She watched as his hand clenched and unclenched just above her arm, and she could feel heat from his body against hers. His jaw tightened again, and he straightened himself up.
“You will end it,” he hissed quietly.
She almost laughed. “I will not.”
“He is using you,” Rhaif accused. “Do you not remember all the times past Venari Kings have tried to take over our kingdom? How Duarb tried to seduce our mother? The time when their Infi brothers walked our streets without restraint, raping and pillaging our kingdom and how long it took our ancestors to rid us of their filth?”
“Exaggerations of the Chronicles,” Aydra spat, the story of the night before filling her thoughts.
“You invite that kind of madness back into our walls by consorting with him. You are weak, my sister. He has manipulated and seduced you—”
“Do you two think you could put aside your bickering long enough for us to meet our guests?” Dorian interjected as he leaned around Rhaif.
The great gate opened then, and Aydra felt her weight shift. She clasped her hands in front of her and straightened her dress.
Rhaif glared sideways at her. “We’ll talk about this when they’ve left.”
“There is nothing to discuss,” she argued under her breath as the carriages came closer.
“There is,” he hissed. “There is the fact that you have betrayed your kingdom for the taste of a foreign fuck.”
“I am not discussing this with you here,” she whispered, meeting his gaze. “We have guests.”
“Guests whom you’ll surely drop the Venari for tonight and wrap your legs around their heads instead. You are playing with the safety of our kingdom by letting him into your bed. What do you think will happen when you inevitably leave him for your next conquest? Do you think he will stand by and allow our kingdom to go on without punishing it?”
“I love him.”
The words seethed from her clenched mouth in such a dark voice that she felt the birds stop chirping overhead.
Color evacuated from Rhaif’s face. She felt her nostrils flaring as her gaze blazed through his empty eyes. His stare fluttered back into reality, and then he turned straight ahead, the veins in his neck bursting to the surface. He straightened his cloak and fumbled once with the sleeves of his shirt.
“We will talk about this in two days.”
Dorian’s widened blue eyes met Aydra’s, and she swallowed hard as she felt Nyssa’s hand wrap around her own.
The noise of the horses hooves on the stone as the carriages pulled up diverted all their attentions, but Aydra couldn’t help the nagging in the back of her mind at the look on her brother’s face when she’d said it.
It sat there the entire of the time she introduced herself to the Blackhand Elders and their guests.
There were seven Blackhand Elders of the four Blackhand towns. The Elders were much like their Bedrani Council, only they did not have a King and Queen in charge, only the High Elder had the last vote on matters. There were four Blackhand towns, the largest of them being Dahrkenhill, where four of the Elders, including the High Elder, resided, followed by the towns of Monsburne, Greathill, and the Bryn.
Aydra had only met Blackhand people once in her life, and that was the last the Elders had traveled to their kingdom when she was a mere ten years old. And there were a few characteristics about them that she remembered. She remembered their beards, their all rugged mountain appearances, and lastly, their charm.
She remembered Zoria had taken two to bed with her the night they came, and Vasilis had been so furious that the burns he’d punished her with the next morning had made Zoria bedridden for a week.
So when she found herself grinning at the men and women who exited the carriages and felt her brows heighten at the mere charismatic smiles on their faces, she understood why her late mentor had risked such.
She leaned closer to her sister at one point, who was already blushing, and whispered, “Chooseone.”
Nyssa did a double-take up at her sister, and Aydra watched a look grow in her eyes that she recognized in her own core.
“What happened to a queen taking multiple pleasures in her bed whenever she likes?” Nyssa asked with a raised brow.
Aydra stared at her, pride swelling in her chest. “Nyssari Eaglefyre,” she mused mockingly, wrapping her arm around her shoulders. “What have you done with my little sister?”
Nyssa chuckled under her breath as one of the men approached. He bowed to both of them, the braids in his long tawny hair falling over his shoulders when he did. He introduced himself as the Elder from the town of Monsburne, a small farming town which was closest to Magnice at the edge of the Blackhand Mountains.
Aydra couldn’t help the laughter growing inside her as the man spoke with her sister. She shook her head as she looked around, the Elders and their company chatting with her siblings and their own Belwark guard.
