12. A King’s Appetite #3
“Put a sword in his hand,” Lazaros confided to me in a loud whisper, “because it is the only weapon brutish enough to suit him.”
“And yet,” Atlas said mildly, “I am the brother still seated, and you are the one being sent off to practice with your bow and arrow.”
I sat up so fast I nearly knocked over my cup.
“Archery?”
Both brothers looked at me, startled by the sudden enthusiasm.
“I’ve always wanted to try archery,” I confessed, perhaps with a little too much eagerness. “Always. There was a bow at the base once, but Riley said I’d take someone’s eye out and never let me near it.” The memory came soft this time, fond rather than sharp. “I always thought I’d be good at it.”
I felt the change before I saw it.
Atlas had gone utterly still. Not the easy stillness of a man at rest, but the taut, dangerous quiet of one holding something on a very short leash.
His jaw had set, a muscle feathering at its edge, and when I glanced up, the warmth had drained clean out of his eyes.
Even his hand had tightened around his cup, a hairline crack appearing like a tiny storm had built inside.
“Riley.” My best friend’s name left him flat and cold, carved from stone.
His hand closed over mine on the table, his grip just shy of too tight.
“You will never again need that boy’s permission for anything.
Do you understand me? You are here now.” His voice dropped, rough at the edges.
“And here, there is nothing in any realm you cannot have, should you want it.”
It might have been the most romantic thing he had ever said to me.
Instead, all I heard beneath it was exactly how much Aster had told him… and how very near the surface that fury was still sitting.
Lazaros caught it as well.
I watched something knowing pass behind his eyes, quick and careful, and though I didn’t understand the whole of it, I understood enough to know he was deciding, in that very moment, to steer his brother back from a cliff edge the rest of us couldn’t quite see.
“Right,” he said briskly, clapping his hands together loudly enough to scatter the tension before it could settle.
“On that thoroughly cheerful note,” he flashed me a grin, smooth as anything, the subject already changing beneath his hands, “A bow it is, then. Stick around, and maybe you’ll get your chance.
The finest archer in the kingdom has been known to take on the occasional student…
when the company is worth the trouble, of course.
” He said, placing a hand to his stomach and bowing to me in a deeply respectful gesture.
Then he was loping off across the terrace and down toward the grounds, all that restless energy finally turned loose, leaving me alone at the table with his brother and the warm hush he left behind.
To my surprise, Atlas made no move to follow.
Instead, he reached over, plucked the last pastry from my plate as though he had every right to it, and settled deeper into his chair like a man with nowhere in all the realms he would rather be.
“You’re not going?” I asked.
“My brother can humble the practice targets without my help,” he said. “I have been parted from you for far too long to hand you over to an empty terrace the moment I have you back.” His warm gaze found mine. “The kingdom has had years of me. It can spare me a single morning.”
Something in my chest went soft and entirely too traitorous.
So, we lingered. Longer than either of us should have, the sun climbing higher while the banter ran easily, and his hand found mine on the table between bites.
For a little while, I let myself pretend this was all there was.
No war. No Demetrios. No vow hanging unspoken over my head.
Just a girl, and a king, and a table full of pastries in the morning light.
It couldn’t last, of course.
“There is something you should know,” Atlas said at last, and the slight shift in his tone had me bracing on instinct. “Tonight, the court holds a banquet. In celebration of the kingdom’s survival.” A pause. “And, I suspect, to get their first proper look at the mortal who ended the war.”
“A banquet?”
“A banquet.” He repeated, with a barely suppressed grin, no doubt born of the panic in my voice.
“With your people. All of them?” I swear the question sounded more like a choked squeal of pain than anything that could be classed as normal.
“A great many of them, yes.” The corner of his mouth twitched, the wretched man enjoying every second of this. “In your honor.”
“In… my… honor.” I repeated yet again, this time swallowing hard.
I then looked down at the crimson silk, which I still wasn’t entirely convinced I knew how to sit down in, and tried to picture an entire hall of immortal strangers studying me in something even grander.
And as the dread curled cold and certain in my stomach, I arrived at a truly startling conclusion. I genuinely could not decide which was more terrifying.
The battle I had somehow survived…
Or facing the whole of The?kós in yet another killer dress.
Oh yeah…
This was going to be a disaster