He lifts the glass to his lips, gulping down the red liquid as I brace myself for the bragging that’s sure to follow. Bragging about the legion that supposedly fell to his blade, his renowned battle strategy, his female conquests, or maybe some sick combination of all them. The typical stuff cocksure men choose to flaunt.
“I’m capable of shouldering the burden of being their villain until a better one comes along,” he says, wiping the wine from the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “They need someone to hate, so I let them hate me.”
It’s not the response I expected, but his non-answer provides a sliver of hope. A chink in his armor that I can exploit.
“And if you had a chance to change their opinion of you … would you take it?”
“Would you?” he counters.
“Not if it requires bowing to someone who doesn’t deserve it,” I reply.
There’s a gleam in his gray eyes, a spark of something that wasn’t there before. Captain Murphy reaches under the leather armor and into his shirt pocket, dropping a folded piece of blank parchment on the table.
“Then make sure they deserve it, princess.”
The messenger owl leaves just before sunrise, my missive gripped tightly in its claws. With the Ascension Vote three weeks away, there’s still a chance my letter can get to the Topaz heir before his father departs for Amale. Though his father cares little for the woman I became, Silas Wilson still has a soft spot for the girl he used to play games with at the annual governors summits. We might appear to be rivals publicly, but ever since his mother’s passing two years ago, Silas has drifted further and further from his father’s oppressive rule.
Maybe he will be willing to convince his father to at least hear me out—especially since my letter claimed that I have Captain Murphy as my formidable ally.
A claim I now need to solidify.
Turning the Lord General’s commander against him will prove to both the Topaz and Sapphire governors how serious I am about keeping Marks off the Amethyst Throne, but in order to do that I need to be less poison and more …Ivy.
Whatever the hell that looks like.
A decadent smell wafts from the kitchen as I wait in the common room for Captain Murphy. A petite, older woman emerges a few moments later with a pan of fresh pastries, their golden brown tops and bright red filling calling me toward one last indulgence before the journey ahead.
“I’ll take a half-dozen, please,” I say, placing a few coins on the counter. Her eyes lift from her creations and I know she recognizes me. “I’m sorry for the disturbance last night.”
“No matter. There’s always a fight on the holy day. Bastin prefers his offerings that way,” the woman replies as she loads up a paper bag with the crumbly tarts.
Heavy footfalls pound down the wooden stairs and a smile blooms across her thin lips as the captain strides across the room. She leans across the counter, her eyes scanning me up and down as she muses, “The best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, you know.”
“Actually it’s between the fourth and fifth rib.” Captain Murphy, voice gruff from sleep, takes a pastry from the innkeeper's outstretched tongs. “Thank you, Suzette,” he winks, vanishing out the door nearly as fast as he appeared.
“He’s a charmer, that one,” she giggles.
“Him?” I ask in disbelief. “Do you know who that is?”
“Oh yes,” she replies, placing a bag of pastries in my hand. “The captain has been stopping here for years and he’s always just the sweetest young man.”
The old woman turns and disappears behind the swinging kitchen doors leaving me standing with my mouth agape. The Captain of Corinth is asweet, young man,who apparently has a soft spot for kind old ladies.
Maybe I can use that.
Captain Murphy waits outside the inn, mares already saddled and ready to depart. He holds their reins in one hand and a half-eaten pastry in the other.
“Between the fourth and fifth rib, huh?” I ask as I approach.
“It’s the most efficient way,” he says, handing the reins of my mare over to me. “But I think you already knew that.”
“Oh these blades are just for show. Princess, remember?” I joke, lifting myself up into the saddle and settling in.
A chuckle escapes from his lips. “You’re funnier than they make you out to be.”
“Laughing in the face of the gods requires a substantial sense of humor, Captain. Jokes are all you have when there’s likely to be no afterlife in the Eternal Meadows for you.”
A slow, knowing smile spreads across his face as he swings a muscular leg over his mare. “And here you thought we’d have nothing in common.”
