2 Theodore #2
What I had not done in that time was “see to my duties.” I’d attended neither council nor war meetings.
For two days and one night, I’d not done what my crown required of me, and that had been enough to send Eftan into a whirl.
He’d worked to set my council against me, urging a vote while I’d been caring for her.
Even while keeping her alive, I’d not been able to protect her—it was during that vote that he’d suggested she be proscribed.
Eftan rose and straightened his dark suit.
He turned up the lantern beside him, so the flame burned brighter, and let his gaze dart over the black ink that littered nearly every page of parchment.
“Do you think that the council members aboard this ship will allow this? These amendments show clear disregard for the well-being of your kingdom—” He cut himself off, overcome.
“I’ll get them now, and we’ll put these changes to a vote.
You are the crown, but you have succeeded only because the council allows it.
” His hand beat once upon his chest. “Because I allow it.”
I stiffened. “Do you mean, Eftan, that I am the vessel, and you are the captain? That I am the sword and you the fist?” I waited, anger rising in my chest like the burning sun, but he only stared at me with a clamped mouth.
I picked up my goblet and hurled it at the wall above his head.
“I am the captain, and you are a single fucking line of rigging. When you are snapped, you will be readily replaced.”
He’d frozen, his dark gaze touched with surprise.
A gnarled silence grew between us, and it struck me that Eftan had never known this sort of resistance.
When my father had been king, Eftan had all but run the kingdom for him, my father having been more concerned with pleasure and adventure than with duty.
It was Eftan who had prepared me for the crown the way my father should have.
My childhood was a litany of his lessons, his reprimands.
I’d been pliant and unquestioning beneath his tutelage.
Him, setting an expectation, and me, easily, unquestioningly, meeting it.
“There will be no more Godsdamned votes,” I said through a tight jaw.
“The law is clear—”
“I know the law. I am not unfit. This choice poses no greater threat to the kingdom than the union itself. And you will do well to remember that I am the king.”
He dipped his chin. “You are the king.” He took a quiet moment. “You are also cock-led, imprudent, witless—”
Without thinking, I reached across the table and took the front of his shirt into my fists. The contracts creased and spread as I heaved him toward me. “I said careful.”
“Careful is all that I have ever been. And unlike you, never once have I wavered. Did I ever tell you of how your father came to the decision to transfer his crown and power to you? How he decided to let his rule end, so that yours might begin?”
I froze, wedged between the sharp edges of my rage and curiosity.
A hard gaze bored into mine. “It was because of me.”
Some sick, heavy feeling began to fill my stomach. I let go of his shirt and straightened, keeping my face even, inscrutable.
“Your father, he was full of zeal and passion, wasn’t he?
” He smoothed the rumpled front of his clothes.
“But not for his crown, and not for your mother—never her. I had to encourage their consummation, you know. Had to feed him a draught to help him conceive their first child. He only had eyes for that mistress of his.” He shook his head.
“After years and years of my tireless efforts, I decided it would be best to rid him of his distraction.”
Coolly, Eftan lowered himself to the chair and stacked the contracts into a tidy pile.
The sounds of the ship preparing for sail—the shouts and whistles, the creaks and booms—all faded behind the sudden hammering in my ears. “You killed her.”
An eerie stillness overtook him as he watched me with fevered eyes. “An overdose of pure nepenthe oil. Quite simple. Quick.” He straightened his sloped shoulders, pride pouring off him like a miasma.
I thought only of Imogen and the threat he posed to her safety as I rounded the table and violently tipped back the chair in which he sat. I hovered over him like a dark cloud.
He raised his hands in surrender, speaking in a frenetic rush.
“It was because of my intervention that you were born. It was because of my guidance that you excelled. I’d always known you’d be a better ruler than he ever was.
I let him know it and he finally agreed to the transference.
” Despite his alarm, he still managed a nonchalant arrogance.
A keen, tactical air. “And it was all for the best.”
For the best.
What an insultingly tidy way to describe the brutal death of my father, my own self-inflicted poisoning, and my premature ascension. I released my hold on his chair and let its front legs crash to the floor. “You have murdered. You have abetted regicide—”
“No, I have done the difficult, dirty, necessary work.” Eftan set a firm hand atop the contracts. “I made you,” he said in a soft voice. “I made you to be even greater than the Great God Panos himself.”
I pressed my fists into the table and leaned in.
I fought to leash the thrashing anger within me so that he wouldn’t know how deeply I felt it, but my words came like spitting venom nonetheless.
“Hear me clearly and understand. Whatever power you think you possess can be taken as easily as your head can be severed from your neck.”
He dipped his chin, unfazed, and in a tone that rocked through me with its surety, said, “It is not power that I wield. It is love.”
“Love…”