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No one rose. No one bowed. Instead, the other council members kept their eyes down, focusing on the polished marble floor with their mouths shut. Whatever was about to happen could not be good.
I raised an eyebrow. “How’s the shoulder, Reg?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said through a forced smile.
“The old memory starting to fade? How close are you to your one-hundredth?”
My father cleared his throat. “Deyanira…”
I curtsied. “My king.”
The doors behind me creaked open, and a line of servants entered, the scent of freshly broiled pork and roasted vegetables hammering me before I could rise.
“I hope you don’t mind, Princess Deyanira,” Regulas fucking chirped. “We’ve worked up quite an appetite.”
I blinked slowly, rising. “Why would I mind?”
My blood boiled. Not because of Regulas, but my father’s silence as he watched me, waiting to see how I would respond. He would never be a shield for me, and his council knew that. His silence taught me to be stronger. And alone. To never need a person’s approval or defense. But it also taught them to allow their resentment to show.
He’d been icy my entire life, staring down the murderer of his beloved, a woman he kept so private all portraits were removed so I could never look upon her face and see my own.
“Thought I heard your stomach growling.” Regulas’s ugly face twisted when I glared at him.
The rest of the council said nothing, and no one moved. My father’s appointed hand was nothing if not predictable, but though I usually kept my composure, which was why he felt at liberty to speak to me this way, today was not the fucking day.
I sauntered forward, circling the table as I closed the distance between us. Fear shone in his eyes as he realized he’d pushed too far.
“Deyanira,” my father warned.
But I did not listen. The pull of my dagger and the lethal smile on my face was accompanied by the sound of piss dripping from Regulas’s seat.
I leaned over to whisper in his ear. “Once again, you forget yourself.” In a quick motion, I spun the knife in my hand, grazing his ear before stabbing the meat in the center of the table. Aside from my father, the room collectively jumped. Sinking my teeth into the pork and letting the juices slide down my chin, I used Regulas’s jacket to wipe Chaos clean. “I think you’ve wet yourself, councilman.” My father cleared his throat, forcing my eyes to him. “Did you need something from me, my king? Or have I been summoned to watch you dine?”
He pushed himself away from the table, the scowl enough to make a lesser man cower. “Silbath crowns their new king in three days.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“In one hour, you will join us in the throne room with your mouth shut and your weapons in your room. You will not disobey that order again, do you understand?”
I considered the presence of his council for half a second before responding. “There’s nothing you could say to convince me to abandon this blade. You can try to lock me in your dungeons, tie me up, chain me down, whatever you’d like, but I won’t be left unarmed. Ever.”
“You would disobey your king?” one of the elder councilmen asked. “On the brink of war?”
I made eye contact with my father before continuing. “Shall I answer that honestly, my king?”
“Please,” he answered, lifting a goblet full of wine and sinking back into his chair as if this show was merely an inconvenience.
“I could kill any of you in this room with my bare hands before you knew it was happening. I don’t need a weapon to be Death’s Maiden. But my father knows me well enough to know that’s the one order I will not obey. He’s asking me only to placate you all. And I’m simply telling you it’s not going to happen.”
“You’ve heard my demand of her,” the king said, casually biting into a potato. “It was requested that she be unarmed. What she chooses to do beyond that command is her will alone.”
“Who requested?” I asked, shifting toward him.
“Sit. Eat.”
“You realize Regulas just pissed himself three feet from where you’re dining, don’t you?”
My heart raced, wondering what the great secret was. He wasn’t letting me leave this room, and there was a reason. I’d never been invited to a meal with my father in my life.
