Ignoring her greeting, I purse my lips. “Oh dear.Azul!”
The blue eagle responds to my call, launching himself, talons outstretched, at the back of the throne. Silently this time.
The wind puffs at Galla’s back.
Her eyes widen as the threat appears to register.
With a scream, she launches herself out of the chair, just in time for his talons to rake across the plush surface, tearing through silk before closing around the chair’s wooden skeleton, ripping it wholly off the dais and into the air.
He flies past the nearest wall, leaving Galla hunched at the edge of the dais, her arms thrown around her head.
The would-be throne makes a heavy thud as Azul drops it unceremoniously from his talons before he returns to the wall behind the dais.
A heavy silence falls.
“Darling Galla,” I say softly. “I did try to save you from this embarrassment. If only you’d done as I asked.”
She raises herself up to her full height, but now her focus is on the darkness looming behind us, the boiling bloodlands.
It doesn’t matter how hard I fight to break her control of this situation—she still holds the power.
Smoothing down her dress, she glides toward us, making the briefest bending motion with her legs, as if that will suffice as kneeling to Antony.
He has remained silent and motionless behind me, giving me free rein, but I sense the increasing tension in his body as Galla approaches.
“Where’s Rohan?” she asks, aiming her question at him.
Antony merely stares back at her.
I’m acutely aware that her lords are all gathered on the left of the room while her ladies are on the right, all of them now rising from their kneeling positions.
I identify Emiliana, her face painted white but without the glittering stars on her cheeks, the slowest to rise, her legs appearing a little unsteady. Next to her, Lady Delphina wears a sickening smile, her cheeks painted with golden stars and her cunning eyes bright.
“Where’s Rohan?” Galla snaps.
I clear my throat, pointing to her dress at the location of her lap. “Galla, darling, there’s an unfortunate wet patch where you spilled?—”
“Where’s Rohan?” she screams.
Slowly, Antony reaches up to his helmet, and even more slowly, he pulls it from his head.
Gasps sound around the room. Then a new hush falls.
Wide-eyed highborn stare at their king, possiblyseeing for the first time his adult face, although he never told me how old he was when he started wearing his armor.
His dark hair falls in jagged strands across his cold green eyes, and his smile…
So dangerously perfect.
“Rohan isn’t here,” he says.
When I first witnessed Antony’s uncovered face, I truly understood how much the metal he wears cages his brutality.
I felt intense fear in that moment.
And now it seems, the highborn are experiencing it too. Many of them edge backward, scooting on their knees, bumping into those behind them. Some of the ladies have even looked away, trembling where they crouch.
Cheeks deathly pale and breathing shallow, Galla is frozen. “You… I…”
