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“Uncle, you must hold still so that I can remove the glass or your wound could become infected,” Mara said, as calm as if we were lounging around a garden taking tea.
I’d never admired anyone more.
“Just get it done,” the king hissed.
I gave Mara all the assistance I could, but by the time she started stitching King Julius’s wound, all I could do was watch.
No, I could do more than that. I could glance around the room to determine what was going on. The drunk decorations had moved to the edges of the room, where they sighed listlessly, now that they weren’t the center of attention. The cluster of men—who I now suspected were senators or councilors or other important men in the kingdom—hovered anxiously around the settee. Hovered as if King Julius were some sort of flash pot that might ignite at any second.
“Conrad, more alcohol,” Mara said quietly to me as she finished her stitches. “Just to be certain.”
I nodded and dribbled a bit more of the spirits over the king’s hand.
Mara tied a knot in the string then bit the end. “Conrad will bandage your hand,” she said to the king. “He’s the best in our class at bandages.”
I winced at the information Mara revealed about me, truly wishing she hadn’t. I wanted to stay as far beneath the king’s notice as possible.
A minute later, I rethought that as the king asked Mara, “You know this man?”
Mara nodded and stood to address her uncle. Which put her head slightly higher than his. “He is a student at Royersford College with me. A housemate too, actually, and a friend.”
It was a miracle that my hands didn’t shake as I wrapped the bandage someone handed me around the king’s hand. All it would take was one more question, and the king would know I was a frontier boy. He would know I was a rebel and an enemy.
But instead, King Julius merely grunted and nodded. “The two of you will be rewarded for your service.”
That was it. I was too stunned to do more than finish wrapping and tying the bandage as the king went on with, “As for the rest of you, I don’t care what it takes. Form an army and go after General Rufus. Bring his head back on a pike. And while you’re at it, subdue and punish the frontier. I cannot believe that I am surrounded by so much incompetence that not a single man can bring a few recalcitrant children to heel.”
It took everything I had to keep my expression blank and my eyes downcast as the king spoke. He had no idea. None at all.
“If Gomez had succeeded with his plans—” one of the men started, causing me to suck in a breath.
“Gomez is dead,” King Julius roared. “Killed by my whore of a brother’s cheap playthings. I’ve half a mind to have those weakling whore boys slit the rest of your throats after letting them fuck you too!”
I was grateful that I’d stood up and stepped back before the king said that. King Julius knew about Magnus. He knew about Peter and Neil. Apparently, he knew details of Gomez’s killing that Peter, Neil, and Jace had whispered to the Sons in secret.
What else did King Julius know?
Evidently not how powerful his brother and the Wolf River Kingdom were.
“Are you finished?” the king snapped, shaking me out of my spiraling panic.
“We are, Uncle,” Mara said, moving to stand by my side. “Keep it clean and dry, and try not to move your hand much for a week or two. Have the palace healer check it in a day or so, when the festival is over, to make certain the wound has not festered.”
King Julius grumbled and scowled and waved me and Mara away.
Mara bowed—and I followed suit—then touched my arm and turned to hurry out of the room. She glanced to me to tell me to come with her, but honestly, she didn’t have to. I would have run from the room as though it were on fire if I could have.
The first thing Mara said once we were out in the hall, walking fast in a direction Mara seemed to know, was not what I expected. “You’re not meant to be in this part of the palace.”
“I don’t know how I got here,” I told her in a tight whisper. “I followed a horrible woman with red hair and black leather. She took me through rooms where evil things were happening. I broke away from her, got lost, and found myself in a room with King Julius!”
Panic overwhelmed me at the end of my explanation, and I had to stop and grip the sides of my head and lean my back against a wall or else hyperventilate. I couldn’t believe what had just happened to me. My whole body started to shake as the reality of it pressed down on me.
“Breathe,” Mara told me, coming to my side and urging me to bend forward. “Breathe slowly and deeply, and it will pass.”
I did as she said until I’d recovered physically, but I shook my head as I straightened. “It will not pass,” I said. “The king wants to send an army into the frontier. And there’s already an army in the frontier. And…and this man, General Rufus, has…mutinied?” I gaped at Mara, as though she would have an answer to an unanswered question.
“I heard just this morning,” Mara said, her hand still resting on my shoulder. “When I went to visit my mother.”
