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“That’s your first lesson,Your Majesty,” said Rune, crossing his arms. “The bodyguard is always right. Suppose your life depended on knowing our height discrepancy. What then?”
“Youarean ass,” she muttered. She took a moment to breathe, to let her heart slow its speeding gait. Rune waited, expectant, a half-smile still catching at his lips. “I didn’t summon you here to compare heights,” she said at last. “I want to discuss my schedule, the events leading up to my coronation. Beginning with tonight. A feast is being held in honor of my father, a family affair. I’m not particularly concerned for my safety. The advisors will not be in attendance, except for my uncle Godwin. But…What?”
Rune blinked. “Oh, nothing, Your Majesty.”
“You made a face.”
“Did I?”
“You don’t trust my uncle?”
“Nothing like that, Majesty, it’s just…” Rune shrugged. “Sometimes, these family events can get rather bloody if you’re not careful. Things happen. Comments are made, blades are drawn. All of a sudden, your dinner party is a slaughterhouse. Do you trust them? Every last one of your kin?”
“It’s the advisors who—”
Rune moved toward her again, lifting one finger and pressing it gently to her lips. She wanted to bite it and draw blood.
“Your Majesty,” he said, as if telling off a child, “answer a question for me. Which of us is the bodyguard?”
Resisting the urge to draw her dagger and sever his hand, Elma swatted it away with a curse. “Fuck you,” she spat. “Touch me again, and I’ll have you drawn and quartered in the Frost square. Understand?”
“Completely.” He tilted his head, never removing his icygaze from hers. And even though he was no longer in her personal space, he seemed still to envelop her, to wash over her like a snowstorm. “Answer my question.”
She glowered. “You are.”
Rune smiled. “Very good. Then you won’t mind if I make the call, going forward, on whether or not an event is worthy ofparticular concern. Understood?”
Elma was not deluded enough to think that her royal status would control this man, least of all, protect her from him. For a moment, she felt truly unsafe, if only for a breath. She was alone in a room with the most skilled fighter she had ever seen in action, a man who would have killed her if it weren’t for…
Something came to her, a memory of Rune’s shape in the darkened wagon, the glint of a wicked blade in the moonlight. “In the wagon that night,” she said. “You could have killed me while I slept. And again, while we talked. I sensed… I thought you might have…” she swallowed dryly. “You had every opportunity.”
The assassin’s expression was unreadable. “I don’t kill sleeping women. And in the spirit of honesty, well… I wanted you to look me in the eye before I killed you. Before you bled out all over me. Makes for a far more enjoyable experience.”
“A man of principle,” Elma said, unable to hide the disgust in her voice. She gestured to a chair and sat across from it in one of her own. This was a business arrangement and nothing more. A truce between enemies. There would be no understanding him and no peace between them as individuals. “Never mind,” she said. “Let’s discuss where you’ll be needed, and when. And most importantly, I’d like to remind you that you are not to speak at any of these events.”
Rune settled in his chair, one leg bent so his foot balanced on the opposite knee. He looked more lazily relaxed thanElma thought she’d ever been in her life. “Not even to compliment my queen on her dedication to the Volta family legacy of blood and cruelty?”
Elma stared into the flames, her lips pressed together. This was going to be a long month.
Twelve
“Ifind it worrying,” said Lady Devereaux, popping a hunk of sharp cheese into her thin mouth, “that you’ve adopted a Slödavan as your personal lapdog. You could have had any number of bed slaves, but you’ve gone and given this one asword.” Flecks of cheese and spittle flew out of her mouth as she spoke. Her age was impossible to tell, her features as craggy and cruel as the mountains of Rothen. Lady Devereaux was Elma’s third cousin by marriage, a woman whom Elma saw very seldomly but for major family occasions.
King Rafe’s death and Elma’s subsequent upcoming coronation had been deemed worthy enough, it seemed, of Lady Devereaux’s attendance.
Elma smiled wanly in reply. The feast was well underway, though Elma felt wholly separate from it. She sat in her father’s chair at the head of the table. It felt far too big for her despite her height — too heavy, wide, and dark. As if the memory of him clung to it, a ghost of a man whose shoes Elma would never fill.
These and other gloomy thoughts invaded her mind asshe picked at her food, letting the meaningless drone of conversation fill her ears, none of the words taking shape. And though she made every effort to keep her attention on her guests, on the food in front of her… Elma couldn’t help but let her thoughts drift over to the shadow that lurked behind her.
Rune was not inconspicuous, though he had tried his best to be. The room was dim enough that he should have blended into the shadows, a silent specter of warning to anyone who might attempt to harm the queen that night. But his eyes and hair gave him away — bright beacons of strangeness, reminding everyone present exactly who he was and why he was there.
“Are you listening, my dear?” Lady Devereaux insisted, laying a gnarled hand on Elma’s arm. “It’sunseemly.”
The moment Elma’s cousin reached out to touch her, Rune was there at her side. With the practiced grace of a dancer, he bowed, lifted Lady Devereaux’s hand from Elma’s arm, set it on the table, and said, “Don’t touch her.”
A breath later and he was back in the shadows.
Lady Devereaux’s eyes threatened to pop out of her head. “He dared lay hands on me,” she croaked, her voice cutting through the general din of conversation. “I want him whipped! I want him—”
