.jpg)
“I—” I forced out that one noise through the hammering of my heart that was beating in my throat.
I got no further.
“Now, we eat,” he concluded.
He then pulled me from the door, took my hand and curled my fingers around his elbow.
He wrenched open the door, his hand moved to clamp over mine on his arm, imprisoning it there, and he drew me out into the hall.
For the sake of dignity, if nothing else, with no choice but to walk with him, I lifted my chin to salvage some pride and hissed, “We will speak further of this sometime later.”
“We will not,” he retorted.
“You do not make decisions for the both of us,” I returned.
“I didn’t. Destiny did. And for the first time in a bloody long time, save your sister becoming my sister, and not because she wounded my brother, but because she’s vastly unpleasant, I’m beginning to think the fates don’t loathe me.”
This declaration made me shut my mouth.
Because…
What did that mean?
I would suspect he said his next with careful timing.
This being just moments before we returned to the room he’d dragged me from.
“And mark this, Elena, if True approaches you again when I’m not at your side, whether you’re in uniform or wearing the most comely gown I’ve ever gods-damned seen, this will not make me happy.”
All right.
So.
Now he knew I was a virgin.
And I knew his man killed my dearest friend.
And perhaps I finally understood why Melisse had insisted I wear this gown.
He also knew how unpleasant my sister could be (though I reckoned he already knew she was thus just simply from her reputation, not to mention she dealt the blow that would eventually lead to his brother’s death).
And he further knew True and I had feelings for each other.
To end, if I thought the night before that our relations weren’t starting all that well, I had much gloomier thoughts about this subject now.
Though it would seem I was wrong, and he wasn’t entirely disinterested in me.
And apparently, he liked my gown.
However, as he held my hand caught tight in his elbow tucked close to his side, which meant I had to be close to his side, as he led us directly to King Mars and Silence, I was wondering if this was a boon.
Or if the fates might loathe me.
21
The Dinner
The Priest
Formal Dining Room, First Floor, West Corridor, State Wing, Catrame Palace, Fire City
FIRENZE
The last to arrive in the formal dining room of Catrame Palace were Prince Cassius Laird of Airen and Elena, Princess of the Nadirii
The minute both their feet stepped over the threshold, he felt it.
And feeling it, he took note.
Also feeling it, Ophelia’s head twitched, and her eyes sought her daughter’s.
Elena’s head jerked, and her gaze sought her mother’s
Ha-Lah’s curls bounced and she put her hand to her stomach in a comforting gesture.
Silence’s eyes narrowed bemusedly.
Last, Farah’s lips parted, and she looked to the floor.
For the priest’s part, he felt his lips thin momentarily before he smoothed them and moved to find his assigned seat.
When he found his chair, he saw that he’d been relegated to a table with non-important personages.
This did not make him angry, as it used to do.
They would learn.
As he sat, he did it thinking this had been a nuisance, these alliances being made…and why.
Now it was more of a nuisance because he was concerned.
That vibration in the veil of magic, the strengthening, it happened simply with all of them together but without all of them being together.
What would come of it when they were?
There was nothing for it.
He’d had to cease the rituals so he could assess the possible danger of how the realms were aligning to beat the Beast.
Now, the priest would have to keep close in order to stop these alliances from coming to fruition.
A bother.
And a frustrating one.
Though it was his understanding he only had to select one and then all would be lost (for them).
He would do that tonight.
He dipped his chin to the boy who filled his wineglass, greeted his dinner companions as they joined him, and looked to the long table at the front of the room where the couples were seated all in a row.
Elpis was no fool.
There was a seat’s-worth of space between each couple.
Privacy.
Time to get to know one another in a room full of people at a table shared by many.
Cassius and Elena to the left. Mars and Silence beside them. Ha-Lah and Aramus next. Ending in True and Farah.
The priest made his assessments and started with the least likely couple first.
Drawing it in, focusing on it, he felt the sensation grow in his lower stomach, and then he utilized it, honing on Mars and Silence, and using his magic, his ears took in their words at a distance he would not normally hear them.
“What was it?” Mars asked low.
“I don’t know.” Silence sounded disturbed.
“A tremor?” Mars queried.
“No.”
“A draught?” he went on.
“No. Yes. What I mean to say is, it was a tremor, but not a tremor,” Silence explained. “A…a throb. And it was not a draught. More like a wind. Not a breeze, a wind. Didn’t you feel it?”
She was talking about the strengthening of the veil.
Though she couldn’t identify what it was.
A boon.
“I felt nothing, mia piccolina.”
My little one.
Yes, they were the least likely couple. They were already much drawn to each other.
And Mars had paraded his new bride in front of his people like she was a precious, priceless ruby extracted from deep in a Firenz mine and hewn to lustrous perfection.
The priest sensed, already, if she were to be harmed, Mars would turn every stone in five realms to find the culprit and exact his vengeance.
