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Pain radiated through my connection to Gwyneira, though she only smiled calmly in return. “I would like that,” she said evenly. “And may I introduce my allies?” One by one, she went around, giving our names calmly, as if we were no more than acquaintances she’d met along the road. The tone would have worried me, had I not understood why she used it.
She was protecting us. Herself as well. Tension tangled deep inside her no matter how outwardly calm she appeared. And despite even her best efforts, I could still see the assessing way Lord Thomas and his supposed bodyguard eyed us the entire time.
They likely wondered what she’d needed to do in order to secure the assistance of eight male strangers such as ourselves, but they were too tied by their Aneiran sensibilities to ask.
I was glad. I wouldn’t tolerate them looking down upon my mate for making her own choices, even if they didn’t agree with them. No one would put her in a cage.
This gods-damned place aside.
Valeria’s gaze snapped to me, though I knew I hadn’t made a sound. She’d noticed my tension, I suspected. I met her eyes, knowing that to do so was a challenge.
I didn’t care. I wouldn’t back down. Human or not, a predator was still a predator.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” Lord Thomas said when Gwyneira was finished with the introductions. “Thank you for assisting our princess.”
A few of the others nodded. I didn’t, and neither did Roan nor Clay. The former lurked as far from the humans and everyone else as he could, while the latter looked like he couldn’t decide whether to crack a joke or demand we leave.
Clay clearly couldn’t relax here. And Roan…
I pulled my attention back to the humans. Roan was a question mark. I just wasn’t sure what the actual question was yet.
“It was our honor,” Casimir replied to the lord, the regal etiquette with which he carried himself even more in evidence now. I hadn’t realized until this moment how much he’d relaxed around us since we first met him. “And may I express our gratitude for the shelter you offer the princess and ourselves as well?”
Lord Thomas inclined his head slightly, a measured bit of body language like one would give to a stranger who was also a subordinate.
Human perceptions were so strange. Even setting aside Casimir’s actual rank as king of Zenirya—not that the lord knew that—the vampire’s bearing alone should have made his station clear. But humans rarely comprehended such things, if they even saw them at all.
“Why did you give us shelter, Lord Thomas?” Gwyneira asked carefully. “Truly?”
He was quiet for a moment, as if weighing his words, and I could hear I wasn’t the only one who ceased breathing while we waited for what he would say.
“I’ve lived long enough to know that people can surprise you, princess,” he said. “That they are sometimes capable of wrongs you would have never imagined they’d commit. But even with that in mind, I have also known you since you were an infant, and I haven’t maintained my position all these years without being a decent judge of character. I saw the love you had for your father. It would defy my very understanding of sanity itself if you had actually killed him.”
Gwyneira swallowed hard, but that slight crack in her composure was nothing compared to the anguished tumult of emotion I could feel through my connection to my mate. She’d never let on how much it pained her, the fact her own people might truly believe she killed her father. That they thought she hadn’t loved him but instead had only seen him as a step between herself and a throne she hadn’t been patient enough to wait to ascend.
Gods, I wanted to reach for her now. From a few of the faces around the room, I suspected several of my friends felt the same.
“Moreover,” Lord Thomas continued. “The events following your father’s death never sat right with me. If you had escaped like the queen claimed, then why in the world would you flee to the mountains where, rumor has it, she sent her Huntsmen to search? Your father was determined that you learn strategy and tactics. By all accounts, you learned them well. Yet rather than seek aid from me or any other lord who might have been your ally, you chose to escape to the barren wilderness in the depths of winter?” His head shook. “That is not where someone goes who is seeking to survive. That’s where someone is sent if you wish to be rid of them.”
My mate’s head twitched in a small nod. “Indeed.”
“I meant what I said to my people. I will see there be a trial, if for no other reason than to put to rest any doubts that you are wholly innocent. The people will need that, princess. The other lords will too.”
Casimir gave the man a coolly appraising look. “I take it not all of your brethren believe she is innocent, then.”
It was hardly a question, and the grim expression on Lord Thomas’s face was more than enough answer besides. “There are those who are more opportunistic than what is perhaps in the best interests of their people.”
“They want the throne for themselves,” Casimir filled in dryly.
“So it would seem.”
My jaw clenched. Humans talked around things rather than cutting right to the core of them, which meant his answer could be interpreted any number of ways. But I, on the other hand, didn’t give a damn.
My mate deserved the throne, not only because she’d been born to have it but because she would be the kind of ruler Aneira needed if this damned nation ever wanted to reclaim its soul. They’d been a crazed and rabid predator for years. She could help them heal and find a different road.
But not if power-hungry lords got there first.
“Lord Thomas,” Gwyneira asked, and I could feel how her words were meticulously chosen. “What is happening here? Is there a coup? An invasion? Every person we’ve encountered on our travels has run from us, and long before they could have identified who we were. From what we’ve seen, all your people are seeking sanctuary behind the city walls. And we needed to pass inspection with garlic to enter? What in the world has become of Sinaria?”
