It was shortsighted and simpleminded of me, but I’d never seriously considered inviting another into my heart when Aderyn already owned the whole of it.
Oblivious to how he’d stunned me, Forov leaned forward on the balls of his feet. “Princess Josephine is the emperor’s only daughter—his only heir. The daughter of an emperor? A fine match for any king.” His tongue slid quickly between his lips, wetting them. “You may be young, Your Majesty, but you’re not eternal.”
There was a sound as Bet moved—metal on stone, near to my ear—but the sound was blocked out by Rhys standing. The move was quick and so dramatic that it knocked over his inkwell, spilling a black mess all across the table and the papers he’d been working on.
“What an offer,” Rhys announced to the four of us. “You have given us much to consider, Lord Forov.” He swept around the table, ignoring his upturned well and spreading his arms to turn Forov away from the throne. “You will understand that we need time to consider.”
Rhys didn’t look at me then. Surely he didn’t expect me to seriously consider a proposal to marry someone I’d never met before.
I stared at the back of him as he led Forov away.
It was for the envoy’s safety, I realized. Bet marched down from the throne to the table where Rhys had perched, blade grasped in his fist, but he didn’t make it ten steps before Rhys and Forov were gone. Bet drove the blade’s slim tip into the tabletop, cursing.
“Presumptive pus-filled cock on legs,” he growled.
Now that we were alone, the throne felt hard and unforgiving against my back. I stood with a sigh, wandered down from the throne myself, and set Rhys’s inkwell upright.
“Leave it,” I said quietly.
Perhaps Forov had meant to make the offer as a—a kind of... gift. A show of generosity from an empire that believed itself above everyone else. I, at least, might be equal to them, in their eyes.
A ridiculous prospect, considering so much of my kingdom displeased them.
At the very least, they wanted something from me, though it was hard to imagine what might be worth the hand of the emperor’s sole heir.
Another grumble from Bet, and he swiped out a cloth of some sort. The splash of ink on the wood was gone in a second. The cloth itself was stained already—brown spots that might’ve one time been blood, though it’d been washed again and again in the years since. Leave it to Bet Kyston to best know how to clean up a mess.
“You don’t have to humor these people any longer. The Destovians need this alliance more than we do,” Bet murmured.
That wasn’t remotely true, but Bet had always made do with what he had and brought the world to its knees.
When he was angry, he had this way of clenching his teeth and hardly moving his lips, like he didn’t want to give away where he’d strike from next. His black eyes cut into me sharply when he narrowed them. “If they have anything we need, we can take it.”
I huffed. “Can we now?”
Bet shrugged, his gaze flicking to his discreet blade as it resumed its dance across his fingers. “We have magic.”
“The Hudoliaeth is full of students. Children.”
He arched his brow high, not a wrinkle on his pale forehead. “I watched your aunt lift a mountain.”
I sighed through my nose. “Aunt Gillian has magic, sure. And a family I’m not willing to part her from.” My cousins, after all, were still quite young, little as they seemed to think so. “She’s not a soldier.”
“That didn’t stop her from fighting before.”
I glared at him. I’d trained in the art of war, to be sure, but it was a matter of necessity. When I’d been a prince, it’d been the thing to do, and I’d been pitiful at it. After the Battle of Windy Pass, I?—
I determined that I would never let another Llangardian raise their sword in my defense unless I could protect them in turn. I’d nearly lost... I’d nearly lost everything that day, and if it took sword practice and years of dedication to ensure it never happened again, so be it.
Even still, I hadn’t had any natural talent for fighting. It was hard won and cultivated through years of dedication. War wasn’t a thing I longed for. We’d respond to threats in kind, but I’d be hard-pressed to resort to violence without great need.
“Our allies are dragons,” Bet insisted. “The Destovian ships won’t matter against fire, and we’d take the land after that first assault from above.”
The curl of Bet’s lip spoke to simmering rage he was ready to unleash on all of Destovia, and while I could understand it, I couldn’t risk it.
“No.”
Bet’s jaw clenched.
