I stall out. I hadn’t figured out how to phrase this. It wouldn’t help to outright accuse the King of murder in the middle of an important banquet.
As the King’s gaze intensifies, scrutinizing me, warning prickles wash over my skin.
The awareness that I’m utterly vulnerable here has never left me, but I’m not used to operating like this. It’s been a long time since I worked so hard to blend in amongst the fairies and it takes a great amount of control and perceptiveness on my part.
“Wonder what?” The King’s voice reminds me of the rattling of a snake about to attack.
“My dear, I think you need a top off,” the Queen mutters next to me before waving over a servant to refill my glass.
The King and I don’t break eye contact even as the thralled familiar leans over between us to pour more sparkling bubbles into my glass. My blood runs hot despite the chill of the hall.
Their eyes are so dead, so empty. I wonder if they can even take a shit without Valdor Charming’s say so.
“Wonder if perhaps there was foul play involved in your father’s demise?” The King finishes for me.
The table quiets.
My lips flatten, suddenly glued together as my heartbeat moves to my throat.
The only thing keeping me from fighting or fleeing is Kaison’s distracting play with my hand.
The tension presses in around me like a thick fog, making it difficult to breathe.
“I have sometimes wondered that myself,” the King muses idly, taking a sip of blood, breaking the tension. “But then no one would dare hurt such a favored familiar of the King’s,” he says a little louder.
No one except you.
The Queen recoils between us ever so slightly at his announcement. As if she knows the full weight of his power.
“Do you smell something burning?” the duke asks the prince.
Kaison shrugs, looking around briefly as if looking for the source of the smoky scent.
It is true. To attack any of the castle’s familiars would be a treasonous offense, to which King Charming brings a swift punishing hand—fang?—down upon them.
I want to ask about what Kaison told me. About my father’s final days sequestered. About what he and the Kingfought about. About why the King uses my father’s art as the background for the social season.
Kaison’s hand squeezes mine, hard. A silent signal.
Don’t do it. You’ve already pushed the envelope enough tonight.
The message is received but not exactly welcome. Ever since Kaison shared that my father was likely murdered, it has been eating into the side of my brain like a hoard of flesh-hungry fire ants.
The King and Queen turn their attention away from me to converse with the guests on the other side of them. Kaison drops my hand and the scathing glances move on.
The stiff propriety of secrets, lies, and stuffy ass decorum in this place makes me want to jump and scream, shatter glasses, shake people by the lapels, and do something truly crazy to break the suffocating pattern that has existed for hundreds of years.
Just as I’m about to break and do something crazy, a buzz activates between my legs.
Chapter 20
The Panties Don’t Have Fangs
CINDER
Ican’t bite back the moan before it escapes me.
The duke across from me shoots me a disapproving look as if the zoo animal is not behaving herself.
