“To the horses?”
“To Edrathen.”
Cedric offered a lazy shrug. “He’s still breathing.”
Ravik’s mouth twitched, but not into a smile.
He’s investigating me, Cedric realized. Or at least poking for cracks.
Which was fine. Sometimes letting a man ask the questions was more informative than anything you could say aloud.
“Interesting,” Ravik acknowledged after a pause, stepping slightly closer. “That the prince arrived alone. No Empress. No Emperor. No royal retinue of note.”
Cedric’s jaw twitched, just slightly. “The royal couple is very busy,” he uttered evenly.
“The old emperor, however, is not. Lucien Soleranos has been absent from court for some time, hasn’t he?”
“He’s traveling,” Cedric replied.
“Ah,” Ravik hummed. “And travel, it seems, is more important than the wedding of his grandson. I was told the Soleranos family values its blood ties. Fiercely.”
“Is there a point in there, or are we just reminiscing about absentee monarchs?”
Ravik tilted his head, and for the first time, Cedric saw the glint of something colder behind his eyes—not disdain, exactly. Suspicion.
Yes, Alaric had come alone. Yes, it looked strange. But there were reasons. War clouds were gathering on the Vaelmont-Kaer’Vosh border. The engagement had been sudden. There had been no time to mount the parade of protocol. Someone had to hold Varantia’s center while its crown prince marched to foreign soil and married into steel and silence.
But Ravik wasn’t interested in the reasons.
“I find it interesting. Imagine my position,” he began, voice still calm. “The Princess of Edrathen is engaged to a very powerful man. Heir to the Dvorenic house—the bloodline that manages the royal treasuries of half the continent.” He paced a slow step, as if the thought had just occurred to him. “Andthen, on the day of the wedding, tragedy strikes. Everyone in the chapel dies. The ceremony never happens. The family is gone. The girl survives—but now she is marked. A princess without a husband. And what does the court do? It offers. And offers. And every kingdom, one by one, politely declines. No one wants the curse.”
Ravik turned slightly. “And then,” he recounted, quiet now, almost reflective, “a single kingdom steps forward. Eager. Willing. Enthusiastic, even.”
His eyes met Cedric’s.
“Coincidence?”
Cedric’s jaw tightened. “What exactly are you insinuating, Marshal?”
Ravik’s smile was faint. Too faint.
“I’m not insinuating anything,” he assured. “I’m merely observing how very… convenient it is that Varantia took advantage of such an opportunity. A marriage to Edrathen—militarily unmatched, strategically placed, and rich in ore and discipline.” He tilted his head slightly. “Especially now, with tensions rising along the Kaer’Vosh border.”
The insinuation hit like a slap. Is he suggesting that Varantia had orchestrated the Maroon Slaughter? That they’d eliminated the Dvorenic family to create the vacuum and to push Edrathen into desperation?
He could hear the blood rushing in his ears.
It was absurd. Insulting. And, in the most dangerous way possible. “Careful,” Cedric warned, his tone no longer pretending at politeness. “If you keep thinking like that, Marshal, you’ll start believing your own fiction.”
“Fiction becomes policy more often than you think.”
Which, Cedric thought bitterly, was Edrathen’s favorite sport.
He smiled, but it was the tight, wolfish kind. “Funny,” he said. “I didn’t realize Edrathen was in the habit of accusing allies inthe middle of wedding preparations. Does the king know, or is this just your own personal brand of hospitality?”
Ravik’s expression didn’t shift. Of course it didn’t. Stone walls flinched more often than the Marshal of Edrathen. Cedric took a breath, swallowing the next ten insults that begged for daylight.
“I should go,” he said instead. “Some of us have actual work to do.”
