Chapter 5 #2
‘So sorry, milady— Uh … Lady Reinhart,’ the one closest to Arla began.
‘We apologise milady. We knocked but—’
‘Why are you here?’ Arla cut the sister off, not eager to listen to her own shortcomings – lack of awareness, lack of precautions – repeated back to her from the maids.
‘To light the fire, and to inform you that dinner will be in an hour. His Majesty has requested your attendance,’ the maid closest continued.
She had a scar on her jaw, Arla noted.
‘What time is it?’ Gods, she hated not being in control, especially in this kingdom surrounded by these people.
‘Seven, milady,’ Scar answered.
Gods, she was so stupid. She had slept for hours.
‘I can find you a gown, if you’d like?’ Scar’s sister offered, and for the first time since she had sprung awake, Arla looked down at herself.
She had gone to sleep wearing the robe she had found hanging on the back of the door, a lovely peach-coloured silk she wouldn’t have minded in her own chambers at Castle Grey.
‘A gown would be helpful. Thank you.’ She wasn’t usually so polite – especially to Kastonians – but she was embarrassed at not having noticed them enter. Arla wished for them to be in her favour if it would save them gossiping to the palace staff about how they had found her.
The maids returned quickly, carrying between them a selection of dresses that were strangely her size. Arla wondered if they had ‘borrowed’ them from the queen and if she would be punished for it. No matter; they wouldn’t get within an inch of her. She wouldn’t be caught off-guard again.
Settling on a pine-green coloured dress, Arla pulled the fabric over her skin, surprised to find it soft and expensive.
The twins – Lilith and Rheia, they had revealed – began combing through her hair as Arla fastened the hundred metal clasps down the side of the dress.
How useful that could be for accessing a dagger strapped to a thigh.
The blade she had taken from the bathing chamber would have to do.
She missed her own weapons, the feeling of being without them as foreign to her as this place.
She wondered where they had been stashed and whether she might find the location when she investigated later.
They were right not to trust her.
By the time she stepped out of the guest quarters, Arla was looking much finer than when she had arrived in Kastonia.
As much as she enjoyed the comfort of her tight leather clothes, she was just at home in a lovely dress with her hair pinned back from her face.
The pins would be a welcome addition to the stash of weapons she was collecting.
Lilith and Rheia led her through the twists and turns of the palace and eventually Arla recognised the route she had taken earlier. She began making a mental map of every corridor and servant doorway she could see.
The scent of roasted chicken found her nose as she followed the twins towards the dining room. She dreaded having to return to bread and cheese when they set off again.
Arla had expected the maids to halt once they reached the dining room, sparing her at least a few seconds to collect herself before entering the room.
They did nothing of the sort.
Lilith pushed through the double doors, creating a vacuum that smothered Arla’s senses in chicken, and gravy, and that spicy scent she had noted earlier.
She had expected a large dinner with members of the royal court filling the seats of an extravagantly large table.
Instead, only four pairs of eyes greeted her from a table designed to seat eight.
King Elrod leaned back in his chair at the sight of her, his eyes roaming the length of her body in a way that made her shudder.
The queen sat beside him, her mousy brown hair appearing a shade darker in the low light of the room and almost covering her face entirely.
Across from her sat a young man no older than Arla, with the same square jaw as the king and the crystal-blue eyes the queen bore. The heir, then.
Arla’s gaze met the ambassador, Orson’s, narrowed one at the far end of the table, his sneer and pointed features so rat-like it almost sent a chill down her spine. She could see the hatred churning in his eyes and she did her best to reflect it back at him.
The lack of people had taken her off-guard when she’d entered the room, and it left her feeling exposed when Lilith and Rheia melted into the shadows, leaving her in the company of those who were responsible for the deaths of her family, rendering her an orphan.
It’s just a job.
A job that was admittedly more personal than most, but nonetheless a job she had been sent on by her king. She did not wish to disappoint Cyrus.
So Arla did what she had been trained to do: she called forth all of the swagger and self-importance she could muster and forced a disinterested expression onto her face.
Immediately she felt better; hiding behind the mask was so much easier than walking in here as Arla Reinhart, and to be honest, she wasn’t always sure she could differentiate between the two.
Both were spiteful and cruel, with an affinity for expensive things.
Or was that only when she was the King’s Assassin?
Perhaps the real Arla Reinhart didn’t exist anymore.
