“Then how?” Amarande raised a sharp brow. “Because knowledge is not something you can tax at port, nor turn away at your border.Everyonein this arena now knows thetruth. Refuse my handouts, fine. But the people of Pyrenee will now learn exactly how they lost three leaders in short succession, and then they will compare it with the tale you lay at their feet. Is your pride worth so much that you might wager the trust of your people, who are reeling from the top down? Geneva made that bet from this very stage and if you’ve been paying attention to this ceremony, you know that these pieces of parchment are just the first step in atonement from the Crown to the people of Ardenia for the lies she told.”
Amarande’s was a brutal response, as cutting as the Basilican steel she’d used to threaten Renard. The queen knew it, the councilor knew it, the crowd, too.
Luca tried very hard not to smile.
Menon’s pride sagged, his anger receded, and Luca waited to see if the man from Pyrenee was stupid enough to take a swipe from another angle in this fight he would not win.
In the end, Menon sank to his wooden bench with a creaking sigh, no response ready or available. When he was fully put in his place, Amarande lifted her chin and again addressed her most important audience—the people of Ardenia.
“I cannot command Pyrenee or any of the other kingdoms withinour great continent to share the knowledge given to you in this arena.” Her eyes fell to Menon and the other aubergine-clad representatives of Pyrenee for a pointed moment before she continued. “But as your queen, I pledge from this moment forward that the loyal people of Ardenia shall know the truth of what has happened and not simply that we managed to survive it. That is my promise to you, whom I have the duty and honor of serving with my life.”
She nodded, firm, and clarified and confirmed her oath.
“You do not serve me, I serve you, Ardenia.”
And with that, Amarande took a step back from the podium, slipped her hand within Luca’s for all the world to see, and accepted the applause of her people.
CHAPTER 3
COUNCILORMenon greeted Queen Amarande in her own North Tower with a renewed objection and a toss of crumpled parchment upon the high shine of the council room’s oval table.
“That timeline makes the Kingdom of Pyrenee look absolutely terrible!” The councilor was red-faced and decisively pointed at the paper as if it had personally injured him.
Beyond Menon’s agitated form, the Itspi council room was brimming full—the remaining advisors and royalty from the Sand and Sky in attendance for a meeting called for the express purpose of discussing next steps in the future of the continent. They and the military from each kingdom were to set a course for home straightaway once they’d adjourned.
Amarande took her time cutting a path through the bodies to her father’s tiger’s head chair. Luca politely pulled it out for her, and she quietly arranged her voluminous gown as he helped her forward before settling in to her right. There’d been no time to change clothing, or celebrate, or even have a morsel to eat after the ceremony—the continent could not wait. And here was this man still aching from the truth and his own well-deserved embarrassment before thousands of Ardenians.
“The only reason Pyreneelooksabsolutely terrible is because the rulers of Pyreneedidabsolutely terrible things.” Amarande made it a point to gesture to Luca. No one could see the extent of his wounds beneath the well-tailored black tunic and doublet adapted from King Sendoa’s collection, but the queen’s intent was clear. What Pyrenee had done was literally marked across his chest.“Documentedthings.”
Menon accepted her answer like a kick to the gut. Breath frozen in a gasp, his face as sour as if someone had replaced his sagardoa with medicinal sagardon.
She wasn’t done. The queen had planned to enter this meeting without a single look back, but if this was where Menon and the restof Pyrenee’s representatives wanted to go, she was certainly going to take the opportunity to dig in the knife. The future of the Sand and Sky was here and now, and he was glaring at it—at her—with flaring nostrils and spittle stuck in the corners of his mouth.
“As you can see, Ardenia is no cleaner. If you took time to actually read more than the Pyrenee portion of the timeline, you would see it isright therein ink that I killed Renard during our wedding.Myterrible choice is etched into that parchment just as it is on the backs of my eyelids. Weallmust live with what has happened the last few weeks. And by ‘all’ I do not mean everyone in this room, but the people we serve as well. The unrest will always be worse for those with the least. And here you mock their sensibilities and mine with your lack of respect.”
“Disagreement is not mocking.”
“The wayyou disagreed with me certainly was. Menon, I acknowledge that your judgment is likely clouded with mourning for your queen and perhaps her sons, too, but would you have questioned a king so publicly at his coronation?”
Menon seemed surprised when Amarande finished with a true pause, waiting expectantly for any answer. Just as in the arena, the councilor took a moment to glance around, searching for support from the remaining decision makers in the room. All he received were averted eyes and uninviting glares.
“The queen requests an answer,” Luca prodded.
The councilor’s eyes flicked to Luca’s, the disdain in them flaring brightly enough that Amarande bit her tongue before the councilor accepted his fate, drew in a breath, and insulted her yet again. “A king wouldn’t have been so cruel to his peers.”
Amarande bared her teeth. “Says the man who only survived Domingu’s reception regicide plan because his queen figured out the plot and bested the king at his own game. Inés may have benefited from the wedding massacre, but make no mistake, the cruelty there was an idea borne from aking.”
Silence settled about the room—for nearly everyone here was a survivor of that particular cruelty—and in that brief pause, Amarande’s mind corrected her own words.
An idea not simply borne from a king, butkings. For as conflicted as she’d been about Taillefer, Amarande could not deny the last, briefking of Pyrenee and his understanding of the natural arts was the centerpiece of Domingu’s plan. It was Taillefer’s poison. His willing relationship to learn at the knee of the ruthless old king—and to help him. Taillefer died with the blood of those wedding guests on his hands.
And Amarande blamed herself for his death. She gave the order to retain him. Luca did. And the second son of Pyrenee had bled out with a confession upon his lips. It was his poison that had killed her father as it had Domingu and Akil, though it had been Renard who’d done the deed.
Something flared within Amarande and she pressed her hands to the table to steady them, turning that spark in her gut upon Menon. She could dig in further here—swipe her claws at the blatant sexism of his behavior, the clear revisionism in his denial of the timeline parchment, and his particular brand of egoism related to working in proximity to power—this smacked very much of Satordi, may he rest in the stars—but, this meeting had been planned to discuss the future.
The one they were to build.
And Amarande would not waste any more time arguing with a man forged in the patriarchy she was taking active steps to kill.
