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I hear a bang that echoes through my body, and I suspect that the second prince has struck something. That’s confirmed when the crash of a heavy vase strikes the floor.
He’s strong, I realise. The vases in the atrium are taller than I am and heavier, too.
“This marriage can secure our unquestionable power in a land whose loyalty to us does not exist,” Elden roars. “Without it, more of the light will break through—and how can we maintain control then?”
Daein answers in an icy voice, “We move around it.”
“Until it spreads,” spits Elden. “How far?”
“Ifit spreads,” Daein seethes. “And having a litalf princess marry into our royalty could worsen the light’s spread,” he adds darkly. “This plan is a weak one, as I have said from the beginning.”
“Yet at the beginning, you were willing to try,” Elden replies coolly, his rage stuffed into a frosted-over bottle. “What has changed, Dae? Is it that human whore of yours?”
A bolt of ice spears through my gut.
For the most part of listening into their argument, I was lost. Whatever light they are talking about simply went over my head.
But this...
This, both Terry and I know, is about me.
Terry slides her troubled stare to me. Her mouth is a tangled ball of nerves.
I’m just shocked. The fear flickers like a flame in my chest, but a numbness has draped over me like a heavy blanket and covered me.
Still, through the shock, I know that it can’t be good that Elden knows anything—anything at all—about my existence or even my bargain with Daein.
“This is about power,” Daein growls, the roughness of his savage voice shuddering through me. “No litalf should be on the thrones of our Royal Court. She, nor the rest of her kind, should not come to that sort of power within our realm. But,” he adds darkly, “if you insist on this political marriage, might I offer you up, Elden? Or perhaps Rowlyn?”
“It must be you,” Elden insists. “You are furthest from the highest throne, thus the litalf will be furthest from queenship.”
“Marry her off to a cousin,” Daein dismisses icily, but I hear the currents of anger beneath his crisp tone.
Silence wraps around the castle for a moment. No sounds break it. No footsteps, sighs, clatters of the guards’ swords. Everyone and everything is utterly still.
And it’s the worst time for a cough to start brewing up in my chest.
Eyes squeezing shut, I cup my hands to my mouth.
I can feel Terry’s wide glare on me.
Don’t cough.
Don’t cough.
Don’t make a fucking sound.
Then, finally, the click of expensive boots strikes the atrium floor. Elden’s voice follows, all darkness and daggers, “Consider what your decision impacts. I will return.” He pauses for a beat before he adds, “Fuck your whore out of your system in the meantime. I expect more of you than to allow one of her kind to fog your mind.”
Elden leaves, the click of his bootsteps hitting the courtyard floor hard. The sound is starting to fade away when the coughs can no longer be fought off.
I’m jerked forward by the force of it, feeling wetness splatter all over my palms. Distantly, I hope it’s not blood this time. But most of my worries are on the muffled noise of my coughs.
It’s a short fit. I open my watery eyes and look up at Terry. Her face is slack with horror. So it was loud enough to cause us worry, then.
Peeling my hands away from my mouth, I see that it’s just saliva on my palms. I wipe them on my skirt and gesture with a nod of the head at Terry. Time to leave, to run the fuck away from this atrium before—
Too late.