And if Mars were to be harmed, the waif had much magic. She might not yet know how to use it, but he did not like to think if she harnessed it through emotion, but without the knowledge of how to control it, what she would do.
And obviously the priest had to survive. Not only to bring forward the Beast, but to master him. He couldn’t be hunted down by a barbarian or magicked to another realm (or the like).
No, that wouldn’t do.
“Nandra, as you know, is here tonight,” Mars shared. “After dinner, I will have her brought to me and I will ask about this.”
“I’m not certain it was a bad thing, my king.”
“We will make certain, my bride.”
Yes, the least likely couple.
“Think no more of it. I will find answers,” Mars stated and changed their subject. “Now tell me, do you worry about the ceremony tomorrow?”
The eavesdropper tensed.
What ceremony?
“I don’t know, does it hurt?” Silence asked.
“It is a piercing of the flesh, Silence,” Mars said gently.
Well then.
As they would do, they were preparing her for her Firenz wedding which was to take place three nights from that one.
She’d endure their odious piercing ceremony.
But of course.
“So it hurts,” Silence murmured.
“Ice is used to numb the flesh. It’s mostly painless at the time,” Mars assured. “Though there can be some discomfort after.”
“Well, everyone is pierced here, so it can’t be all that bad,” Silence stated gamely.
Mars’s slow grin did not hide his approval.
The priest tire
d of their discourse, studied the couples, and turned his attention to what he perceived was the next least-likely pair, especially considering the pirate king’s current demeanor.
That being, he was resting back in his chair, his large bulk shifted toward his wife, his long arm along the back of her chair.
“Of course you would think that,” Queen Ha-Lah was saying, but she sounded amused. “You’re a man.”
“I am that.” King Aramus also sounded amused.
“Though I cannot agree,” she said.
“That I am a man?” he teased, raising his brows.
His queen gave him a small smile and an exaggerated roll of her eyes, answering his tease without words.
“They returned to the room with her on his arm, close to his side,” Aramus observed, returning to their discourse.
They were discussing Prince Cassius and Princess Elena and the earlier shenanigans.
Really.
These Airenzian men.
Would they never learn?
That would not go well for Cassius.
But it might go well for the priest.
“They did, though he looked furious and she looked like she wished to whirl her Nadirii staff straight into his head,” Ha-Lah retorted.
Aramus chuckled before he repeated, “Yes, wife, but he brought her into the room on his arm and close to his side.”
“I see this says something to you about Cassius,” she noted, watching her husband closely.
Aramus’s expression grew serious. “I worried about him most of all with these allegiances. He much loved his wife.”
“And?” Ha-Lah prompted when he did not go on.
“Cassius is a man of honor. His father, and the brother he lost, were, and in his father’s case, still is fond of war, whether it spills blood, or the wounds inflicted are unseen. Power. Control. Demonstrations of might. Conflicts to determine supremacy. It is, for them, an addiction. Cass is a man of peace. He is good at making war, even if he doesn’t have the heart for it. But he still has Laird blood.”
“And that means?” Ha-Lah asked.
“That means he might have found the kind of clash he cannot only stomach, but that he will enjoy.”
“Ah,” she murmured, grinning at the plate of food set in front of her.
Aramus captured a curl of her hair and wound it around his finger.
His queen seemed discomfited for a moment at this gesture before she hid it, and hid her fondness for his touch, as minimal as it was, by reaching toward her wineglass.
“There is more, my wife,” he murmured distractedly.
He was speaking but he was much caught up in the twirling of her hair.
After taking a sip, her voice was husky when she asked, “There is?”
“My friend, he is a man lost.”
Ha-Lah set her glass aside and turned her head his way, which took her tendril from her husband’s fingers.
And they both looked like something was lost with that.
Aramus recovered first. “Tonight, when he walked in with his future bride, his eyes were full of fire. I have not seen that from my friend, not once, not in six years.” He leaned toward his wife. “It brings gladness to my heart, Ha-Lah. For this means he might get found.”
“Then it brings gladness to mine, Aramus,” she whispered.
His eyes dropped to her mouth and he grinned.
With some clear nervousness, she faced forward.
Even if their words were amicable, they were not yet in full accord.
But they would be.
She had the beasts of the sea at her command.
He had a secret weapon.
No, it would not be wise to target either of them.
The observer shifted his attention to the left end of the table.
“My daughter is not here,” Cassius was saying. “She meets us in Wodell. I didn’t want her away from her studies for this long.”
Elena did not reply.
Instead, she stared angrily at the plate in front her.
“But I will meet your daughter,” Cassius declared.
“In a few days,” Elena murmured, picking up her fork and knife.
“Tomorrow,” he retorted.
Her head turned his way and her cheeks were flushed, not with her rouge, with ire. “Tomorrow is too soon.”
