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I sniffed and tossed her an affronted glance. “I’ve no interest in the crown.”
To which my half sister hummed and raised her eyebrows in obvious disagreement. “Then what’re you doing up here, skulking around and waiting for the first morsel of news? Certainly, you’re not concerned for our dear stepmother’s well-being. Kalendria wants you banned from Far Shore entirely. She probably wouldn’t balk at the suggestion of you being drawn and quartered.”
Ignoring that unfortunate bit of fact, I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be curious about the arrival of a new half sibling?” Bumping my elbow her way, I sent her a teasing wink. “Maybe I’ll actually like this one.”
With a moody pout, Sable poked me right back. “As if. You adore me and you know it.”
“Only because you command it, my princess,” I murmured offhandedly, my attention returning to the king when he demanded to know how much longer he was going to be forced to sit there, waiting.
None of his servants were brave enough to tell him he wasn’t being forced to do any such thing. He sat there by his own directive to begin with.
The entire scene was sad, really, because of how desperately he wanted a legitimate male heir. It was almost as sad as how desperately I wanted him to claim me as such.
“It’s going to be another girl, anyway,” Sable went on in her matter-of-fact voice.
I glanced her way, lifting my eyebrows. “You think so? Even though the second soothsayer claimed it would be a boy?”
“You mean Roloff?” With a roll of her eyes, Sable muttered, “He only pred
icted a boy because Father beheaded the first soothsayer for predicting a girl. Honestly, what else could he say?”
“Honestly,” I shot back, rolling my eyes to copy her. “He could’ve told the truth. The king will behead him anyway if he learns he was lied to.”
“If he finds him,” Sable argued. “Which I doubt he will. You and I both know Roloff’s halfway to Lowden, or Donnelly, or maybe even Blair by now.”
I agreed with her wholeheartedly. But it was always fun to egg on Sable’s temper, especially when she was certain she was right, which was pretty much always.
“They tested him before he could approach the king,” I reminded her. “And he was found to be pure of heart, in which case, he couldn’t lie.”
“Of course, he could,” Sable insisted, her voice sharpening high enough to make both of us flinch and widen our eyes before glancing worriedly toward the others to make sure we hadn’t been heard. When no one reacted, telling us we remained undetected, she turned back to me, hissing, “He didn’t want to die, Farrow. The lie was about self-preservation. Besides, being pure of heart doesn’t mean you’re unable to—”
She broke herself off when the first cry of a newborn rent the air.
The two of us exchanged wide-eyed glances.
The child was here.
“Well?” King Torrance barked, surging to his feet as a midwife eased nervously from the queen’s bedchamber and into the corridor. “Is it a male?”
Her answer was too quiet for us to hear, but the king’s response was not. Throwing his head back, he bellowed in outrage before slapping the quivering midwife across the face and knocking her to the ground. When a dignitary stepped forward and touched his arm to rein him in, the king spun and began thrashing him next.
He cuffed the unfortunate man upside the head until the dignitary cowered to his knees and blanketed his bloody face with his arms. So, the king proceeded to kick him in the ribs with an inhuman barbarity while his other advisors watched wide-eyed, all of them backing into the farthest walls so as not to be next.
Sable whimpered out a sympathetic shudder, so I nudged her toward her bedchamber. “You’d better return to your room.” She didn’t need to witness such cruelty.
“What about you?” she hissed, glancing at me with concern. “You’re not even allowed inside the main keep unless Father invites you, much less the family wing.”
“I’ll look after myself.” Prodding her harder, I urged, “Go! Now. He’s coming this way.”
“He—” Sable glanced over and peeped out an anxious sound when she spotted the king indeed storming in our direction. Sending me a farewell glance, she darted into safety, silently closing the door just as I slipped into a shadowed nook, out of sight and behind a stone column.
A moment later, Father rounded the corner.
“This is an outrage,” he blustered as he stalked by where I hid in the dark, the breeze from his passing cape brushing against my bare arm. The dignitary’s blood freckled his cheeks and began to drip as he roared, “Where the hell is that lying soothsayer? Bring him to me at once! I want his head on a platter.”
Damn, he was mad.
A bitter grin quirked my lips. Good.
