloodless lips still twisted up into a grimace.
Had he died in pain?
Did it matter?
Surely that was justice for the things he had done. I could hardly be upset about it now. After all, hadn’t I wanted this to happen? Needed it, even?
I swallowed, following the familiar lines of his face down to the blood still seeping slowly from his neck. The crimson pool almost seemed to glow…
My breath left me in a single exhale.
It was glowing. Or sparkling, rather, reflecting the firelight that danced along the many jewels encrusted in the familiar hilt of the dagger I had spent all afternoon searching for.
The bare-chested siren that no one from Socair would be caught dead carrying.
Rage coursed through my veins, clouding out my vision with a crimson hue the exact same shade as my father’s blood.
This was Iiro’s doing.
I didn’t know how the aalio had done it, but it all made sense now, why he was so insistent on baiting me into accompanying my father when he should have wanted the duke here alone.
Why he had made sure I would bring my wife—my wife, whose dagger was protruding from my dead father’s throat. She stood beside me now, features painted in horror and understanding as she beheld her precious family heirloom coated in the blood of a man she hated.
Iiro’s oily voice slithered down the hallway, igniting my fury all over again. My entire body thrummed with the visceral need to reach for my swords. It would be so easy. He was no doubt distracted by what he saw as a victory, already basking in the carnage he had caused. I could draw both of my sabers and sever his head cleanly from his body in a death that was so much more painless than what he deserved before his guards even reacted.
Rowan placed a slim hand on my arm, equal parts cautious and comforting, like she knew exactly where my mind had gone. It was enough to stay my hand. But barely.
Winning requires patience.
My father’s voice resounded in my head. It was the first thing he had said to me when I sat down for my earliest lesson on strategy, hardly tall enough to see the map he had spread across the table.
Acting on your emotions is the fastest way to wind up dead.
He had been a monster then, too, but I hadn’t known it yet. All I had seen was the duke who was respected by his entire clan, the father who was proud of me.
The war hero.
Regardless of what else he had been, though, he had been an unparalleled strategist. That much was true. So I took a breath, and then another, refusing to turn to acknowledge the man who pretended to be king. If I looked at him now, I would kill him. And if I killed him, my lemmikki would pay the price.
Besides, I didn’t just want him dead.
I wanted him defeated. And for that, I would need to bide my time a little longer.
I walked on leaden footsteps to my father’s corpse, pulling the dagger from his throat and shielding his body from view. Maybe he didn’t deserve his pride, but I would be damned if Iiro gloated even more over the destruction he had wrought.
His footsteps sounded closer behind me, but I still didn’t turn. Instead, I used my free hand to pull the blankets from the bottom of the bed, wondering who could have possibly caught him unawares enough to murder him in his own bed.
Wouldn’t he have been suspicious if Iiro had come here? Or had he already been sleeping, spent from the energy he used hiding his decaying mind day in and day out.
I paused once I had pulled the blankets up to his shoulders, my fingers brushing against the skin-covered bone. It felt frail. He felt frail, like his body had deteriorated right along with his mind, and I was too stuck in my memories of him to notice. It was jarring, so at odds with the warrior—the monster —I knew him to be.
“It was her. That’s her dagger.” Ava’s voice was even more grating than usual, a serrated blade dragging along the insides of my mind.
She would be next. Once Iiro had been broken, his plans destroyed, once he had lost everything the way he had tried to take everything from me, I would find a way to make sure my stepmother followed.
“There will be an investigation immediately,” Iiro announced, sounding for all the world as though he was surprised by this turn of events. “Everyone is to adjourn to the throne room.”
I finally turned to look at him. His face was carved into a serene authority, his hand outstretched for the dagger. But his eyes glinted with triumph.
“Give me the weapon.”
Every part of me rebelled at handing that aalio my wife’s dagger. It belonged with her, where she could use it to remove his favorite body parts if he dared to come within three feet of her with his threats and his unreasonable hatred for the woman who refused to be a pawn in his games.
But the dukes were watching, and my refusal would only make this worse for her. So I held out the weapon, only narrowly resisting the urge to grant him the same death he had so graciously arranged for my father.
Winning requires patience .
And vengeance, even more so.
Iiro lounged on the throne like he had any right to it, each self-righteous drum of his fingertips adding kindling to the endless inferno of my fury.
I needed a plan, but it was hard to think through the crimson haze of my anger, especially when he had the nerve to look at my wife.
“Lady Stenvall—Lady Rowan Stenvall. Do you confirm this is your dagger?” he asked, eyebrows raised in a pretense of inquiry.
She took a breath, features unwavering as she lifted her chin confidently.
How does it feel to know she is still not afraid of you, even now, you pretentious, miserable svoloch?
“Yes, but it went missing this morning,” she answered in a clear voice, not allowing the aalio to cow her.
He gave her a thin, cold smile. “How convenient. I assume you reported this to someone.”
No one would have reported it to someone. It was a flimsy way to refute her claim, though the claim itself had little backing. Still, I wondered what his game was, aside from the show he was putting on.
Rowan blinked irritably. “No, but?—”
“Brother,” Korhonan cut her off. “Surely you aren’t suggesting that the princess bested a seasoned warrior with no more than a dagger.”
