“Vance did.” Salom is smiling, which deepens the bend of his crooked nose and the shimmer of his eyes. He seems…crazed.
“Go get the soldiers in charge of surveillance and bring them down to the War Room.” Konstantin crosses his arms. “And, Salom, I forbid you from nicking anyone else’s skin without my permission. Am I understood?”
Salom’s amber gaze flashes with a mixture of hurt and resentment. “You’re understood, Vizosh.”
The vein in Konstantin’s neck distends at being called Your Highness by the man he considers family. Salom squares his shoulders before whirling on his heel and heading up the stairs. The sound of his footfalls seems to echo endlessly against the vaulted ceilings and stone walls of the Throne Room.
“May he find evidence or a culprit…” Konstantin’s knuckles are white against his black leather sleeves.
Would he dismiss Salom of his duties should the general be guilty? Force him into early retirement? Extradite him? Kill him?
“Ekaterina’s right.” Konstantin’s grave murmur ferries a chill down my spine. “Iamruling over a kingdom of cards.”
“My father thought the same when he took over Luce,” I remind him. “Unrest rocked Luce for years, but the dustdidend up settling. And not over the king’s corpse.”
“We became kings at the same time.” Konstantin’s posture remains closed off, his gaze riveted to the stairs.
“When Dádhi rose to power the second time around, it was in the middle of a civil war. Your kingdom is not at war, Konstantin.”
“It’s on the brink of one.”
“The brink isn’t?—”
“I still had the favor of the High Fae, but after today, many will eschew me.”
Could that be the reason Lev was killed? So that Konstantin loses the favor of the last courtiers who still supported his regime?
To think we believed Lev complicit in Ksenia and Mestyla’s plot… But he was a victim of it, like so many others.
I close the distance between us. When my toecaps align with his, I stop, gaze darting around the Throne Room to make sure we’re alone before I ask, “Does Salom truly hate your sister?”
Konstantin’s eyebrows slant. “Which sister? Ksenia?”
I nod.
“Why?”
“Because none of your soldiers have been able to locate her or Mestyla, and who leads your armies?”
Konstantin’s pupils shrink.
“What if he killed them both but kept their deaths a secret to have someone to blame?” I muse.
His jaw hardens. “You sound like Aodhan.”
“Is that what he thinks?”
Konstantin gives me the faintest nod.
“It just seems so improbable that Lev, whom you compelled to stop selling weapons to terrorists, manages to defy the toxin of your bargain. He may not have been morally faultless, but he didn’thateshifters.”
“Salom isn’t an antimorph, and the terror attacks started when I promulgated my shifter law. Not to mention that he’s been loyal to my family for longer than I’ve been alive. Also, your great-grandfather likes him.”
I sigh. “I know, which does give my suspicions pause. Perhaps the tavern going up in flames, Svyato’s deaths, Tiana’s, Lev’s…perhaps they’re all truly accidents.”
Konstantin’s fingers stiffen against the small of my back. “Who told you about Tiana?”
“Vance.” I roll my lips at the memory of the half-blood’s bright eyes and sweet laughter.
