I stepped closer to him and lowered my voice. “You’ve always been a despicable man, Penworth. You don’t deserve to touch the ground she walks on. I saidkneel, and beg that she doesn’t wipe you from this kingdom like the rightful empress she is.” I thrust his arm back at him, and he staggered into his wife, who glared daggers at me.
Lord Penworth met my gaze, a sneer pulling at his lips. The entire room held their breath as my anger coiled like a snake ready to strike.
A cough sounded from the floor.
I jerked toward Galen, who gradually propped himself up on an elbow, his arms shaking.
“Are you alright? How do you feel?” I asked, bending low.
“Wh—what happened?” he replied in between coughs. He looked around the small kitchen in confusion. “And if you’re going to start fights, Thorne, I want to be there.” His voice was frail, but he chuckled weakly.
My shoulders sagged as my panic and wrath dimmed. Until Rhys Penworth’s voice rang out.
“This has gone on long enough.” He pulled himself up to his full height, still clutching at his wrist. “Grimaldi, I’ve chosen to respect you out of loyalty to your father, but I willnotbe offended and lied to in my own home. And I absolutely will not tolerate terrorists under this roof.”
Galen narrowed his eyes. “You’re toeing a very dangerous line, Penworth. You forget that I am your king.”
Rhys shook his head, his slicked-back gray hair catching the light. “The great King Orion would never have approved of the company you keep. Marrying an outsider? Letting our kingdom fall into ruin?” He scoffed. “You claim to be a king, but you are aboytrying to step into his father’s shoes.”
Galen grasped the back of the couch and shakily hauled himself to his feet. His normally combed hair was ragged and loose around his ashen face, and his voice was rough as he glared at Rhys. “There will be consequences for your disloyalty, Penworth.”
The older man chuckled. “Attempt anything, and see what happens when a quarter of your kingdom turns against you,Your Majesty.” He took a step closer to Galen, and I moved on instinct, ready to get between them. “You are nothing without your regents. You speak of disloyalty? When have you ever been loyal tous, Grimaldi?”
Tension swelled and heated in the silence between the two. My muscles were drawn tight, unsure what the next move would be, barely daring to draw breath.
Rhys’s cloak billowed along the floor as he spun on his heel, taking his wife by the arm. He didn’t bother to face us when he said, “I want all of you out of my house by morning. You are no longer welcome in the South Territory.”
The Hunt
43
Clarissa
The faint silhouette of the mountains receded behind us as we sailed east into the rising sun. A full day aboard theQueen Mignonetteawaited us on our journey from the South Territory to the elusive Island Territory.
I’d hardly slept. By the look of the motley crew surrounding me at the table in the quarter deck, neither had the others. Leo’s arm was thrown around Rose’s chair, her head resting on his shoulder. He kept tipping forward and backward on the legs, and I glimpsed his tail winding and unwinding around Rose’s ankle beneath the table—a sign of his unease.
Devora brought my mother a cup of tea, and the two of them sat next to me. It took Mia all of five seconds to rouse from her nap at my feet to prop her little paws on Devora’s leg, begging to be let into her lap.
Galen had gone straight to the captain’s cabin to continue sleeping off whatever toxin he’d ingested last night. Katrine was preparing a medicine for him that Rose had taught her, and the Reaux family…well, I wasn’t sure where they’d settled on the ship. I tried not to think about them.Him. With everything else going on, my complicated emotions for a man I couldn’t have didn’t need to muddy the waters.
I sighed and scrubbed at my eyes. Apparently it wasn’t justmesomeone was after—it was Galen too. I’d known from that very first dinner at Palace Grimaldi that there were people opposed to my coming here, and Galen hadn’t exactly established the best reputation among his kingdom. Plus, Scarven’s Shifters had entered the picture. The threat could literally be anywhere at this point. We had no idea who to trust, no idea what lurked around the next corner.
I’d tried to find the Penworths and tell them about the strange figure I saw running through their grounds last night, but they refused to see me. I settled for Taryn and hoped she’d be able to get through to them. Not that it mattered anymore.
Every single person aboard theQueen Mignonettehad been examined. The assassin hadn’t left the South Territory with us. I prayed they wouldn’t follow—or worse, that there weren’t more waiting for us on the island.
I was curious about this next regent family. If Scarvenwasn’tbehind the attacks, then the regent families had plenty of motive too. Especially if they were working together. Even if Dion Silenus had changed his mind at the last moment, that didn’t mean he wasn’t at one point part of some larger plan. And the Penworthsdefinitelyhated us. They all had the power to do anything they wanted in their territories—bribe carriage drivers, pay security guards to let a man with a weapon through at the Harvest Tournament, rig a bonfire, poison a bottle of whiskey, even cause an explosion to bring down the roof of a small cave.
“You look like you could use this,” Devora said next to me, breaking me from my thoughts. She slid her teacup across the scratchy wooden table. Mia’s head peeked up at the motion before she settled back into her lap.
I gave her a look. “Tea?”
“Sure.Tea.” She fingered the top of her shirt, and the metal tip of a flask peeked out.
I snorted. “Devora, it’s not even eight in the morning.”
She shrugged. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
