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What she needs is reckoning.
And by the gods, I shall be the instrument used to deliver exactly that.
I crack my neck, feeling more like myself than I have in days, and look my friend straight in the eye.
“Settle your mind, General. You need not worry about your king. He is of one mind and one mind only.”
“Pray tell?” He arches an unconvinced brow.
“The northern throne.”
To this, Brick’s face lights up, his lips stretching into a satisfied smile.
“The gods be good.” He pats my shoulder down hard in elation.
“Yes, the gods be good,” I repeat under my breath. “For I shall not be.”
Brick opens his mouth to say something else but is interrupted when one of my soldiers comes into my tent with a message.
“Your Highness, there is a visitor here to see you,” he announces.
“Hmm. Must be your men with the asshole who spilled the beans to the Winter Queen’s jezebel,” Brick mumbles, going back to pouring wine for himself to drink. “Not that I blame him. A woman like that could seduce a priest out of a monastery. Might as well bring the poor fucker in and get this over with.”
“No, Your Grace,” the soldier interjects. “It’s Queen Katrina’s handmaiden who would like an audience with the king.”
Brick spits out his drink, eyes wide in alarm.
“Shit! Now the witch is sending that sexpot to your tent?! Is she mad?”
My soldier looks confused as to why his general looks like he’s about to have a seizure, but I’m in too foul a mood to pay him any mind. But when Brick begins to fix his attire and comb his wild auburn hair back with his fingers, I begin to share in my soldier’s baffled sentiment.
“You do know that if the queen sent this red-haired vixen to my tent, it’s with the sole purpose of seducing me, not you, right?” I say with as straight a face as I can muster.
“Couldn’t pay me enough to care. A girl like that is bound to need to blow off steam after a long day of doing her queen’s dirty work for her. Wouldn’t mind it one bit if she did it with me.” He winks.
Any other day, I would have chastised him for his perversity, but I’m too curious as to what could have passed through Katrina’s mind to send her seductress my way.
I guess there is only one way to find out.
“Send her in,” I order.
A few seconds later, my curiosity doubles as a no-nonsense raven beauty marches inside my tent, instead of the red-haired seductress Brick had his heart on meeting.
“Your Majesty,” she utters impassionedly, curtseying before me.
Brick and I rapidly share a confused glance before she lifts her head back up at me.
“And you are?”
“My name is Inessa of Bjørn, Your Majesty. I am one of Queen Katrina’s lady’s maids. I’ve come to deliver a message from our beloved queen,” she explains, her tone as expressionless as her face.
They must put something in the water up north, for I swear every woman I meet that’s from there is as cold as the driven snow. Like Katrina, Inessa’s face alone is something to behold, almost as if sculpted from the fairest clay. But it is the bite of bitterness in her eyes that makes all that beauty look harshly severe instead of pleasing to the eye.
“I see. Tell me, Inessa of Bjørn, what message does the queen have for me that she couldn’t deliver herself during the ten-hour journey we just made together?” I cock a brow.
“Apologies, Your Highness. It’s not a message, per se, but an invitation that I bring. My queen would very much like to dine with you this evening and will not take no for an answer.”
Dinner?
