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My mouth twisted into a small grin.You’re my beautiful monster.
CHAPTER47
The Serpent
Days after I’d placed Livia on my throne, the palace was still locked in a frenzy as servants and courtiers and common folk adjusted to a woman in power. I wouldn’t take it back. There was a rightness in my chest, like this was the path I should’ve taken all along.
Carpenters were half-finished with a twin throne in the great hall. Carved in foxes and ivy and a swallow in the center of the back. The royal smith set to work fashioning her a circlet in the shape of oak leaves and would present it at an official coronation at the next full moon.
Of course, if I’d known there’d be such a need from the house lords to discuss my lunacy, I would’ve killed them all—save for Gavyn who found it wholly entertaining—and been done with them.
“Lord Hesh,” I said, desperate to sound bored. The man was made of more stone than flesh. The only small piece of his towering form were his teeth, ground down from the constant tension in his damn jaw. “As I told you, if I cared for your opinions on the royal court, I would have consulted you. Alas, I care little.”
“My King,” Joron interjected. He was slender as a sickly tree, with knobby limbs to go with it. “We seek not to tell you how to rule your court, but what you have done . . . it is a weakness against us. You’ve given the earth fae—”
“What?” I snapped. “What have I given them? A union? A call to peace? You recall the days the Ever Folk went to their realms, where trade was once prominent between our people, where the lands thrived together.”
Joron spluttered. “Those were different times, My Lord.”
“And they will be again.” I faced the far end of the table, one fist curled over my leg. “Lady Narza, what do you say? Think a queen is a weakness for the Ever?”
“What else will a woman say?” Hesh grumbled.
“I don’t believe I was speaking to you.” I gave the lord a warning glare and took pleasure in the way he pinched his lips. “What say you, Grandmother?”
Narza had been silent, but to the surprise of every house, she’d arrived after Joron summoned a council to discuss the blasphemy of an Ever Queen. My grandmother had little to do with me after the death of my mother. I’d always resented her for it, always wanted her to steal me away to her house to escape the cruelty of my father.
She never came.
Oddly enough, in this moment she looked at me without indifference. More like she did not recognize me.
“I say,” she began, “our king has been burdened by a broken kingdom for a great many turns. At times to heal, it requires vast change. I am optimistic your act to change the way of things will only benefit our people.”
Not praise exactly, but it meant more than I expected to have her approval. Hesh and Joron muttered until Gavyn flamboyantly expressed his enthusiasm for a new queen.
“Already the kingandqueen,” he said, “have cleared away the darkening on the far isles in the House of Bones. They are stronger together, and I for one, like the king a great deal more when the earth queen is near.”
I narrowed my eyes and fought the urge to kick his damn shin from under the table.
Slowly, I rose from my seat. I’d been kept long enough from Livia, and I tired of their blustering. “The truth is, I do not need your approval. Any of you. In fact, Lord Joron, I would think hard on your support of your king and queen. Or the palace might take note of the lotus trade you’ve begun with the privateers in the far seas.”
Joron’s eyes widened and the blustering fool startled in his seat when I slammed my palm on the table.
“In fact,” I went on, “your involvement in the Skondell lotus trade makes me wonder if you might be the one financing House Skurk to betray your king.”
“No.” Joron shook his head vigorously. “No, Highness. I . . . would never involve myself with such a house. We’ve used the lotus for study, that is all. To find new uses. I swear to you.”
I pulled my hand back before the cretin could kiss my damn rings, and gave Gavyn a quick glance. He’d done his duty and found more than one wretched secret.
“And Hesh.” I drummed my fingers over the table. “You’ll return to your province to find the sirens you’ve been holding beneath your manor are no longer yours for whatever twisted reason you were keeping them.”
Narza’s eyes burned in a swift, unforgiving rage. “What is this? You’ve imprisoned blood of my house?”
Hesh saw females as tools to expand a bloodline, but beneath the surface he feared Narza. “Trespassers. I am within my rights to detain them.”
“Liar,” she seethed. “You want their voices, is that it? Want to lure folk to your province? Or is it you merely want to use their bodies in the hope you secure an heir with a unique gift like our king?”
I slammed my hand on the table again. “Let this be a warning—I do not care for your opinions on the queen, and I will be watching to see that your support is given to her with unwavering fealty. In fact, I suggest you each look within your own houses and consider how much stronger you might be if you did the same.”
