Chapter 7 Roland
ROLAND
Bet was at my side in the throne room.
Any moment now, Penrose and Nye would crash into each other and fall to earth, and our world would end.
Bet was never willingly in the throne room while business was being conducted.
Perhaps there was the rare occasion he lingered in the shadows to make a point or to discomfort some uptight lord who disliked him, but that morning, he was by my side, standing just beside the throne, twirling a blade so thin and bright it looked more like a needle that a weapon between his long fingers.
Stranger still, Tristram wasn’t there at all.
I could only surmise that Bet had forbade him—not necessarily a play I thought would work, but if Bet thought Tristram were in danger from the envoys, and if Tristram thought Bet were in danger of getting even the slightest bit upset, well, they’d bend for each other at once.
Bet had combed out his dark curls, put something in his hair that made it sleek and well-behaved so that he could tuck it behind his pointed ears and show them off brazenly.
He didn’t even seem bored as Lord Forov and I discussed what our nations were willing to offer one another, what might be fair.
He was simply menacing.
We’d been at it for hours, Rhys sitting at a table to the side with stacks of paper piled before him to sketch out our plans as we conversed, when Forov leaned back and met my eye.
“As wonderful as this all sounds,” he drawled, “it would expedite matters to have a more . . . obvious tie between our empire and your . . . kingdom.”
There was no explicit insult in the words, but oily smile he sent me made me want to throw up my hands and walk away from the whole thing.
Llangard would benefit from stronger trade partners, but our need was greater than that.
Beyond our borders, nations hungered for fertile lands, dissuaded by the once-hostile dragon clans in the mountains surrounding us.
Now that we were at peace, we were a jewel.
My reign was still young—or at least I was—and an ally beyond our borders would strengthen us, especially a naval power like Destovia, who could come to our aid swiftly and help protect our coastline.
I kept telling myself that this was for Llangard while my jaw ached from clenching.
“Such as?” Rhys asked when words failed me. He smiled politely, which was beyond me at the moment.
Lord Forov’s beady eyes lit up. They never once drifted toward Rhys, but stayed locked on me. “A marriage.”
Bet had gone deathly still, the blade in his hands suddenly clutched. My nose flared as I took a slow breath in.
“If I’m not mistaken, you are unattached, Your Majesty,” Forov went on.
Was I? Only in the loosest sense. I’d spoken no vows, but nor had anyone in my kingdom dared trespass on my heart.
“I am not obligated to discuss personal matters during state negotiations, my lord.”
Forov simply smiled. “What I mean is, you have no life mate. No queen.”
My tongue felt large and clumsy in my mouth. My mind spun.
No, I didn’t have a queen, but—
Aderyn, there in my arms, his pale golden lashes brushing his cheek as he slept. His deep green eyes, and how they brightened when he smiled at me. The way my heart soared every time I saw Bowen’s enormous form on the horizon, knowing he’d be with me soon.
It was shortsighted and simpleminded of me, but I’d never seriously considered inviting another into my heart when Aderyn already owned the whole of it.
Oblivious to how he’d stunned me, Forov leaned forward on the balls of his feet.
“Princess Josephine is the emperor’s only daughter—his only heir.
The daughter of an emperor? A fine match for any king.
” His tongue slid quickly between his lips, wetting them.
“You may be young, Your Majesty, but you’re not eternal. ”
There was a sound as Bet moved—metal on stone, near to my ear—but the sound was blocked out by Rhys standing. The move was quick and so dramatic that it knocked over his inkwell, spilling a black mess all across the table and the papers he’d been working on.
“What an offer,” Rhys announced to the four of us. “You have given us much to consider, Lord Forov.” He swept around the table, ignoring his upturned well and spreading his arms to turn Forov away from the throne. “You will understand that we need time to consider.”
Rhys didn’t look at me then. Surely he didn’t expect me to seriously consider a proposal to marry someone I’d never met before.
I stared at the back of him as he led Forov away.
It was for the envoy’s safety, I realized. Bet marched down from the throne to the table where Rhys had perched, blade grasped in his fist, but he didn’t make it ten steps before Rhys and Forov were gone. Bet drove the blade’s slim tip into the tabletop, cursing.
“Presumptive pus-filled cock on legs,” he growled.
