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With great effort, because the man was a bigger prick than I’d realised. It seemed holding the strings of his puppet king Welzes had given the councillor a confidence boost that let his full perversity shine through, because when I’d previously met him he’d been conniving and repellent but notthismuch of a loathsome bastard.
And when his dark, gleeful mutterings turned to Ren, I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer.
“Don’t talk about him like that,” I hissed as Navar launched into a blisteringly cruel account ofthat little good for nothing cockslutand his apparent role asa filthy,profligate burden who should have slit his wrists the moment he took his first breath.“You have no fuckingidea,do you?”
“And you think you do, Prince Velichkov?” the man spat without the need to even take a breath between his sentences. “You and your people are a fucking scourge on the continent. One I will relish removing.”
He flicked his fingers dismissively before I could respond and my guards dragged me ahead of him through the doors to the throne room. Their handling became rougher as more eyes fell on us, as if to prove their loyalties lay far, far away from me. The clink of the chains between my shackled wrists and ankles was the only noise in the hall, and it drew intense, undivided attention from every gathered noble and servant. Parting silently, the court watched me pass with sombre faces and mouths drawn in tight lines, and I glared back at each of them as I was hauled to the centre of the room.
Lord de la Vega and his impressive stomach were here, as were the Lords Lago. Isobella hovered next to Alondra Welzes, both women in equally breathtaking dresses. Lords González and de Leon stood beneath the archers’ balcony, not sniping at each other for once but wearing identical grave expressions that made them look far older than I knew them to be. Nearly a hundred other faces I recognised from my time in the southern palaces made up the rest of the crowd, but each one had skin darker than my own and for the first time since being brought here nearly six months ago, I felt lost among the sea of Quarehians.
My chin was shoved down to my chest in a laughable mimicry of a bow to the man seated up on the dais, and I let out a long, slow exhale that I hoped conveyed just how tiresome I found all of this, because that was better than showing them my fear.
“Nathanael Velichkov,” Zidhan Welzes said from the throne above me, choosing to inject a note of surprise into his tone as if we hadn’t already met in similar circumstances last night. He must have realised that it gave him less of an air of mysteriousness and more befuddled ineptness, for he repeated my name and gave it rather more force this time.
“Nathanael. I’m glad you could join us.”
I lifted my head and fixed him with an unimpressed scowl. “Us? So you admit that your crown is not really worn by you, but by the fucker on my heels?”
I sensed the court shift uneasily around us. Navar might have been clever to set up a figurehead to take the attention – and any potential assassination threats – away from himself while he pulled the strings from the shadows, but not clever enough to have found someone who didn’t make it bloody obvious what was happening. Welzes was hardly king material, but his marriage to Alondra Aratorre, who was hovering at her husband’s side with her huge brown eyes fixed worriedly on mine, made him eligible for the role in a way that Navar would never be.
Welzes’ face split with fury at the comment and he made a gesture with his hand that was evidently to order me smacked hard across the face, for that was immediately what happened. I rotated my jaw, unable to touch it with my hands still bound and chained in place, and tried to look like that hadn’t fuckinghurt.
“Tell me, how long do you think it will be before my brother-in-law…my mistake,halfbrother-in-law,” he said loudly, emphasising the correction for the crowd, “comes running to try and save his little whore now we’ve spread the word you’re to be executed? One day? Two? I doubt he’s far away.”
“Or perhaps I’m just a distraction,” I suggested blithely, “and he’s actually in Máros right now, taking back his fucking throne.”
The false king’s gaze shot to mine, looking gratifyingly alarmed, but Navar just chuckled behind me. “Renato always was a jealous, possessive child,” he assured him. “He won’t like anyone else playing with his toys.”
Then he lowered his voice, his mouth moving close to my ear. “Perhaps His Highness will be stupid enough to use the tunnels we know he still has the key to?” the councillor mused, sending my blood cold as he guessed exactlyhow we’d planned to sneak into the palace. “Oh, the look on his face when he realises he can’t talk or fuck his way out of what we’re going to do to him. Or you.”
“I’m not helping you catch Ren,” I gritted out, keeping my head high because I’d be damned if I was giving them anything but defiance until my final breath.
“My dear boy, you don’t have to do anything but die.” Welzes laughed, loud and deliberate, and glanced earnestly over my head at the gathered court. The words were for their benefit, not mine. “Isn’t that the only thing you people are good for?”
*
Chapter Thirty-Eight
We hurried along the dirt-packed floor of the tunnel, the lantern mostly shielded to only let out the faintest glimmer to light our path. I was silently commending us on how impressively stealthy we were being when Dima let out a sharp, unexpected shriek that made me jump.
“What part of quiet-”
“Mierda!” he wailed in terrified Quarehian, and Velichkov glared accusingly between me and Starling before slapping a massive hand over the man’s mouth to keep him quiet. But the healer looked as confused as I felt.
“That’s not me,” she whispered. “Maybe we’re close enough to the palace for him to have picked up the thoughts of someone above us?”
And then something flashed further along the tunnel and I threw myself at Starling, crushing her to the wall just as I heard the twang of a bow string and felt the air move by my left ear. Dima cursed again, and this time maybe itwasbecause of me, for my heart was pounding and my head spinning as I grabbed the lantern from Starling’s trailing hand and flung it away from us. The little light it had provided instantly died with the shattering glass.
“Get down!” I hissed, dragging us both to the ground and pawing in the darkness at where I thought Velichkov had been standing. If my fingers happened to scrape down his groin instead of grabbing at his hand, then it was mere coincidence and Dios’ impeccable sense of humour, because it wasn’t like I could fuckingsee. Not that the heir seemed to appreciate that from the rapid-fire insults he tossed back, but even he was smart enough to shut up when we heard a second arrow pass by overhead and thud into something solid. I could only hope from the lack of screaming that it had hit a wall and not one of us.
“What the fuck, what the fuck,” Dima moaned from somewhere close by. “He’s here…what if he makes us…can’t…my children…the trap worked…do I fire again?...execution of the other one…His Highness…should have taken…don’t want to die-”
The tunnel echoed with his screams as the minds of us and our attackers overwhelmed his own. I felt Starling wriggle away from me and the Hearken fell abruptly silent.
More arrows slammed into the walls. We were pinned down, and it was only a matter of time before they refined their aim to reach us on the floor.
“Stay here,” Velichkov breathed. I heard him draw his sword. “Wolf and I will try to get closer.”
