Maelsar chuckled, lounging like he owned the space instead of me. “I have news.”
“Oh?” I asked, raising a brow. “What about?”
“Calrien,” he said casually, flicking some invisible lint off his pants.
This time, it was my turn to grin. “So you found something?”
Mischief danced in his aquamarine irises. “He’s been fucking Dasha for a fewyearsapparently.”
A laugh barked out of me. “You’re kidding.”
“I won’t even say I wish I wasn’t because I fucking love this information,” Maelsar chuckled, grabbing an apple from a nearby bowl. He turned it over a few times to check for bruising, then bit into its flesh.
“All the time he spent with us after thebetrothal announcement, and he never mentioned it,” I mused. Honestly, I didn’t care. I’d never wanted to wed Dasha anyway. Nor had I ever lain with her.
“But get this,” Maelsar said around a mouthful of fruit. “Iaoth called both of them to her chambers a few nights ago. They didn’t emerge for hours. And a servant was turned away for bed service the next morning.”
Lyriasthe was proving incredibly useful if she had gleaned this information and passed it onto Maelsar. The servants were notoriously tight-lipped except around each other. If they discovered that Lyriasthe was informing us of all the gathered gossip, she’d be excluded from any further discussions.
I whistled, long and low. My sister was brazen, bold, considering her current position. “Any report if Stadiel was there too?”
Maelsar spun the apple in his hand, looking for another piece to tear off. “He wasn’t in his study and this was hours after the council meeting. So they assume yes. There were, allegedly, multiple male moans when a night sentinel made her rounds.”
My brows climbed my forehead. I knew the Koron’s sexual appetites were vast, and that he’d bedded more females than just my sister since they’d been wed before the Goddess. Perhaps group sex was his new way of impregnating her. Calrien resembled him enough that if he did father Iaoth’s child, Stadiel could still claim it as his.
But if the rest of the court caught wind of their Koron fucking his brother-by-law’s almost-wife and his own councilor’s daughter, the political fallout would be catastrophic. Especially if Herr Elyriane didn’t know of it. He’d already accused me of tainting her. With this news, he’d rally the other houses behind him and strike Stadiel off his silver throne in an instant.
Maelsar must have followed my line of thinking. “I doubt Zarethiel knows. After how you embarrassed him, I’d be shocked if he ever accepted the betrothal proposal for Iaoth and Stadiel’s children.”
“If he can’t secure his position through marrying me to Dasha, perhaps Stadiel thought if he impregnated her himself, Zarethiel would back off. Especially because if Iaoth never bears him an heir, that bastard would inherit the throne,” I mused.
“That’s another possibility,” he commented. Maelsar polished off the last of the apple, then threw the core at me. Light burst from my skin and caught the offending object mere inches from my face. Keeping it aloft, I glared around it at Maelsar. “Sloppy. Do we need to go to the training yard today?”
“Psh,” he dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand. “I’ve had plenty of exercise already.”
I snorted a laugh. My amusement died when I felt Sylaira brush against my mind.“I really need something today.”
Fuck. Iaoth must have been pushing the Seers hard again. They’d had a brief reprieve as the nobles’ letters percolated through the realm, calling for new recruits in the army. The hope had been that their power would replenish while the tides shifted.
“Give me a moment,”I replied. Wracking my brain, I tried to decide on a reasonable glimpse into our future that would appease my sister. Iaoth already suspected that my mate wasn’t exactly tapping into her immense power. Battling against that was the need to keep secret what was really occurring with the war. Sylaira was ignorant of many recent developments—like that we’d be joining the ranks in a few weeks.
With her Elessarum leanings, she’d have a fit. And I wasn’t ready to face her wrath again.
“What is it?” Maelsar asked, but I held up my hand to silence him so I could think.
“Say something along the lines of the Angels starving among sand. How the Demons are overrunning them, forcing them back to our realm. Make it sound ominous, but not too certain.”
It was borderline treasonous to suggest the future. But it might also be the only way I could steer the direction of supplies to ensure that very reality didn’t come to pass.
“Is that really happening?”Her melodic voice was scarcely a whisper, threaded with apprehension.
I paused for a long moment, considering how much I wanted to reveal.“It is not. But it could be. And by conveying that, you could save lives.”
I hoped the final sentence would convince her to go along with my lie.
“Thank you,”she murmured before drifting away.
I chased her down the chain linking us—much calmer now that I’d claimed her. Her thoughts were a wild blur, despite the fact that I could sense her in a meditative posture. The ache in her knee was dull, a stark contrast to what had once been a sharp pain.
