Page 3 of Bride of Ash & Dust

“On your upcoming marriage,” the king finishes. He drains his wine goblet, then sets it down with a laugh. “I bet you weren’t expecting that,” he says, jabbing his fork in my direction.

The bastard loves surprising me. It happens so rarely.

“I was not,” I admit.

He laughs again, then stabs the steak on his plate.

“To the princess of Marion?” I ask as lightly as I can.

“I don’t usually have to tell you things twice,” the king replies. “Not like my other idiot sons.”

I know better than to agree with any part of that statement, so I just nod as I try to remember what the princess of Marion looks like. I don’t think I’ve ever met her. I have a vague impression of someone dull and inoffensive, just like her tiny and mostly worthless kingdom, but I can’t recall a face, not even a painted portrait of the king of Marion’s royal family.

But wasn’t there some whiff of controversy around her? She’s betrothed to the prince of Ethiria, naturally; those two kingdoms intermarry every generation. And I seem to recall overhearing something mildly scandalous about the princess of Marion. I’ll have to ask around.

“What about Ethiria?” I ask.

“What about it?” King Malrik grunts.

Ethiria, like Marion, is hardly worth mentioning. Just another one of the splinter kingdoms scattered across the western mountains. But I push the subject anyway.

“Wasn’t their prince betrothed to the princess of Marion?”

Malrik laughs again. “Oh, he was. But won’t a dog drop a dry, old bone if you wave a piece of juicy raw meat in his face?”

That’s a rather unpleasant metaphor for my future wife, not to mention me. I glance down at the juicy slab of steak on my plate, and my gut shifts around the bottle of wine we shared as an appetizer.

And then I remember the important bits.

“The mine,” I say. “Didn’t Marion just open a new gold mine?”

The king’s eyebrows lift as he grins at me. “How about that?” he says. “Not all of my sons are idiots.”

I keep smiling, even as my mind screams. I’m not this asshole’s son, and we both know it. No, he only calls me son when he wants something from me.

I’m just another pawn in his layers upon layers of games and schemes. And apparently, my role now is to marry some princess of nothing so that he can lay claim to a gold mine.

Disappointment curdles inside my gut. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

“Could be worse,” the king says, in a way that manages to sound like both a joke and a threat at the same time. “Fucking to serve your country’s a damn sight better than fighting for it.”

He waves his hand over his wine goblet again. The servant steps forward, pouring another stream of red wine into both our glasses. The king watches me as I raise my glass to my lips.

Fucking. Fighting. I’ve done it all, and he knows it. Since the day he took me in, King Malrik has trained me to be exactly what he needs. A spy. A traitor. A blade to hold against someone’s throat as he whispers promises into their ear.

Still. As he so eloquently said, it could be worse. The kingdom where I was born is nothing but ash and dust, after all. My hand drifts to the tiny vial around my throat, then falls back to the table.

“Lovely,” I announce. “Do I get to meet my future wife before the wedding?”

For the first time in our conversation, the king looks surprised.

“Why?” he asks.

I smile. Why indeed? Why would any man want to meet a strange woman before they bind their lives together?

“When is the wedding?” I ask, to shift the conversation.

Perhaps I can come up with some excuse to visit the little kingdom of Marion before the ceremony. I’d like to know more about this woman before the details of her life could be used to blackmail me. And, hells, it would be nice to at least recognize the woman I’m going to see on the other end of the aisle.