“It’s not too soon. What is soon is that we will be a family,” he replied.
“Yes, and your man killed her mother. Perhaps you’ll give me, oh…I don’t know, an hour to come to terms with that myself,” she rejoined.
One of his men killed her ward’s mother?
Interesting.
Cassius dipped his head to Elena, and she braced, clearly wishing to pull away at the same time fighting to hold her stance for she didn’t want to show the weakness of retreat.
“It was war, Elena, and I do not know the circumstances. What I do know is that it is likely it was him or it was her. And it is unspeakably unfortunate it was her. As it would be unspeakably unfortunate if it was him.”
A wise response.
The priest knew that when Elena turned her attention back to her plate, set down her utensils and reached for her thin flute of sparkles.
She had no retort.
Not to that.
“It matters not. We cannot arrange a meeting for the morrow,” she said before putting the glass to her lips. “The piercing ceremony is tomorrow.”
With that, she took a sip.
“It’s my understanding that lasts less than an hour,” Cassius returned.
With but a glance at him, she fired back, “It’s my understanding much bonding happens after it.”
She then drained the last of her wine.
Cassius instantly put his bottom lip to his teeth and emitted a low whistle.
A servant boy came forward.
“Bring my intended another glass of sparkles,” he ordered.
The boy nodded and dashed away.
And as he did, Cassius most definitely had the full attention of his betrothed again.
“Did you just whistle at a servant?” Elena snapped.
Cassius looked to her. “Tell me, is there anything I can do in this moment that will please you? Outside leaving your presence, of course.”
“What you could do is not whistle at servants like they’re dogs or order my wine refreshed. I can order my own wine.”
“It is the gallant who sees to his partner’s needs before she realizes she even needs them,” he educated.
“I don’t need a gallant,” she returned. “I need a dinner partner who doesn’t whistle at servants.”
Cassius sighed, sat back and reached for his own wine, bringing it to his lips and murmuring to the rim of the glass, “Would that this was whiskey.”
“Would you like for me to whistle at a servant and get that for you?” Elena asked archly.
At that, Cassius set his glass aside untasted and twisted his torso fully to her, leaning in.
He was very much larger than her, and looming that way, an immediate threat.
She again didn’t retreat.
This time, it would be a mistake.
“You don’t wish to know what I truly would like to do,” he said low.
“Yes, I do. You’re my betrothed. Obviously, it is my most fervent desire to know everything about you,” she responded sarcastically.
“Trust me, this you don’t wish to know,” he warned.
“I’m no wilting violet, my prince,” she stated unwisely. “If I haven’t made this clear before now, you don’t need to protect me from the anything. I have traveled. I have studied at the Go’Da. I protect The Enchantments. I highly suspect I’m more worldly-wise than any female you’ve ever met.”
“I am utterly certain that is not true,” he murmured.
“Put me to the test,” she challenged, again unwisely.
“Right then, my warrior,” he rumbled, leaning ever closer to her. “What I would like to do is drag you from this
room, take you somewhere dark, kiss you until you’re breathless, also, importantly, speechless, and equally importantly, soaked. Then I would spank you until you beg me to stop and apologize for being bloody-minded.”
Her brows were up in full affront. “Spank me?”
“Spank you,” he growled.
As their eyes clashed, and this went on for long moments (very long), her indignation ebbed, she appeared to be fighting confusion, as well as (finally) considering the wisdom of her next.
She made the wrong decision.
“Soaked?”
He dipped so close, he had to avert his head in order to put his lips to her ear.
“For me,” he purred. “Between your legs.”
She jerked away, belatedly, and hastily took up her utensils again.
Cassius moved slightly from her but did it studying her profile.
“I see. Very worldly-wise, my future wife,” he murmured, sounding a cross between contemplative, pleased, amused and titillated.
“You can stop speaking now,” she declared, spearing something on her plate.
“I don’t think I will.”
“Then I’ll stop speaking to you,” she declared, shoving her fork into her mouth.
Cassius turned to his own plate as the servant boy set a new glass beside Elena’s and whisked away her old.
He picked up his utensils, muttering, “If we cannot get along, at least I won’t mind gazing upon you. Not to mention, life will be far from boring. Especially in bed.”
Another flush hit Elena’s cheeks.
The priest considered this situation.
One could say with some certainty they had no accord at all.
However, Cassius had already lost one wife to forces he could not control, thus no vengeance could be meted.
He desired the Nadirii.
Would Cassius Laird unleash wrath for a woman he simply wished to bed?
The listener did not think he wanted to test that.
He turned his attention to the final couple, finding them with his eyes before he did the same with his ears.
Only to see Farah of Firenze staring right at him.
He looked to his own plate.
“I say, are you with us?”
His gaze lifted to Carrington, the advisor to the Dellish king who was one of five sharing the round table with him.
“You’ve been miles away,” Carrington noted when he had his regard.