“Love you, little Lys,” I whispered to the door.
Sooner than I wished, I came to a stop in front of the monstrous wooden door of his study. Two of his personal guards flanked it, armed to the teeth and staring straight ahead. They wouldn’t stop me.
Still, I hesitated. I couldn’t ignore his summons, but I also couldn’t help taking this extra moment to drain my face of expression and my heart of feeling.
Even if my efforts were always for nothing.
Gods damn your little weaknesses.
I knocked.
“Enter,” he commanded from within.
I tugged the door open and slipped inside. Of the two studies I’d been in tonight, this one felt more dangerous. Thick velvet draperies the color of my tunic and stitched with glittering gold and onyx thread covered the stone walls. A massive fireplace provided heat and light, as well as a useful incinerator for sensitive correspondence.
Father’s brown eyes, dreadfully like mine, fastened on me as he fed letters to the hungry flames. “Renwell never keeps me waiting. Neither should you.”
He still refused to call me by a name, any name, since the day he’d stripped me of my title and, effectively, my family. I was now a servant to the crown, an apprentice to his most trusted High Councilor. Nothing else.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” I said through stiff lips.
“Renwell told me of your mission.” A hint of disgust wrinkled his thick nose. “Ridiculous to send a girl to do something Korvin could accomplish in half the time.”
My shoulders twitched at the mention of his beloved torturer. “Renwell believes?—”
“Yes, I know what Renwell believes,” Father snapped. “There are times I question that man’s judgment—usually in regard toyou.” He threw the last letter into the fire, the flames puncturing it into pieces. “But he has yet to fail me. A quality he needs to train into you.”
Bitterness rose up my throat like bile. “I will not fail, Father?—”
“Don’t call me that!” he snarled.
I flinched. “Apologies, Your Majesty. I misspoke.”
He turned away from the hearth, straightening his heavily embroidered coat of violet, gold, and black with one sharp tug. His beloved crown sat atop his iron-gray hair. The gold points shimmered in the firelight as the chunks of sunstone winked mockingly at me—a perfect match for Mother’s dagger.
His scathing gaze raked over me. “Look at you. Playing dress-up in the shadows when I gave you the greatest life a child could ever hope to have.”
My lips curled into a snarl. “That was no life. You imprisoned me, you beat me, you took away the only chance I had at love?—”
“Silence!” he thundered. He stalked toward me, his ringed fingers clenching into fists at his sides.
My legs quivered from the strength it took to hold my ground.
“So ungrateful,” he hissed, “when you have no idea what it’s like to grow up with nothing, tobenothing. To have the world look down on you and think you’re as worthless as the gods-damned gutter you were born in. You have no conception of how hard I labored foryearsto educate myself, to ingratiate myself with the very people who kicked me aside as a child. I worked my way up fromnothingto be a king—just to have a daughter who refuses to do her duty and further the royal Torvaine bloodline, to ensureTorvaineis the longest-lasting and most prosperous of all the Rellmiran royals.”
Fury and humiliation from our old argument stabbed my chest like a hot poker. “You wanted to auction me off forbreeding rights to the highest bidder, all to preserve a crown you got by chance.”
His palm whipped over my cheek hard enough to make me stumble. Bursts of light flickered over my vision as my face throbbed with pain. For a moment, I wanted to scream and fight back, but instead, Renwell’s voice filtered through the cacophony in my mind.
“Never show an enemy how wounded you are.”
I inhaled deeply through my nose and slowly stood at attention once more, my hands clasped firmly behind my back, eyes cast downward.
He barked out a harsh laugh. “I see Renwell has managed to teach you something at least. Look at me, apprentice.”
I forced myself to meet his gaze.
He studied me as if I were the papers curling to ash in his hearth. “I will let you keep your job—for now. But if you ever speak to me that way again, I will make sure you never become High Enforcer. Do you understand?”
