Page 130 of The Court of Venus

The nobility bent to kiss the jewels on his fingers.

And over their heads, he smiled at me.

The court parted. I stepped forward, but when I bent to kiss his ring, he shook his head no. He raised my hand to his mouth instead, brushing his lips slowly across my knuckles. “Lady Mortlake,” he murmured. Then he lifted my hand and pressed it to his brow.

The crowd gasped.

It was an ancient sign of chivalry. A pronouncement of who held his heart, his loyalty. They already knew we were lovers, but now he’d claimed me as his before the entire court.

As we walked arm in arm to the dais, courtiers tipped their heads to me. “Lady Mortlake,” they whispered, even as distrust and envy stirred within them.

“Lady Bianca.”

“Bless you, Your Grace.”

“Lady Mortlake, how lovely you look.”

Roland whispered into my ear, “More than lovely, Mouse. See how they are blades of grass? When wind blows, they bow. And now they bow to you.”

He pulled me closer. Kissed the tip of my nose.

The king followed behind us, struggling with his cane. The courtiers paid their obeisance as he passed.

Roland sank into one of the thrones, and I stood just beside him out of a direct shaft of sun. Roland entwined our fingers together as the king settled into his own seat. In the crowd, Oliver tapped his chin, an instruction to raise mine.

“My friends, we have a new ambassador here today from Bastian.” Roland nodded to a somber man in all black, with flaxen hair and a scythe stitched onto his breast. “It seems rumors have spread across the continent that the assassination attempt by the Guildfords and the Roets had been successful. It was not.” Roland’s glare swung away from the ambassador. “As you can see, King Richard is alive and well. I’d beg you to send your report to your emperor and his magician quickly.”

I squeezed Roland’s hand. His smile was tender, meant for me alone. “Alvion is strong,” he proclaimed. “Our magicians are strong. And none shall threaten our borders or our blood.”

The Bastian ambassador’s eyes narrowed. Confusion swirled in his head. For there I was—standing beside Roland. And there the king was, alive and well, just as Roland had said.

It was outside the scope of my known powers, or any Moonborn powers. Balthasar would tear through tomes and find nothing.

For who could see the red glint in the king’s eyes but me? Miranda had taken to her new role with abandon. After a lifetime of service to the Guildfords, eating tarts in bed was a welcome change. We had assured her it would only be a Moon or two, but she enjoyed playing king already. We all enjoyed playing king.

We had gathered in my apartments—Oliver, Miranda, Roland, and I—huddled together around a fire, whittling our plan into a new shape. Wearily, I watched the sparks leap and fall as they argued. Oliver and Miranda wanted to execute the real Fulke. It was our only logical choice, they argued. Public. In the square. His murder of Ambrose as the charge.

“The king wouldn’t hesitate,” Miranda added.

“Hal would,” Roland said.

I tensed at that.

“Fulke is our ace,” he continued. “Chew up our ace, and what do we have? There is great value in having what someone else wants desperately. Balthasar will be cautious with us as long as he believes we might give Fulke to him. I know him.”

I bit my lip. Tore myself away from the fire. I played it out for them. If we let Fulke live. If the court believed that, because he had committed such egregious treason against the king, he’d been struck from the line of succession. If we announced the king’s death, if Roland stepped in as regent now, if, if, if. It all led to only one outcome I could see. The entire court—the entire country—whispering it was Roland who had killed Richard. They would whisper it because it was easy conjecture, and because it was all they knew of us.

The ambition in Roland tugged on him. I recognized it intimately. It had always, always mirrored my own. But what he said was, “You should be named regent, not me.”

“What? No. Roland, you know I—”

“Joy.” Miranda rolled her eyes. “A lovers’ quarrel.”

“Bianca is right,” murmured Oliver. He leaned against my desk with his arms crossed. Before him were scraps of parchment. The ciphered language he was inventing, just for the four of us to speak. We had yet to come up with a name for it. “We require legitimacy right now, not further chaos. We need royal blood.”

Roland tilted toward the hearth. “Royal blood,” he laughed. “Why should that matter? Thousands of years ago, did it matter to Oberon? The first king of Alvion would never have had a crown without his magician. Oberon handed Armel this kingdom.”

“But we have royal blood,” I said. “Or the appearance of it.”