Well, that stings like a dart. My jaw goes tight.
“I see.” The woman is a little pale, and she holds out her own hand. “Come walk with me now, Hannah.”
The little girl drops my hand and skips over to her mother.
Even the princess seems a bit frosty. Her eyes are cold and challenging, and with Asher at her shoulder, she looks every inch a rival queen, here to negotiate for resources before we abandon pleasantries and go to war.
“Your Majesty,” she says coolly.
“Princess.”
“Have you come to walk with us?”
“I have.”
“Good.” She turns and starts walking again, and it seems like the people around us are holding their breath, waiting to hear what we’ll say.
I fall into step beside her, but my thoughts are already categorizing where the men are, and which ones have weapons.
Jory reaches out and takes my hand, and it’s so startling that I almost jump. But her fingers close around mine. There’s a part of me that doesn’t like it. I want both hands free.
But Jory’s voice is calm as she says, “These people didn’t come to fight with you.” She glances at me. “And once these gentlemen beganscuffling with your soldiers, their families came to stop them—not to heighten the tension.”
She’s clever in the way she says that, assigning blame to no one.
I’m not sure I like it.
I’m also not sure she’s wrong.
She continues, “I have been telling your people that you spent months negotiating with my brother, Prince Dane. That you hear their worries, and you have been taking steps to protect them.”
“Yes,” I say gravely. “I have.”
“Well, you haven’t done enough,” one of the men snaps. “Your magic has been scorching the fields.”
“It’s not my magic,” I say.
“It’sfire!” says another.
My jaw is tight again. None of these are unfamiliar arguments. “I cannot control the wildfires—”
“They aren’t just wildfires,” says a dark-haired woman near the back. “These fires come fromnowhere—”
“And no one canstopthem!” the pregnant woman cries.
“We keep running out of food,” says one of the children, and the others begin to echo it, like chirping baby birds.
“And now our livestock are going to starve,” a man calls from the edge of the crowd. “Once the cattle and chicken die off, we won’t have—”
“Iknow!” I say, and my voice is a crack like thunder. Sudden silence falls. I stop and gesture out at the dried fields we just rode across. “I am your king! You think I don’t see the state of my kingdom?”
Two of the women flinch. Several of the men are glaring again.
The little boy’s face crumples, and he starts to cry.
Fuck.
I would give anything to be sent back to the worst battle on the border, right this very second.
