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“Queen,” hissed our guard sharply, her shoulders rising as if I’d offered great insult.
Mat’s breath hitched. “What?”
Panarina let out a soft exhale. “My father passed nearly two weeks ago.”
“I’m so sorry, Astrid,” Mathias said sombrely, his face crinkling in empathy and looking rather more distraught than the news called for, considering he had barely known the man. My boy was too fucking sweet.
I struggled to keep my emotions from my own expression. King Oleg Panarin had been a bastard and a half, and the cause of many of Quareh’s woes over the last few decades, so I certainly wouldn’t be shedding a tear over his death. “Whether I offer you condolences or congratulations depends, I suppose.”
One of Panarina’s pale eyebrows rose fractionally. “On what? Whether he was a good king?”
“Whether he was a good father,” I said, and Panarina looked faintly surprised at that before quickly recovering her indifference.
“You missed my coronation, I’m afraid.”
I shrugged. “You’re invited to mine.”
Her smile showed teeth this time. “Forgive me if I hesitate to accept, Aratorre. I heard your first one didn’t go so well, and it’s remarkably audacious of you to assume there’ll be a second.”
Mat bristled at my side. “Can we fucking not?” he snapped, glaring at her and then belatedly me as if he was trying not to show favouritism between the two asshole – and exceptionally gorgeous – royals he found himself in the company of. Although he could certainly count himself among us. “You don’t like Ren, he doesn’t like you. We get it. Let’s cut the shit.”
Oh, the political suaveness of Nathanael Velichkov. It was an incredible sight to behold, and my heart swelled at his passion; at that no-nonsense way of his that struck at the heart of an issue.
To my surprise, Panarina inclined her head in his direction and stood up from her throne, her white dress seeming to shimmer around her legs as she descended the dais towards us. The heavy stone seat looked even more foreboding without an occupant, looming and bleak, but it was the queen now only feet away from us that held the threat. With a single word or gesture to the many guards lining the walls of the throne room, she could have us both executed.
As a prince in exile, if my country even bothered to give me a royal title anymore considering the lies that had been spread about my heritage, my death would not spur any political ramifications. And Mat’s people, many of whom had been eager to see him flayed for his public admission of sodomy, similarly might not care, although I imagined Val and Mila at least would raise hell over it. But if Panarina hid word of our arrival? If she had us quietly killed?
It was a possibility we’d contemplated many times on our journey here. Contemplated and then discarded, for there was nothing that could be done to avert it. Without the resources of Quareh to keep us protected, I had to trust in my wildcat’s assurances of Panarina’s beneficence.
“We need your help, Astrid,” he said. “Help us to free Quareh from the monsters who have taken it.”
She gazed at Mathias, tilting her head slightly as if to take him in after all these months of separation.You owe him, I wanted to scream. After what Kolya Panarin did, she should be on her fucking knees before my lover.
But it wasn’t my story to tell, and Astrid wasn’t responsible for the sins of her brother.
“It’s the start of a new era,” Mat continued, ardent and animated. “You’re a new queen. Ren will soon be a new king. Forge peace between you, the same as we began between my family and his, and make a legacy to be celebrated and remembered for centuries to come. Or, you can all continue the pointless bloodshed of your ancestors like puppets pulled around on strings.”
His voice dropped to a whispered plea. “Astrid, you have a choice here. Do the right thing?”
“Aratorre has a lot to answer for,” Panarina said slowly after a long moment of silence. “He was responsible for taking you from my side at St Izolda’s Monastery and making me mourn a great friend for many weeks until Valeri delivered the tremendous news of your survival. But you stand by him, Nathanael?”
“I do.” There was no hesitation from Mat, the words thrown out with undaunted surety that made me shoot him an adoring glance. “If you could know him as I do, Your High…Majesty, you would see it. He may have begun as my captor, but beneath Ren’s flirting and jokes and fucking eyeliner, he’s got a good heart. He hasmyheart.”
I blew out a breath. “Please don’t undermineallof my mystique to the prickly northern queen, Nat.”
They both ignored me.
“Then I will hear him out for your sake,” Panarina conceded, and then turned her shoulders to re-include me in the conversation. “But not tonight. You both need rest, and I need to consider my…position. The situation here is fragile and this will be a delicate issue to manage, as I’m sure you appreciate.”
“Thank you,” said Mathias, beaming at us both as though the ink was already drying on a treaty instead of her merely having promised not to take my head in the next few hours.
The queen blew out a breath, suddenly looking tired. She reached up to wrap a strand of hair around her finger and brought it to her mouth, and I tried not to smile as I watched her chew on it fretfully. “I make no guarantees, Nathanael. With my father dead and Kolya still missing-”
“Kolya’s not missing,” he said quietly, his mood souring. “He’s also dead. Reallyfuckingdead.”
She inhaled sharply at that, her blue eyes flashing with more emotion than I’d seen so far. And not in satisfaction as I might have expected from someone whose sibling had tried to have them killed to steal their royal inheritance, but inpain.
“What? How?”
