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“King consort,” he breathed, rushing to the bars and dipping his head in respect. “Thank you.”
Ren would have saidyou’re welcomewithout missing a beat, before adding a comment about how refreshing it was to be properly thanked for his mere presence. I just stood there dumbly for a moment, staring at him.
“I…”
“He offered his complete cooperation in return for my assistance in recovering his son from the local mercenaries holding the boy on behalf of Lukia,” Elías said in a low, almost reverent voice, as if not wanting to spook the man.Blyat,that was why Xio had almost killed me and half our court? I couldn’t imagine facing such an impossible choice: what wouldIdo to save someone I loved? To save Ren?
The answer came too easily, even if it made me uncomfortable.
Anything.
Hell, I’d once been willing to let him take out half of the Temarian army to secure his freedom from my brother’s captivity. It seemed mass murder – at least as an accomplice – wasn’t beyond my limits, either.
*
Chapter Sixteen
“So if it’s not Lukia behind the king’s disappearance,” Councillor Morales mused, but I could hear the frustration in her voice at being no closer to an answer than we were hours ago, “and it’s not Temar-”
I rolled my eyes. Suspecting me of plotting was one thing. Suspecting me of plotting with mymotherwas entirely another.
Unless Morales had thought it was Valeri I was in league with? Just over a year ago, Ren and my brother had been at each other’s throats, but their subsequent friendship and shared love of teasing me apparently wasn’t going anywhere. And I could only imagine Val’s horror if I suggested kicking Ren off his throne so we could annex Quareh for the north. He was having a hard enough time ruling Temar with all the upheaval triggered by his younger brother marrying another man. Apparently our mother had swiftly delegated the management of that little problem to Valeri, perhaps as penance for aiding us in recovering Ren’s crown.
“The rebels don’t have the numbers or sophistication to pull something like this off,” del Olmo added thoughtfully from where she was leaning against the wall. “Not since the Comandante’s raid which took most of them out.”
I caught Elías’ eye, and we both grimaced.
Raid. What a simple word for something so significant: El and Luis’ rescue of Jiron from the weeks’ long torture he’d enduredin protecting me and Ren. The man had been in bad shape for a long time afterwards, but the last six months had seen significant improvement, not so coincidentally timed with the beginning of his romance with Wyatt.
The two of them were standing opposite the councillors in the narrow corridor, Wyatt tucked under Jiron’s arm and his head against the older man’s chest. I’d collected quite the entourage on my way through the palace, but none of the gathered crowd had yet come up with any viable plans for recovering my husband, including me.
“Maybe they’re remnants from the previous regime?” I suggested, still unable to give up on the idea that the perpetrators were among the palace staff. How else could they have whisked Ren away from our home so easily? “Someone who preferred Iván Aratorre’s reign to that of his son?”
“There are very few such people left,” said Councillor Zapatero. “We’ve not been idle, Your Highness. In the months since our appointment to the Council, we’ve managed to weed out many remaining dissidents. And you replaced many of the palace’s servants with your own people fromla Cortina.”
I continued to pace up and down the short section of corridor I’d claimed as my own. Each lap took me past the door to the storage room where Ren had so mysteriously disappeared, and I glared at it and its unforgivable role in taking my husband from me.
“And what do they want?” Vidrio asked us all. He stood next to Morales, leafing through scraps of loose parchment he’d explained were threats they’d received against Ren or me since we were crowned. I’d been struck mute for a good minute at quite how large the pile was, before deciding to take it as a compliment. It seemed we’d ruffled a few feathers intransforming Quareh into a place we could be proud of, and that made my contrary, nuisance self very happy.
“Most of these are threats of death or...other horrific acts against our king and his consort,” the councillor finished quickly, glancing at me with an apologetic expression. “Very few suggest their writers’ purposes could be achieved through kidnapping. And to have received no demands...what is it they hope to achieve?”
“Legislation can’t be changed without our sign-off as a Council, as much of a formality as it may be in a monarchy,” Del Olmo pointed out. “So any push for a revision of the gender laws or whatever shit they’re after won’t work without the king in attendance here at the palace.”
“Gold?”
“No demands,” reminded Vidrio.
“Cession of the throne,” I said quietly, my stomach twisting at the reminder of what Ren had once suffered at the hands of Juan Moreno when he’d strived for the same thing. “They could be trying to force him to relinquish his crown to them.”
By the Blessed Five, please don’t let him be subjected to that again.
“His Majesty has no heir,” Morales replied, her voice so soft I barely heard it. “All they would have needed to do was...kill him.”
I swallowed.
“He’s not dead,” Jiron insisted. “They would have either left his body here or produced it by now as proof.” Elías nodded sombrely, while at his side, Luis grimaced at the macabre reassurance.
The problem was that there was no fuckingevidence. If there had only been a footprint, a sighting, a broken lock...something,anything, that could give us a clue of who they were or where they’d gone. Something for us to do instead of standing here as the sun set beyond the windows, unable to do much more than speculate.