Perhaps she had gutted her from the inside out.
‘Apologies for my tardiness. I don’t usually keep to someone else’s clock, I’m afraid.’
Too much? Judging by the unamused look on the king’s face and the coy smirk from his heir, she guessed it was just the right amount. Orson scoffed.
‘No matter, Miss Reinhart. We have all the time in the world.’
Did they? Judging by the state of his kingdom, it seemed that they were running very low on time indeed. Or did it simply not matter as long as the royal family stayed shrouded in a cloak of luxury?
‘I don’t believe we’ve met.’ The young man stood, offering a hand to Arla that she was reluctant to take. ‘Prince Reuben of Kastonia, at your service.’
‘Oh, believe me, Prince Reuben, you don’t want to be at the service of somebody like me,’ Arla cooed with the courtly voice of a lady, one who wielded a fan rather than a sword as she took the seat offered beside the prince.
‘I’d rather be in your service than someone else’s. Walls talk, Lady Reinhart, and you have quite the reputation.’ He had heard of her, then.
‘Then let’s hope there’s no situation that should require my … service,’ Arla quipped, drinking deeply from the white wine she had covertly analysed for any hints of hemlock or belladonna.
‘Your … talents are so well known due to your lack of discretion that it’s a wonder you still hold the title,’ Orson said sneeringly.
Arla smirked. She had missed burrowing beneath Orson’s skin and reminding him of all that he’d lost; of how she had worked and trained harder than any before her; of how she had proven her loyalty so thoroughly by stabbing a knife through the centre of her palm, that Cyrus had created the role of King’s Assassin specifically for her and sent Orson, her closest competitor, to Kastonia as ambassador.
She knew he was equally matched to her in skill. He knew it, too.
‘So lovely to see you again, Orson. I do hope you’re enjoying your time in Kastonia?’
He bristled beneath her taunt and she thought he might be preparing to leap across the table to strangle her, when the king spoke.
‘How are things at home, Miss Reinhart? I hear Hadalyn has been in talks with the royal houses on the continent?’ If Cyrus had been in talks with those across the sea, it was the first she was hearing of it, and if he was keeping that sort of information from her, it was concerning.
Whatever moves the King of Hadalyn made, Arla was sure to be dragged into it.
‘I’m not privy to that sort of information. And you know I couldn’t say, even if I knew.’
‘Liar,’ Reuben replied, smiling into his glass.
She couldn’t stifle her own grin at the prince, even though it was making her jittery being so close to a family she wished to kill.
He was handsome, in a princely way, with perfectly pressed clothing and light brown hair – the same gentle shade as his mother’s – that was well groomed and thick.
‘Indeed. I find it hard to believe that the king’s sharpest weapon would be excluded from such important discussions,’ King Elrod pressed, and Arla dug her nails into the top of her thigh under the table.
She was in no mood to be questioned, especially concerning something about which she had no knowledge and which therefore irritated her since it suggested Cyrus had deliberately kept her in the dark.
But before she could snap, she was overwhelmed by an airy caress of whisky and leather.
Hark Stappen had entered the dining room like a storm cloud.
‘I do hope I’m not interrupting what I suspect was about to be a rather lively conversation?’ he said, taking the seat opposite Arla to place himself beside the king. He looked … regal.
He had been ragged and journey-worn when he had arrived alongside her at the palace, but now he was clean-shaven and dressed immaculately in black, topped with a dark navy doublet detailed in gold.
‘Not at all,’ Elrod chuckled, clapping Hark on the back as a servant handed him a glass of amber liquid.
‘You’ve been drinking again,’ the queen said gently, capturing the attention of the room. Arla watched Elrod’s face flash with an emotion she hoped she hadn’t interpreted correctly as Hark offered a soft but vulpine smile to the Queen of Kastonia.
‘If I can’t drink the whisky of my home country, Arabelle, what use is it in staying?’
It was an odd dynamic, and one that Arla didn’t want to begin to unpick, despite it being her job to report back on all she had learned.
If an ambassador was able to speak to the queen in such a way, what did that say about her?
Or the king? She had seen the annoyance cross Elrod’s face when Arabelle had addressed Hark, and Arla knew the queen would be on the receiving end of his temper now for having left the safety of the cage in which she was usually kept.
It made her hate Hark more, hate them all more.
If Kastonia treated their queen this way, it was no wonder the country was falling apart.