She looked at him for a long moment, but then she sat.
Tor passed Mathos a plate of duck and then added a handful of blackberries they’d found growing on the brambles nearby before reaching over to heap some onto Lucilla’s trencher too and then helping himself to a plate.
As he lowered himself to the ground, Tor observed quietly, “If we were going to hurt you, we would have done it by now.”
Mathos glared at him. “Thanks for that. Another true but extremely unhelpful comment.”
Lucilla narrowed her eyes at him. “How is that unhelpful?”
Mathos turned his glare to her. “Well, the last thing we need is you getting it into your head that we are planning to hurt you, dar— Your Maj—” Fuck it all. What was he supposed to call her?
Lucilla put her duck down on her plate and leaned forward, her eyes flicking to Tor. “It is helpful. You haven’t really hurt me—other than kidnapping me and threatening me—so maybe it is true that we can have a vaguely civilized dinner together.”
Fuck. They were threatening kidnappers now; this just got better and better. Never mind the hot flare of resentment from his beast that she was so blatantly supporting Tor over him. Again.
It was irrational that he found her preference for Tor annoying. And that made him even more irritated. “I very much doubt that we can have acivilizeddinner,” Mathos sneered. “I am a beast, after all.”
Lucilla settled back onto the log, a bright red flush climbing her neck. “I’m sorry I insulted you,” she said quietly a few moments later, not quite meeting his eyes. “I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t Apollyon before. And I’d been taught…. Anyway, it was rude, and I’m sorry.”
Mathos hmphed, completely taken aback that she had apologized and suddenly not sure what to say next.
“Why not?” Tor asked bluntly.
Lucilla stared quietly at Tor, her face so impassive that Mathos wondered if she would reply until she surprised him by admitting, “My father filled the house with only his own trusted servants. They were all Apollyon.”
Tor wrapped a big hand around the back of his neck, a sure sign he was unsettled. “What about your friends? Or when you went out? Surely someone must have given you some idea of how to avoid insulting your own subjects?”
Lucilla gazed at him silently for a long moment, and then looked away; obviously she didn’t plan to comment on that.
Gods. A horrible idea occurred to him—maybe she had never had friends? They knew she’d been hidden away since she was born, but maybe she’d been kept isolated too?
Mathos pushed away the sudden burst of pity. He was probably imagining the sad downward tilt to her lips. And anyway, she would have plenty of friends once she was established as the queen.
He took a bite of duck and chewed slowly while he tried to get his thoughts in order. She was determined to keep pretending not to be Ballanor’s sister, which didn’t make this any easier.
“Whatever. I’m confident that you are Lucilla, Geraint’s daughter. And if I’m right, which I am, then we’ve been looking all over for you.”
She watched him with wide eyes as he continued. “King Ballanor is dead, which makes Lucilla the Queen of Brythoria.”
“What?” Her hand flew to her throat as she stared at him, her fingers trembling slightly against her pale skin.
Mathos leaned over to take the dangerously tilted trencher from her lap and settle it beside her before it could fall. Hell. She hadn’t known. Maybe he should have tried to soften the blow a little—what a way to tell her that her only brother had died. Just being around this woman was turning him into the brute she thought he was.
His beast rattled deep inside him, and he fought to keep his voice smooth. “Gods. Sorry, I didn’t realize no one had told you. I should have found a better way.”
“I… um… it’s not, I mean, I’m not…” She took a slow breath and seemed to get her thoughts together. “And the baby?”
Mathos blinked. “What baby?”
“His wife, what’s her name? Something with anA?”
“Alanna?” Mathos asked, still lost.
“They’ve been married long enough….” She moved her hand from her throat to clasp it tightly in her lap. “It would make sense for mercenaries to be hunting her, Lucilla, I mean, if Alanna had a baby. Ballanor might have seen her as a threat to the baby, don’t you think? And now Alanna might feel the same, especially with Ballanor gone.”
Lucilla hunched forward over her clasped hands, and Mathos began to have a horrible suspicion about why Lucilla had run. And why she was so terrified. She thought she was going to die. And, despite how annoyed he was with her, he hated how vulnerable she looked.
Moving slowly and carefully, doing his best not to startle her, he raised himself onto the log beside her and gently laid a hand on her shoulder. For all her bravado, she felt very delicate to him.
