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When he releases me, I realize Nathan is trembling. I frown up at him in concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” He nods and dabs his sweating upper lip with a handkerchief from his jacket pocket. “If you’ll excuse me?”
He walks away and I start after him. “You don’t look fine.”
“We’ll talk later.” He picks up speed and snaps for his guards, who fill in the space between us.
I stop and watch him walk away.
I’m baffled and hurt by Nathan’s abandonment. What happened in the throne room was terrifying. We’d passed a sentence so horrible it had gone out of fashion in the middle ages. Nathan hadn’t given me any indication that he was even considering that.
Maybe he’s angry that you took over sentencing Ashton. It’s certainly possible, but I had no idea Nathan’s considerable ego was that fragile. I can’t imagine anything that could penetrate it.
“Your Majesty?” Xiao prompts me gently.
I turn and force a polite smile. “Sorry. I’m going to go back to my office. Is Hannah—”
Xiao speaks into the communications device on her wrist. “Secretary to the queen to queen’s office.”
“That sounds like a chess move,” I quip.
Xiao tilts her head. “Do you play chess?”
I look back at the throne room. What I did back there… did it make me a strong ruler or a paranoid tyrant?
“Not well,” I respond.
CHAPTER 46
Tara comes to see me while I’m still changing out of my gown. She bursts into my dressing room and practically pushes Hannah down to get to me.
I hold my injured arm out of the way, so she won’t accidentally bang into it when she collides with me and wraps me in a strong hug.
“What happened to you?” she cries against my hair.
How does she not know? It’s the whole reason she was—and Clare still is—under lock and key. “Nobody told you what was going on?”
Tara steps back, shaking her head, eyes fixed on where my hand should be. “They said the king ordered further investigation of our husbands’ plot. What happened to your hand?”
“An assassin bit it off,” I say, more concerned with what was going on while I recovered. Especially since Tara goes pale, clearly receiving this information for the very first time. “You had no idea I was attacked?”
“No! And I don’t understand…how did an assassin bite your hand off?” She still can’t take her eyes from my bandaged stump. “How could anyone possibly—”
“He was fully transformed at the time,” Hannah puts in.
Tara frowns, even more confused than when she thought someone just gnawed my arm off with their regular teeth. “That’s not possible.”
“Apparently, it is. Which is just more trouble than we need heaped on top of this.” I wonder why Tara and Clare weren’t told any of this. “Didn’t they question the two of you about it?”
“Is that why we were under house arrest?” Tara asks, and I think she might need to sit down before she passes out. “Did you think we had something to do with it?”
“No.” The answer is automatic. “I know you didn’t. But Nathan is protective. He wasn’t going to take any chances.”
“And given our husbands’ history…” Tara does sink down to sit on one of the leather cubes. She clasps her hands together in her lap and it strikes me how fragile she truly is. She’d never planned on a life immersed in pack politics.
None of us were supposed to be here. Our father never even had council aspirations before I invoked the Right of Accord. I return, and within weeks, he’s embroiled in assassination plots. Suddenly, I’m queen, and it affects everyone around me in a ripple effect of danger.
Tara’s eyes are wet and pleading. “He knows, doesn’t he? His Majesty knows that we didn’t have anything to do with this?”
“He knows you don’t have anything to do with it,” I tell her. Because she wouldn’t be here if he didn’t believe in her innocence.
“And Clare?” Tara asks.
Hannah’s gaze flicks to mine, and she supplies the answer. “Clare remains under house arrest, for now. Her Majesty receives daily briefings.”
“They’re treating her well?” I ask.
“They locked us in our apartments and wouldn’t let us leave,” she says with a nose scrunch of distaste. “But we weren’t beaten or starved. We had clean towels.”
“And were you permitted to speak to each other?”
“Our sitting rooms adjoin, so yes. We even had dinner together at night.” She pauses. “Am I allowed to tell her what happened to you?”
“Do you believe she would relay the information to Julian somehow?” I counter.
“Never say never,” Tara agrees grimly.
Hannah says, “You should tell her what happened yesterday.”
“What happened yesterday?” Tara demands. “What else could possibly have happened?”
I feel her exasperation but multiplied ten-fold. “Hey, if all this is tiring to you, imagine how I feel,” I remind her.
Hannah ignores me and focuses on the question at hand. “The attackers who carried out the physical violence at the coronation were all sentenced to death. And Ashton Daniels was sentenced to Lycaon’s Banquet.”
