Chapter 17 #2
He glanced back over his shoulder, his voice dropping the formality as he said, “He won’t do that because you look awful, Alek. You don’t seem to care how terrified your father is. Do you realize he’s meeting with the council? Fuck, and the clergy? Everyone is troubled. You need to eat.”
There was the real him. Beneath his model soldier facade was the vultus who’d once been my best friend.
It was difficult to look at him without seeing the leather ball we used to toss between us on summer days or the fallen leaves we used to wrestle in.
I could still smell the peat moss beneath the waterfall where we’d hide from my schoolmasters.
But it was also difficult to look at him because of how much we’d changed and how much we’d lost. What I saw now was not a friend. It was the death of hope.
I swallowed, forcing a calm into my voice that I didn’t feel as I shrugged. “I would love to eat. But like I told him, this is not the one.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You cannot honestly still be trying to convince everyone of that nonsense.”
See, the thing about Neopal? He knew better. He knew I was full of shit, because unlike my father, he knew me.
“Are you accusing me of being dishonest?” I grinned. “Easy, Neopal. He won’t be your king forever. Someday, that role will belong to me. Where does that leave you?”
He looked like he wanted to scream, but he swallowed it down like a good boy. Then he asked, as proper as ever, “May we enter?”
I held his gaze as I stepped back, pinning the door open. “I’d be delighted.”
Neopal’s boots clicked as he marched inside like it was a mission, only to halt when he scanned the empty room. “Where is he?”
“Perhaps you should follow the honorable chain.”
His gaze trailed the chain as it wound across the floor, disappearing beneath the washroom door. “How long has he been in there?”
A full fucking day. “A few minutes or so.”
He dashed to the door and knocked sharply. Feloré jumped from inside, rattling the chain.
“Human,” Neopal said. “You need to come out. Food is served.”
We all waited, but he didn’t start to move.
Neopal knocked again. “Now. You need to come out now. If you refuse, I will have no choice but to remove this door from its hinges.”
“Good gods, that’s so damn unnecessary,” I said, scrunching my face as I rubbed my eyes. I wanted him out here more than anyone, but his dignity had been stripped away. Let him have that one space. “He’ll come out when he’s ready.”
“I’m under strict orders,” Neopal said, squinting at the hinges, debating what tool would be most appropriate, “to ensure he is available to you should you choose to take him. He can’t do that if he has locked himself in there.”
“He hasn’t locked himself in there. Just leave the fucking food. He’ll eat it when he’s hungry—”
The door creaked open.
I’d expected Feloré to be frightened as he stepped into the room, but that wasn’t the case at all. Not only was the chain balled in his fist, whitening his knuckles, but he was staring at Neopal with rage. With pure, poisonous hatred in his eyes.
“You,” he whispered, gaze sharpening into a glare, compounded by the icy color of his strange eyes. “I know you.”
Neopal blinked, probably caught off guard. It wasn’t customary for a human to speak to a high-level commander with such flagrant disrespect in their tone.
“It was you with the king that night.” Feloré slowly stepped toward him, squinting as he pointed a finger. “You were the one with the spile. Feeding on me. Putting me to sleep.”
My eyebrows lifted as I turned to Neopal just in time to catch one of his shoulders twitching, like he was reliving the memory.
An emotion I wasn’t expecting shot through me. Gods, what was it even? Envy? Jealousy? It was like it was both those things but something more, too. He’d had him. Neopal, my goddamn fallen friend, had gotten to taste this perfect human.
No, it wasn’t jealousy. It was fucking wrath.
“You’re despicable. You helped him trick me that night,” Feloré continued, shaking his head as if in disgust. “Did you know this was to be my fate?”
A muscle in Neopal’s jaw tightened and I wanted to punch the ripple it caused in his stupid face. “It’s not my duty to ask questions. It is my duty to do as my king wishes—”
“Did you fucking know?” Feloré shouted.
Everyone in the room flinched except for me. My bones stilled as I marveled at him. I couldn’t even help it. As much as I wanted to jump down Neopal’s throat and gut him from the inside, it was delicious to watch him get scolded by a human.
I’d thought concubines were docile creatures of leisure, getting their holes and pockets filled. The more I learned about him, the more I realized just how foolish it was to judge the human by the profession.
“Well?” I asked Neopal, when he said nothing. “Did you know? Because I certainly did not, and neither did he. Where’s the honor in that, Commander?”
Neopal flashed me a look, then announced to the room, “Our king is divinely chosen. It is not our place to question his word.”
I snorted. “It must be so lovely to excuse yourself of moral clarity just because the king—”
“Fuck your king,” Feloré spat.
The whole room stopped breathing.
Every servant halted cold. Neopal swiveled to Feloré, gaping with huge eyes. It was as if the walls themselves held their breath.
Oh. SHIT.
“Not only is the king a raging lunatic,” Feloré continued, “but he’s a fantastical liar, too. That is who you think is divinely chosen? All hail.”
My eyes rounded further. Oh, shit. Shitshitshitshit. Slander was truly a black-and-white law. It was one thing to call a vultus a demon, but slandering the king came with devastating consequences for a human, and everyone here heard it. There was no room for mercy.
“Uh,” I started, aggressively smoothing my eyebrow. “Well, he’s clearly distraught, and can you really blame him? He’s been captured, taken from his home, and chained to this room. He fears for his life—”
“Human, I must have simply misheard you,” Neopal said, his fiery gaze locked with Feloré’s. “Certainly, there is no way you just maligned the king’s holy and sanctified name in his own palace.”