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“Let.” I met the gaze of one of the guards, then the other. “Go.”
They did. Perhaps they believed I’d win the lords’ vote, or maybe they were hedging their bets and only following my order in the absence of direct contradiction from Welzes. Maybe they’d seen how close I was to taking their fucking heads for it.
Whatever the reason, they peeled their villainous fingers off my boy and stepped back, leaving him standing in a pool of tacky blood and wearing a similarly pissed off expression to mine.
With the manacles still weighing down his wrists and chained to the ones around his ankles, he couldn’t embrace me, but we pressed our heads together, seeking and giving comfort and conscious of all the eyes on us.
“Hello, you,” I murmured, cutting through the exclamations of surprise echoing around us as the court wondered at his healed injuries. Starling had come through for us, as usual.
“Hola,” he whispered back. “I suppose you think you’re terribly clever?”
“I suppose you think I’m going to free you from these shackles of yours?”
“On second thought,” said Mat, “I think you’re terribly clever too.”
I laughed quietly, dipping a kiss to his cheek.
“Cast your vote!” Quintín Lago chirped, immediately bounding over to my side and dragging his husband with him. The older man grumbled good-naturedly but didn’t resist.
As I opened my mouth to suggest this should be aprivateballot to negate fears of retribution against any who supported the losing candidate, most of the crowd began to move, dispersing left and right to show their support to me or Welzes.
Lord de la Vega sidled my way. Lord Delgado, a friend of Navar’s with lands laying further to the west, stomped over to stand with Welzes. Lord Martinez hurried to join them.
More nobles moved this way or that.
The few men who remained in the middle of the room, finding themselves left behind, gave tiny coughs or stretches as if to explain their delay and then quickly joined the two swelling clusters of noblemen. Only the women and servants hadn’t moved, but when Lago stood on his toes to count the lords’ numbers and declare the results of the vote, Isobella cleared her throat to draw our attention, preened like a damn cat when she got it, and drifted across the hall to my side with an elegance I was exceedingly envious of. The skirts of her dress swished in the resulting silence.
Welzes scoffed. “Women don’t get tovote.”
Martinez gave hearty, boisterous agreement. Even the elder Lord Lago made an assenting noise, likely as it didn’t accord to the strict letter of the law,but at least he had the decency to do it quietly.
“Duke Welzes,” Mathias called loudly over to the man, deliberately using his old title as if he’d already lost. Which, to be fair, he had. “Are you unable to count?”
Welzes’ gaze flickered over the two groups of congregated men and he must have done the same calculations as Lago, for he quickly shook his head.
“If they must,” he muttered, clearly torn between his opinions on the matter and his need to make up for his fewer votes. “And the commoners should too,” he added quickly.
With those words, he offered me a challenging stare as if expecting me to protest. But I merely inclined my head, and a moment later there was a second flurry of movement from the remainder of the original crowd as they let their feet cast their votes. Women, servants, guards: all were equal in this fleeting moment, allowed to dictate their own future.
There were some who drifted Welzes’ way. Probably more than I would have predicted, if I was being honest with myself, although I expected that despite my ambitious words there were still women here who would blindly follow their men as they’d been taught their whole lives to do, and men who would demand nothing less.
So perhaps not all of the votes were free from coercion, but each one who moved to Welzes’ side of the throne room was someone I’d failed. Failed to show them what their lives could be like with the freedom and opportunity I offered, or failed in them already being too jaded or too greedy or too cruel to want it.
Yet the numbers were in my favour. As the crowd fell still, two thirds of the court stood on my side of the hall.
“It is decided,” the elder Lord Lago declared, cocking his head as he gazed at me in thoughtful contemplation. “Renato Aratorre shall hold the Quarehian throne.”
*
Chapter Forty-Nine
I hadn’t expected Welzes to take the loss with good grace, so I wasn’t surprised when he began to rant about it almost immediately, blaming everything from poor acoustics in the room such that those at the back hadn’theard his speech properly,to accusations of Ren apparently having spent the last several weeks not on the run, but in secret collusions with the court to dethrone him.
The prince rolled his eyes and gestured impatiently at someone. A moment later my shackles were unlocked, the chains noisily clattering down onto the tiles to form a grim pile at my feet.
“Ofcoursethey’re going to vote for the arrant whore,” Welzes was drawling to those still gathered around him, eyeing my lover with hateful distaste. “He’s probably promised each man here that he’ll spread his legs for them later.”
“Just one man,” Ren said mildly, but I could see the tension in the line of his mouth as he fussed over the state of my wrists, earnestly waving Starling over to us. She sauntered closer, the hair of her beard falling out before our very eyes, and offered a cheeky wink as she reached for my hands.
