Page 7 of The Stolen Throne
I blanch. Does he know? The question rips through me. Does he know I’ve been faking being under his thumb and infatuated? That the truth is I hate him with the fires of the burning lands? But he can’t. Nothing has changed recently.
I don’t know how I hold my composure, but I don’t flinch. I don’t look away.
He studies me a long moment, then, “I have a gift for you.”
Eidolon gets to his feet, an intimidating figure of a man—tall and lean with jet black hair silvering slightly at the temples, and with a commanding aura that most mistake for leadership but I know to be cruelty. Immediately, the music stops, and the dancers watch him and wait. He holds out a hand to me, his expression a charming mask as he gazes at me, lips tilted and striking eyes unblinking.
Everyone around us—all my viziers, authoritates, and even the servants—believe his act.
I know better.
Every day, they tell me how smart I was to align our struggling dominion with his strong one. How lucky I am, the way he loves me so much that he never wants to let me out of his sight. They tell me a lot of things about him.
They would probably find it very odd if I ran away screaming right now.
I glance at his hand.
The last thing I want to do is leave the relative safety of the crowd to go anywhere with him, but I have no choice. A girl under his spell would go quite happily.
So I let him help me rise. Eidolon turns us both to the room with a wide smile, like he’s presenting us to our people, and waves his other hand. “Carry on without us while I treat my queen to her gift in private.”
The expressions all around us are variations of delighted or sly. Immediately the music resumes, and so does the dancing, as he leads me down the steps of the dais. The crowd parts as we walk, bowing and murmuring things like “joyous name day” and “many happy summer solstices, domina” as we pass.
We make it out of the throne room, into the gardens between it and the palace. I can’t walk through here without thinking of the night a certain Shadowraith kidnapped the wrong princess.
Reven won’t come for me tonight, though. It’s been so long that I don’t anticipate it every second. Not anymore.
I haven’t given up. Just…settled in.
We enter the palace itself, our footsteps echoing off the smooth obsidian floors. Eidolon takes me to his chambers in the royal suites, next door to my own. With what I can only describe as a flourish, he opens the door and ushers me in. The light of the brazier fire casts a warm glow over the king’s massive bedchamber—
I jerk to a halt, my lungs freezing in my chest.
No.
Standing before me is my handmaiden, Achlys—the woman my sister loves deeply and my only friend in the palace. She stares at me with wide, terror-filled green eyes as Eidolon’s trusted general, Quinten, holds her at sword point.
Goddess save us. He knows.
3
Ashes, Ashes
I stand very still, Eidolon beside me. Watching my reaction.
What I don’t do is babble. I’ve learned to control that particular nervous tell these last few months in the palace.
“Achlys?” Her name punches from me in a way I don’t have to fake. I turn to the king with equally authentic wide-eyed horror. “What is going on here?”
He gives me a pitying look, then waves a hand in her direction. “Isn’t it obvious, my queen? She is your gift.”
Wait, what? Panic sets in, the tremble of my hands spreading to my shoulders. I can’t fall apart now, not when I don’t know what’s happening. How would a girl who was supposed to be under his thrall react?
As if he senses my struggle, he narrows his gaze. “Rather…her life is your gift.”
Bile churns in my stomach. The air in the room…it’s so thin. Or am I hyperventilating? My breasts strain against the tight bonds of my dress with each inhale. Can he see how fast I’m breathing? I can’t slow it down. “I still don’t see—”
“She was found riffling through my chambers.”