He wasn’t conniving by nature, but he must have hidden some of his brother’s penchant for falsehoods underneath his unending nobility, because even he couldn’t have failed to notice that she had done just that on more than one occasion.
But Iiro didn’t correct him on it, though he had witnessed the exact same thing. More than that, he didn’t so much as blink at Korhonan’s interruption of his proceedings, nor his defense of Rowan.
The pieces fell into place so much slower than they should have, laden down by the oppressive weight of my shock and my fury. That was why he had drawn out his accusation of my wife.
So that his brother would intervene, so that he could lead them to the far more likely culprit. After all, why bother getting Rowan out of the way when she would be powerless without her husband here?
“Naturally not,” Iiro agreed, letting out a chuckle that grated against my bones before he looked pointedly at me, just as I had known he would. “But someone else had easy access to Lady Rowan’s dagger. Only one person, in fact. Someone who had ample motive to want Sir Aleksander out of the way.”
I fixed him with my glare, not bothering to hide my disgust for him.
“If I wanted my father out of the way— “ And of course I did, for more reasons than this aalio would ever understand. But I wasn’t an idiot. “Why would I wait until I was in your castle, surrounded by potential witnesses?”
Mikhail might be a coward, but he wasn’t an idiot, and Andreyev was, by all accounts, a fair lord. Logic was not an entirely lost cause.
Iiro was unfazed.
“Because he was about to help me enact a law to feed our people, one you staunchly disagreed with.” He explained in the patient tone of a man speaking to a small, obstinate child. “We all heard how you felt about that.”
“And why would I use my wife’s dagger?” I countered, willing my hands to stay calmly at my sides rather than hurl one of my own daggers at his sternum, just to show him how little reason I had to use Rowan’s.
Since my many hidden weapons might be needed soon, I narrowly refrained, even when he shook his head in mock disappointment.
“Poetic justice?” he offered. “You appear to have grown rather fond of her for reasons unbeknownst to me, and he did order her flogging, did he not?”
We both know he didn’t. But he also knew I couldn’t reveal that now, not when I had hidden my father’s condition.
“He did,” Ava supplied, lying as easily as she breathed.
Her bloodstained hands were fisted at her sides, but that could have easily been explained away by grief to anyone who didn’t know what a conniving witch she was.
Rowan glared at her, lips parted, but Korhonan cut in before she could respond.
“If he’s fond of her, that hardly seems a reason to implicate her in his father’s murder.” He emphasized each word, clinging to only the barest hint of deference.
Iiro only waved his hand, the gesture as placating as it was dismissive.
“You said yourself, Brother, no one would believe someone Rowan’s size could take down the duke. She was never in danger.”
Korhonan clenched his jaw, not buying his brother’s unending load of horse dung for a rare change.
“Then why implicate myself that way?” I demanded, impatience creeping into my voice.
Iiro actually tutted. “A clever misdirect, obviously.”
“Your Majesty.” Theodore’s tone was sharper than I had ever heard him use with his brother, each syllable clipped with barely concealed anger. “I’m sure no one here believes that Lord Evander would murder his own father and the duke of his clan.”
Perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising after our conversation earlier, but somewhere past my fury, the smallest bit of gratitude crept in. He was speaking up not just for Rowan, who he had believed himself in love with, but for me.
Whether it was out of some long-lost semblance of friendship or loyalty, or just his scruples rising up against his brother’s blatant deceit for a change, I could appreciate it all the same.
Though Iiro decidedly could not. Where he had been expecting his brother’s interruption the first time, Korhonan’s determination to counter him was clearly wearing on his patience now, if the warning glance he shot was any indication.
“And can you vouch for his whereabouts between dinner and the time Sir Aleksander’s body was discovered?” Iiro demanded, fixing his brother with a pointed stare.
Theodore stared back, nostrils flaring as he sucked in a breath.
“You know that I cannot, as I was with you.” The words were damning, not just to me, but to whatever respect remained for the man he had tried to defend to me only hours ago.
I wondered if Iiro knew that the price of this plan would be his brother’s regard. He may have been realizing it now, as he took a fraction of a second too long to nod in response.
Even his wife didn’t look entirely happy with him, her pale eyes moving between the boy she looked at as a son, then her husband, then my wife.
Whether he felt the weight of their disapproval or not, Iiro’s features were carved into their usual smarminess by the time he faced us once more. He settled dramatically back into his chair, basking in a victory he hadn’t quite managed yet.
Though I supposed it was close enough. Whatever his long-term plan was, he had enough support with the dukes in this room, had planted just enough suspicion that, at the very least, he would be able to detain me.
Leaving Rowan alone and unarmed, without me to defend her.
Would Korhonan keep her safe? Would I let it come to that?
My body pulsated with the impotent force of all the rage, the fury, I hadn’t managed to direct into a single useful tactic, my heart pounding a deafening staccato in my ears as I tried in vain to search for a single solution that didn’t involve turning this room into a bloodbath.
Movement caught my attention from the smaller throne at the head of the room.
Perhaps if Iiro had been a little less prone to theatrics, just a single iota less committed to smugly taking in the room, he would have noticed when his wife straightened in her chair. When she squared her shoulders and schooled her features into a perfect mask of neutrality.
When she inhaled a slow, smooth breath, only to let it out on a lie.
“I can vouch for their whereabouts.”