“You’re a damned fool. He won’t have to worry about any of that if he takes control,” Nektarios hissed. “I suppose the increased attacks on supply routes are just a part of the natural order as well?”
“It’s not unusual for this sort of uptick in bandit activity following a change in authority. Smugglers and pirates are sniffing at our boundaries to see how much they can get away with. I’m handling it.”
Nektarios raised his chin. “Like you handled the other mess?”
Leonidas barely shifted. “Which one?”
A pause. Too long.
“The one in the north,” Nektarios said. “The abandoned outpost. Where did an entire unit of men go?”
Dimitrios tensed. A unit of men was missing?
Leonidas let out a slow breath, one meant to sound tired but rang measured. “Commander Demas’s last report indicated a supply issue, but there’s no evidence of conflict. Nothing to suggest…” He waved a hand, dismissing something unsaid. “They’ll turn up, and we’ll deal with them then.”
Another pause.
“One of our ships was seen sailing toward Yiria,” Nektarios said. “The missing unit?—”
“A misunderstanding, I’m sure.” Leonidas’s tone remained steady, but there was a blade beneath it now. The High Chancellor would suffer this topic no longer.
“As you say,” Nektarios ground out, then folded his arms. “As to the previous matter at hand, we can’t continue to hire mercenary armies to protect our routes. We can barely afford those Rangers. The gods only know how long they’ll milk this job with the oxbeast; it’s how they make their coin, and our coffers are dangerously low.”
Dimitrios straightened. These men were already running his kingdom into the ground. What was he walking into?
A man cleared his throat nearby. Lord Stavros Salidis, the Inquisitor the council hired to determine his fate as king. The man was nearly as tall as Dimitrios—over six feet—and fully gray. Stavros was a quiet and watchful man with pale eyes who saw everything and never—ever—smiled.
Dimitrios strode away from the conversation he wasn’t meant to hear. “Inquisitor.”
“I never took you as a man who lurked outside open doorways. One might think you were eavesdropping.” His tone came with a low rumble, bland in his intonations.
“One might think your presence and how you’ve dragged out my hearing had underlying motives as well, but we don’t talk about those.”
Stavros blinked, slow and deliberate. “Walk with me, my Lord.”
“I’m in search of my mother. You can walk withme.”
“As you wish.” Inside the first stairwell, the inquisitor said, “Tell me about your parentage. What evidence can you provide that Mihail Vidalatos was your biological father?”
“You know the answer to this already.” Dimitrios was growing exhausted by these repeated inquiries, but he couldn’tnotanswer. Stavros was looking for a change—no matter how small—in his story. “What further evidence could I possibly provide? My mother was already pregnant when she arrived in Milia. I was newly born when she married Elias. Pericles Garas testified to all of this before his passing.”
Pericles had been the one man in the world who’d known the truth from the start. He was the temple priest who married Mihail to Pandora, then traveled with her to Wairia when bade to flee by Mihail and another man named Nikos.
“How could she marry this man if she was already married to the crown prince?”
Dimitrios turned his head to hide the roll of his eyes. “Word of Mihail’s assassination had reached Wairia. She believed he was dead.”
It wasn’t until Oskar Dahlin sent a letter a few months ago that she learned Mihail’s death had been fabricated. Until that moment, Dimitrios had believed his true father was just a regular man who had died before he was born. It hadn’t mattered because Elias Gabrea never made him feel like anything other than a natural-born son.
Still, Dimitrios had been devastated to learn he’d been lied to about his parentage, and it had taken time to understand Pandora’s reasons. The danger to his life turned out to be very real, and he’d had to reveal himself to the people of Perean carefully. A feat he might not have survived without Selene’s knowledge of Court and help with the council.
“Odd, don’t you think,” Stavros said, “that no one can attest to your parentage but your mother?”
A scoffing laugh leapt from Dimitrios’s chest, burning on the way out. “Odd that they didn’t invite a third party to watch them consummate their marriage? Or to stand by every other time they had sex? Odd, considering they’d married in secret and hadn’t had time to reveal it to anyone before attempts were made on my father’s life? No, Lord Salidis, I don’t find that odd.”
Dimitrios paused at the top of the stairs and faced the inquisitor. “Is this truly how you intend to waste our time?”
“My Lord?—”