Now that we were alone, the throne felt hard and unforgiving against my back. I stood with a sigh, wandered down from the throne myself, and set Rhys’s inkwell upright.
“Leave it,” I said quietly.
Perhaps Forov had meant to make the offer as a—a kind of . . . gift. A show of generosity from an empire that believed itself above everyone else. I, at least, might be equal to them, in their eyes.
A ridiculous prospect, considering so much of my kingdom displeased them.
At the very least, they wanted something from me, though it was hard to imagine what might be worth the hand of the emperor’s sole heir.
Another grumble from Bet, and he swiped out a cloth of some sort.
The splash of ink on the wood was gone in a second.
The cloth itself was stained already—brown spots that might’ve one time been blood, though it’d been washed again and again in the years since.
Leave it to Bet Kyston to best know how to clean up a mess.
“You don’t have to humor these people any longer. The Destovians need this alliance more than we do,” Bet murmured.
That wasn’t remotely true, but Bet had always made do with what he had and brought the world to its knees.
When he was angry, he had this way of clenching his teeth and hardly moving his lips, like he didn’t want to give away where he’d strike from next. His black eyes cut into me sharply when he narrowed them. “If they have anything we need, we can take it.”
I huffed. “Can we now?”
Bet shrugged, his gaze flicking to his discreet blade as it resumed its dance across his fingers. “We have magic.”
“The Hudoliaeth is full of students. Children.”
He arched his brow high, not a wrinkle on his pale forehead. “I watched your aunt lift a mountain.”
I sighed through my nose. “Aunt Gillian has magic, sure. And a family I’m not willing to part her from.” My cousins, after all, were still quite young, little as they seemed to think so. “She’s not a soldier.”
“That didn’t stop her from fighting before.”
I glared at him. I’d trained in the art of war, to be sure, but it was a matter of necessity. When I’d been a prince, it’d been the thing to do, and I’d been pitiful at it. After the Battle of Windy Pass, I—
I determined that I would never let another Llangardian raise their sword in my defense unless I could protect them in turn. I’d nearly lost . . . I’d nearly lost everything that day, and if it took sword practice and years of dedication to ensure it never happened again, so be it.
Even still, I hadn’t had any natural talent for fighting. It was hard won and cultivated through years of dedication. War wasn’t a thing I longed for. We’d respond to threats in kind, but I’d be hard-pressed to resort to violence without great need.
“Our allies are dragons,” Bet insisted. “The Destovian ships won’t matter against fire, and we’d take the land after that first assault from above.”
The curl of Bet’s lip spoke to simmering rage he was ready to unleash on all of Destovia, and while I could understand it, I couldn’t risk it.
“No.”
Bet’s jaw clenched.
With anyone else, I’d have left it at that, but I owed Bet better. I could never fully explain how it felt to watch the people I loved fight for their lives, nor how it’d nearly gutted me to see Aderyn, smallish and abused and so green even then, on the middle of a battlefield.
Heaving a sigh, I leaned back. “The clans are not allies I would risk—would use. That was the crux of all the conflict between us. The dragons used us.” Those were the stories—dragons had taken Llangard from elves, had enslaved humans, and been defeated by a hero turned monster in the form of Athelstan, my ancestor.
“And we cast them out. Defeated them. And—” I swallowed roughly.
“And I won’t have it. We will work together, not with opposite interests or to use each other, because we depend on each other. ”
I’d never have magic of my own, but magic as a whole had almost died in Llangard, thanks to the wedge driven between our people.
As I forced myself to hold Bet’s eye, his gaze softened. His hand fell on my shoulder, light and warm. “You may not be able to avoid war forever. If not Destovia, then someone else. Somewhere else. Sometime else. It’s the way of the world, Roland.”
A life lesson, to be sure. I even thought Rhys would agree, not out of some violent impulse of his own, but because he’d read and read and read and knew the ways that people failed.
I couldn’t fail.
“We can afford to avoid it now.”
His lips pressed tight together, a thin line disappearing as he inhaled. “So long as you’re careful not to compromise our safety in the name of impossible peace.”
I shook my head. No way would I accept that idea.
Only decades ago, all the humans in Llangard would have said it was impossible to have peace with dragons. Now, we had it.
Why not dream bigger?