Page 55 of Winter Gods & Serpents

Someone must have been really determined to gather a group of more than four dozen of such expensive and hardly attainable characters to attack the princess, and what I feared was that it could have easily been one of our own. We were three moons away from the royal matrimony and judging from her character, too long to have her running around her kingdom gaining more haters than admirers. I just hoped Silas wanted this agreement as much as Adriata did to keep her safe within his city walls till she came here.

“It does her well,” Gray interrupted in an evident snarl. “She should not be parading around her kingdom and ours killing and running that sharp mouth as if she is invincible.”

Grey was the one to spew the hottest curses and hate towards her and he did not hide his hate for the future queen of Adriata. However, they were all thinking the same, I saw it on the soldiers who nodded and their shadows of dislike.

Larg stepped in. “You would think so, but her people said she had headed straight out the next day to deal with a vandal attack on a remote village up their north. She might not be invincible, but she surely is fearless.”

I rubbed my face in anger, that ridiculous idiot was probably doing it on purpose at this point. Was it to avoid marrying into Adriata or just because of her own blind stupidity, I did not understand. But something had to be done before she ruined all our plans.

Grey scoffed. “Reckless idiot.”

On beat, the heat of Mal’s composure leaked out of his shadows while he leaned over to the captain. “Lush that coming from you, had I not been in Sitara you’d been basilisk dung, and might I remind you to mind your tongue captain, she is to be your queen, our queen,” he warned.

The two have been on wrong odds with each other since that day at the trial. Grey came complaining that the whole trip in Sitara Mal refused to utter a single word to him. For someone with that much compassion my brother was too petty.

The room went quiet upon his warning as if they had forgotten what she truly was going to be to Adriata and them. The agreement was one thing, her becoming queen, another.

“Oh, you are thinking something,” Mal said, while we rode for Amaris. “Something I won’t like,”

I knew he had just read my shadows, we usually never used it towards our own so openly. Mal however, always used it on me. When we were children he’d never been able to read the emotions on my face. He’d thought me angry only to find out I had been perfectly calm if not happy, he’d thought me sad only to find out I’d been ecstatic. From that point he’d decided to always use his magic from fear of misunderstanding.

We rode back through Kilmarnock past river Nyx and onto Amaris towards castle grounds where we unsaddled our horses.

Adriata was beautiful by my standard, but the late queen had made sure the castle grounds looked like goddess Henah’s heavens. The large white stone castle stood several floors tall, dressed in crawling violet wisteria and located in the middle of miles and miles of colourful and fragrant rose bushes that had sprung all around it. The sound of wind brushing the evergreen leaves was an oasis itself and the pollen, a perfume around my senses.

We headed to notify the council of the latest events, who would have a lot to say and argue to death till the day grew tired and dark, as per usual. Few of the same councillors who partook, organized, and prepared to attack Isjord, and just the same who had not given second thought or doubted their choices. It was however the king hands that ultimately carried the fault for the Adriatian peoples misery and the death of thousands innocent Isjordians.

“You have got that insane concentration you get when you play chess, I don’t like it,” Mal interrupted silence while we made our way to the Council chambers. “Do tell, I hate surprises.”

“Lies, you love them.”

“Unless I am expecting a puppy to jump out of one, no, I do not.”

“An ybris will jump out of this one, will that satisfy you?”

He halted, annoyingly forcing me to do the same. “One with long dark hair and murderous eyes?”

“Yes.”

He scowled. “No.”

“It was not a question brother, answers don’t need answers.”

“If you propose to have her locked till marriage, I will piss in all your morning coffee till the day we die.”

I grimaced. “I don’t drink coffee. And no, I will not propose to lock her.”

Before we reached meeting room doors, I heard him murmur between his teeth, “But you do drink green tea.”

Council sat round in stalls located by both sides of the wall all concentration while shuffling through their documents. We stood at the middle of the room and bowed to the head councillor who was also our blood relative. She was older than my father, her grey stripped hair braided around her head in a crown and her eyes were a grey the same as mine.

“If you have come to notify us of recent events, grand General, you have wasted precious time, we are aware of,” she said absently, flipping through pieces of paper in front of her.

“No, I have come to notify you of a decision rather, regarding recent events,” I bit back in a tone same as hers. She reminded me of our father when it came to leadership, both were cold, calculative but fair, traits that had deserved her position in the King's Council.

She rose her narrowed stare at me. “A decision? I did not know we were to come to a decision for this, she is still theirs to deal with, we are to do nothing.”

“I was not asking, aunt, as I said, notifying,” I stepped closer to her. “Notify King Silas we are to send two of our best men to escort, tail or guard her, whatever you like to call it, at all times till the wedding.”