Next to the king, on the other side, was a smaller throne, much less ornate and also empty. How many queens had sat on that chair? He’d had many wives during his life, extended as it was with Phaetyn blood. How many queens had he murdered when he tired of them? How many of his own children had he slain to ensure he remained king?
King Irdelron appeared nothing like I’d expected. First, he looked far too young for his alleged age of one hundred and thirty, more like forty. His hair was like maize, so golden and fair it didn’t seem natural. His eyes were a vibrant green, the color of the leaves on Mum’s pea vines. And his skin was smooth and fair, like he and the sun were unacquainted. I couldn’t believe the rumors. How could he be over one hundred? And then my gaze landed on the gilded vial that hung around his neck.
“You’ve kept me waiting, girl,” King Irdelron said from his throne. His voice was calm and quiet, but there was a thread of something cold underneath.
I glanced at the Drae, but Lord Irrik’s face could’ve been carved from stone where he stood in the shadow of the throne.
The king raised his eyebrows and said, “I don’t take kindly to waiting.”
9
The doors creaked open behind me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off this man. The girl had been right. The Drae was a monster, but the king . . . The sickness pouring off him was warning me to run and hide. He wasn’t particularly tall, nor his features sharp or twisted. He didn’t have the physical prowess to give the impression that he could fell me in a sweep of his sword. He radiated something much worse.
The girl who’d cut my hair was shoved beside me. A guard towered over her. She fell to her knees and scrambled back to her feet as I watched from the corner of my eye. Shame filled me at my cowardice, but I didn’t dare help her.
The king fixed the girl next to me with a pointed look. “What happened to Lord Irrik’s friend, dear Madeline?” He fingered the chain from whence the small flask hung then ran the bottle back and forth on the chain. “You haven’t been doing things you oughtn’t, have you?”
The girl replied in a wooden voice, “She went berserk, Your Majesty. Said she had to use the pot, but the next thing I knew she was trying to kill herself.” She curtsied and said, “Sorry, sire.”
Her gaze flitted to Lord Irrik, but the Drae watched me, his mouth curved down in disapproval. I glared back, trying to convey my disgust without the king mistaking the glare as meant for him.
“Madeleine, it pains me to see you lie,” the king said with a kind smile. He extended his hand and waved toward the door. “Jotun, at your hand.”
Madeleine sucked in a deep breath, and at the same time, the soldier nearest to her drew his sword. In one fluid movement, he swung the sword in an arc, slicing through the young girl, eviscerating her from one hip clean through her rib cage in a diagonal line. Her lower half crumpled to the ground, and her top half almost seemed to float in the air momentarily before falling to the gray stone floor. She landed on her side, and blood gushed from her gutted torso, her heart still beating, pumping the blood out of her system and onto the floor. Her eyes widened, and she ran her hand over the stump of her body as she watched her life spill out before her.
“At last . . .” She sighed before her head fell back on the floor.
Bile burned the back of my throat, but I was learning I could only feel so much and go through so much before all the screams and tears were gone. That was where I was right now. I stared at the body of the girl who had tried to spare me some of the king’s wrath by cutting my hair and rubbing ointment on my face.
My mind told me she was dead now, but even though I saw the truth of it before me, I couldn’t process the perpetual horror I was experiencing.
I’d never seen brutality like this before. I’d seen cruelty from soldiers but never the river from whence the streams came. This man was the namesake. His savage inhumanity sat underneath his average face and average height and mild manner. I’d have to be a fool not to quake in fear.
There were different rules in this place.
This was not a game I knew how to play.
The king cleared his throat, and I looked at the fair man. He licked his lips as he closed the bottle. His gaze returned to me, and his eyes glinted with the first pieces of hardness I’d seen.
“You are to curtsey before your king, girl. Or did your rebel mother not teach you manners?”
His words were a trap, and I peered down, my gaze falling on the bloodied hem of my tunic. My mother was dead because of his orders. He didn’t kill her with his hands, but what he’d done was worse. The king had no idea who he’d killed with his instructions to his guards. I doubted he cared. The girl, Madeline, lay on the floor at my feet.
I curtsied. Low. And waited.
“Hmm. You may rise.” Turning in his seat to face his first, King Irdelron asked Lord Irrik, “Does she not speak?”
Lord Irrik stared through me to the back of the room. “Mostly nonsense, sire. She hasn’t been coherent in my dealings with her, limited though they’ve been.”
His voice was emotionless, but another glint ran through the king’s expression as though he heard something I did not in the Drae’s voice.
He leaned forward. “She’s truly worthless?”
“That is for you to judge, sire,” the Drae said in a disinterested voice. “I followed a woman from the rebel meetings to her house. When I questioned the girl’s mother, she pulled a knife.”
“Your mother was a rebel, girl?”
I kept my focus on the king, and my tongue twisted before I managed the words, “If she was, Your Majesty, she did not include me in her plans. I had no idea she was anything more than a mother until tonight.”
It was true.
The king’s gaze slid to Lord Irrik, who was still as a statue. “She’s pretty, don’t you think, my Drae? Is that why you lowered yourself to kiss the daughter of a rebel? Three times, according to reports from others in my guard? Once in her house, once on the street, and once at the gate to my castle?”
Three times? I felt violated.
“She was hysterical. She came into the room as I killed her mother and started screaming. Her screams irritated me.”
I gritted my teeth but remained silent as I processed what Lord Irrik had said. He killed my mother? No, she’d asked him to, to protect me. He’d refused, and she’d stabbed herself. But then he stepped on the blade to finish her off. The images flashed through my vision, twisting and distorting in my memory.
“Is that so?” the king mused. He tapped a finger on his jaw and propped his chin on an elbow to one side. He glanced toward the Drae again. “Have we apprehended any other rebels?”
“Three others. The rest have gone into hiding. I don’t believe the same strategy will work again. They are fast learners.”
What others?
The king’s face twisted, and the mask he’d kept in place until now slipped. “Peasants,” he sneered, turning his attention to me. “Trying to kill me and take my throne? Do they think I will ever let another take it, girl?”
I jerked, heart hammering. “No, King Irdelron.”