Chapter 17 #2
A heavy silver ring circled his first finger. A dark stone sat at its center, carved with the same celestial crest fastened at Xandros' shoulder.
Xandros went still.
The hesitation lasted only a heartbeat, but I felt it in the sudden tightness between my ribs.
Then he stepped forward.
My stomach sank as he took his brother’s hand and bent his head. His pale hair slipped forward over his cheek before his mouth touched the dark stone.
Unease crawled over my skin. The sight unsettled me more than the guards lining the walls.
The king watched him straighten with the same empty expression he had worn while examining me.
“Brother.”
Xandros released his hand. His shoulders settled back into place, though tension remained along his jaw. “Your Majesty.”
The formality made my pulse stumble.
The king already had the throne, the guards, and every person in this room answering to him. He had no reason to make his own brother lower his head except to remind us both who held the power here.
And he had made sure I was standing close enough to watch.
My attention returned to the male sitting so calmly at the head of the table. The dress he had sent. The long silence when we entered. The way he had studied my hand before acknowledging either of us. Even this greeting had been arranged to draw something out.
Nothing he did was careless.
Every gesture asked a question.
The only question was what he hoped we would give away when we answered.
My mouth went dry as his gaze cut to mine, his hand remaining extended in the space between us.
For one breath, I could only stare at the ring and the endless dark trapped in the obsidian stone set within it.
Xandros shifted beside me. “The Druids do not owe us fealty, Brother.”
“I am aware,” he said, his eyes remaining on mine.
He didn’t lower his hand.
My fingers curled once against my palm. He was waiting to see what I would do.
I stepped forward and Xandros went completely still. His shoulders tensed beneath the black coat, and a muscle feathered once along his jaw. Every line of him strained with the effort to stay where he was.
I took the king’s hand anyway, and it was an effort not to recoil from his touch.
Xandros was always warm, even when his Everlight was spent and exhaustion darkened the skin beneath his eyes.
His brother felt nothing like him. The king’s fingers rested cool and strangely still in mine, too light beneath my grip, and for one horrible moment, I thought of the silver trees outside the palace, their bark splitting before crumbling into ash.
I wondered how much pressure it would take before his fingers did the same.
Bile coated the back of my throat.
I lowered my head and pressed my lips to the dark stone.
Every muscle in my body wanted the gesture finished, but I counted the heartbeat anyway and held myself there for exactly as long as Xandros had.
Then I released the king’s hand and straightened.
My heart hammered hard enough to beat against the tight bodice, but I met his eyes before he could mistake any of it for fear.
His pupils narrowed by a fraction. A faint spark of satisfaction appeared there, gone almost as quickly as I caught it.
My stomach turned.
I had given him an answer he had not expected.
Worse yet, I suspected he liked being surprised.
“You understand our customs quickly.”
His voice was lower than Xandros' and unnervingly calm. He spoke without raising it enough to carry through the dining hall, as though he expected everyone inside to make the effort to hear him.
I held his stare and kept my voice even. “I understand when someone is waiting to see what I’ll do.”
The king’s thumb moved once across the arm of his chair.
My pulse hammered in my throat, but I kept my face still while his eyes moved over mine, searching for something I had no intention of giving him.
Then one corner of his mouth lifted. A crawling shiver moved down my back, like tiny legs skittering across my spine.
“So you do.”
Before he could say anything else, Xandros' palm settled against the middle of my back. Warmth spread beneath his hand, startling after the lifeless chill of his brother’s fingers.
His touch was light, barely more than steady pressure as he guided me toward the chair beside his.
I was almost eager to let him.
Putting distance between myself and the Moon King felt like stepping out from beneath a noose.
Xandros pulled out my chair before taking the one beside me. The small courtesy loosened something in my chest.
I knew the feel of his hand against mine now, the sound of his breathing when he was angry, the still-fresh memory of his mouth against mine. I had also watched him defy the Grove for his people and his own king for me.
In a room where I trusted nothing else, sitting beside him felt dangerously close to safety.
A side door opened, and three servants entered carrying covered plates. Their footsteps barely disturbed the silence as they crossed the chamber and set one before each of us, none of them looking directly at their king.
The silver tureens lifted almost together, and the smell of cooked flesh assaulted my senses.
Thin slices of pale meat rested beside dark grains, a small roasted turnip browned at the edges, and a few pieces of shriveled fruit. The servants gathered the covers and withdrew without a word.
I moved my attention toward the grains instead, but the pale strips remained at the edge of my vision, stringy around the cut edges and slick with some kind of dark sauce.
Bramble would have climbed directly into my lap by now.
My hand twitched beneath the table before I remembered the small body curled beside the fire upstairs. The faint pressure of our bond remained somewhere at the edge of my awareness, quieter than it had ever been in the Deepwood.
I missed his weight against me.
Then I looked at the meat again and found myself suddenly grateful he had stayed behind.
The king picked up his knife. “I was told you arrived with an animal.”
My gaze snapped to him.
His knife slid through one of the pale slices, and Xandros' hand stilled beside his cup.
The king glanced at my untouched plate. “You needn’t worry. That is not your companion.”
My stomach lurched hard enough to tighten my throat.
“Enough.” Xandros' voice stayed low beside me.
The Moon King continued cutting his meal as though he had said nothing remarkable. “The Marred have made most of our game unfit to eat. Anything carrying indigo is burned, and what remains grows scarcer by the season.”
He lifted the piece to his mouth and chewed with the same measured calm he seemed to bring to everything. I wondered if he even tasted anything.
I swallowed against the bitter rise of bile and reached for my fork. The grains clung together when I gathered a small bite.
“I don’t eat animals.”
“I know.”
My fingers tightened around the handle.
Of course he knew. He had known when he chose what went onto my plate. He had known when he mentioned Bramble while cutting into the meat and waited to see where my thoughts went.
The untouched slices lay between us like another question.
Would I eat them because he had put them there? Refuse because they violated everything I had been raised to believe? Tell a starving king that his food disgusted me while half his kingdom survived on whatever remained?
The edge of his knife scraped softly against the plate.
“Asterra lost the luxury of choosing what sustains us a long time ago.”
“Aurelian.” Xandros spoke the name quietly.
My fork stopped against the plate.
Aurelian . The name struck a familiar chord somewhere inside of me, but it took me a moment to place it.
Then Elder Griffin’s voice came back to me from the Cedarstone house.
Crown Prince Aurelian Umbriel ordered every remaining road drained for as much Wild as it could give.
My fork nearly slipped from my fingers.
I looked up.
The male at the head of the table was already watching me, silver eyes fixed on mine while the dark stone of his signet ring caught the light beside his plate.
My pulse jumped. “Aurelian Umbriel.”
His knife scraped softly against the plate. One corner of his mouth lifted. “So your elders taught you my name.”
They had.
I’d heard his name in the same lessons as the First Severing, surrounded by names so old they belonged to history rather than memory.
Except Aurelian Umbriel was sitting across from me.
My fingers tightened around the fork as I studied him. He looked older than Xandros, though only slightly. There was nothing in his face that suggested he had been alive when the roads between our realms still stood open.
How long did Moon Fae live?
My gaze flicked toward Xandros before I could stop it.