Gods, what am I doing?I’m going to drive myself insane with worry, and I haven’t even seen the man yet. My head feels strangely light, the way it feels when I haven’t eaten in hours. I’ve got to find a way to calm down before I spend my first time meeting the king passed out on the floor.
“Breathe,” says Larus softly so that only I can hear him. “Remember your training.”
My training? I’ve trained in swinging swords, darkening shadows, parrying with a dagger, shooting a bow. I’ve also trained in formal dancing, the correct silverware to use at dinner, how to play the flute passably well, and how to pray to the gods…How is any of that going to help me when the man I’m going to kill can sense my every feeling? “Oh no, I wasn’t thinking of murdering you, your majesty. I was thinking about which fork to use with the salad.”
Fucked. I’mfucked.
We turn a corner and are faced with a pair of wooden doors taller and wider than the ferry’s portcullis, their surfaces etched with gilded swirls. I pause, imagining the impossible weight of them and wondering how in the world they manage to get them open, when two guards stretch out their hands, and the doors shudder, swinging forth into the room. Nature magic, maybe, because of the wood, or earth, if they’re somehow using the hinges for leverage. Or air, even, though I felt no gust of wind.
The sight inside is even more spectacular. Ronan’s throne room is larger than even our greatest temple. It’s a cavernous space with golden candlelit chandeliers hanging high in the rafters, giant columns of pinkish stone, and rows of wooden benches lining the aisles, all pointing to an enormous chair at the very back.
The throne itself is wooden as well, and it appears unremarkable other than its size. From what I remember, it’s the original throne built for the original Selaran ruler Queen Elissa from when the lands were first settled, long before the divide that had torn Nithyria into its own kingdom.
I’m surprised to see that Ronan hasn’t made himself a new one out of gold yet.
As we’re led down the aisle to the throne, it becomes clear that Ronan isn’t in it. I glance at Adria, but she simply shakes her head and looks forward.
“God-King Ronan prefers to receive guests in his antechamber,” Cyrus explains, his voice dripping with displeasure. “He likes to see his people eye to eye.”
His people.We are not his people. We will never be—
No. I stop myself. This is exactly the kind of thing I can’t think of.
Gods, it’s hard tonotthink of something. As soon as you know you’re not supposed to be thinking of it, it’s the only thing you can think of at all.
Cyrus leads us to the left of the throne and into a room at the back. It’s as different from the throne room as it could possibly be. It’s small and quite nicely furnished, with fine rugs in a rich red and tables and chairs carved from a dark red wood.
The wood of the phoenix tree, I realize. Our wood. The wood they burn for their gold.
Is this some kind of power play? To parade us in here and remind us of what they took from us? To remind us that they’ll always have the power to take it?
I bite the inside of my mouth to stop that line of thinking too.
A door opens at the back, and in he walks.
No trumpets. No fanfare. Only a pair of guards in chainmail and a retinue behind him.
This is the God-King of Selara. The man who killed my father. The man who took our lands from us. Who humiliated my sister. Who starved our people. The man we’ve traveled hundreds of miles to kil—meet. To meet, and to attend his festival, and nothing else. That’s all we’re here for.
I hope he felt that.
He’s just…a man.
I don’t know what I expected. I guess in my mind, I’d built him up to be a monster. I’ve been hearing about him since I was a child. For the last few years of the war, I’d heard about his every move in the coded letters my family sent Larus. I imaginedsomeone larger than life, someone enormous and hideous and revolting, someone with the soul of a beast and the face of one of Vahlo’s demons.
But he’s just an ordinary man. Well, not ordinary exactly. He’s certainly taller than everyone in the room. That’s all I really have time to determine before I see everyone around me bowing, and I bend to do the same.
When I look back up, he’s looking directly into my eyes.
The intensity of his gaze sends a jolt of panic through me. What does he sense? What does he know?
Keep it together, Sylvie. Find something else to focus on.
A bead of sweat slides down my neck. It will look suspicious if I look away from him when he’s staring at me so intently, so I look back and study his face.
It’s…well, it’s perfect. There’s really no other way to put it. It’s almost too perfect. Uncannily perfect, artificial almost. Every proportion is perfect—the spacing of his brown eyes, the length and angle of his nose, the fullness of his lips. The set of his smooth jaw, the size of his ears.
Even the hair on his crownless head is perfect. It’s a dark, rich brown with a few sun-kissed streaks of gold, and it has a gentle wave that falls in just the right way onto his forehead to accentuate his perfectly groomed brows.
