“Cousin,” he slurs, “what are you going to do now that the king is dead?”
Noemi just looks at him, face stony.
“Will you spread your legs for this new queen, too? I hearyoulike that, but does she? Have you already tasted her?”
The man’s mouth opens to say more, but whatever vile words he intended next are silenced forever with an angry swipe of my hand.
Sometimes it takes effort to impel, but the power comes to me now without a thought, slamming into him like a brick wall.
He’s pushed up and back, and the luxe tapestry behind him isn’t enough to cushion the blow as his headthwacksinto the wall and splits open like overripe fruit.
Lord Eisenfall and his court look on, stunned, as my power releases him. His body crumples onto the serving table below, displacing several full goblets of wine that spill and tumble onto the floor. A wide slash of red and an accompanying splatter mark the spot where his head met tapestry.
I gesture at the stain. “Hope that’s not a family heirloom.”
Lord Eisenfall swallows audibly. I look over to Noemi, and she gives me the smallest hint of a nod.
I keep my voice flat and level, knowing I have every ear in this hall. “What I’lloffer youis your life and your freedom, and if youdon’tfall in line, you will have the full force of the Bonded bearing down on your fiefdom. Are we clear?”
The silence is profound, until finally the lord merely nods. “We’re clear. I’ll be there, Alpha Stark.”
Turning, I lead Noemi away through the shocked, silent crowd. And then a buzzing, electric connection unfurls in my head, a dam that’s been opened wide.
It’s never happened before, and still, I know what it is instantly.
Fuck.
“Stark?” Meryn’s voice calls in my mind.“What’s happening? Are you okay? I… felt something.”
Noemi and I push out of the doors of the great hall. “Go pack up,” I tell her. “I’ll be down there in just a moment.”
She gives me a bewildered look, but she shrugs and heads toward our guest rooms. In the now-empty passageway, I focus my mind back on the surging connection that Meryn has torn open between the two of us.
Our connection has lived inside me from the moment she and Anassa bonded, but with Cratos’s barriers up, it’s been easy enough to ignore. I’ve never sought it out or attempted to use it.
It’s been like the sun: a fact of my life that I don’t have to pay attention to because it simply is.
Now my vision has been directed into it, and I can no longer avoid it because I’m being blinded by its warmth.
With Meryn’s voice comes a slow leak of her feelings, too—something sheshouldbe able to safeguard me from if only she was better at this. Meryn and Anassa are still working on the finer skills of mental communication after blocking each other out for so much of the Trials.
She’s on edge, concerned.
Concerned aboutme.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say quickly.“It’s nothing.”
Her frustration pours through the connection.“That was a blatantly suspicious response. You were angry about something, angry enough that it reached me. Tell me.”
That’s not good. I’ll need to do a better job of keeping her out, or at least of leashing my temper.
“Is Eisenfall refusing to come to the coronation?” she asks, uneasy.
“They’ll be coming,” I say.“I was pissed because Noemi’s family are behaving predictably toward her.”
Meryn might be all strong bluster on the outside, but I’ve seen the woman beneath it now. The unending concern for others—now extended to an entire kingdom. The way she bottles up every bad thing that happens to her, locks it away, until it begins to eat her alive. And the way she would let it, time and time again, if it meant sparing the people she cares about.
It would be admirable if it wasn’t deeply unhealthy.
