"Likeness?" Morgan repeated, feeling that her feet were not stable beneath her.
"Perhaps after we are wed," the woman said smoothly.
"Wed?" Morgan repeated dumbly.
The woman looked down her nose. "Did you think you would have him, my little cabbage leaf?"
"He's an ass," Morgan said without thinking. "I wouldn't have him if he begged."
Gasps echoed throughout the chamber. Morgan suspected Adhémar's was the loudest.
Paien and Camid took a step backward. Morgan saw them do it but couldn't manage to tell them not to bother. She was still having too much trouble reconciling what the woman was saying with what she knew couldn't possibly be true.
Adhémar, the king?
Preposterous.
She looked at the men gathered in a neat row to one side of Adhémar.
They looked enough like him that they could have been his brothers, There were five of them.
The king had brothers, didn't he?
Morgan clutched the sword in her hand and looked back at Adhémar. He had only folded his arms over his chest and was watching her expressionlessly. He was named after the king, true enough, though she had suspected his parents had indulged in too much wishful thinking while he was a baby and named him after the eldest prince. Was it possible? She thought back swiftly to all her encounters with him. He had been boastful, irritating, condescending, and autocratic in the extreme. She had thought it was just a bit of wishful thinking onhispart.
Perhaps it had been something else.
She managed to swallow.
"Are you?" Her voice broke and she had to try again. "Are you the king?" she asked, but there was little sound to her words. She sounded faint, even to her own ears.
"Of course he is the king, you idiotic shieldmaiden," the woman in blue snapped.
Adhémar shot the woman a look of warning, then turned back to Morgan. "Aye," he said with a curt nod. "I am."
"But?" She could almost not find voice for her thoughts. "But why? Why did you say nothing? Why did you let me believe otherwise?"
"I need you to wield the Sword of Angesand."
Morgan looked at the sword in her hand. "This?" she asked. "This is the Sword of Angesand?"
The woman in blue threw up her hands in disgust.
Morgan looked at Adhémar. "Is it?"
"Aye," he said simply. "It is."
Morgan frowned. Well, if that was the case, then it was little wonder that he had tried to teach her spells. Perhaps he'd known all along that the sword would call to her. But how? She'd told no one about her errand to Tor Neroche. She'd told no one about the knife she carried. She'd told no one she had dreamed of a sword that perfectly matched that knife?a sword that even she could now see was the Sword of Angesand.
Then she froze.
That wasn't exactly true.
She looked at the men standing next to Adhémar. Five brothers. Now that she thought about it, she remembered that the king had six brothers.
She looked to her left. There, standing by himself silently, watching her with a very grave expression, was Miach.
The sixth brother.
