Page 26 of The Broken Elf King
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After our little empathic exchange,the king totally closed off to me. He barely looked at me in our meetings later that day. After I tasted his food he asked to dine alone, and now he was getting ready to usher in his first dinner date.
Yes, I was ashamed to admit that while I was thinking of bedding him in the healing pools, I’d forgotten I was also supposed to be helping him find a wife.
After tasting his amazing dinner, I moved to leave the kitchen and return to my room to eat alone.
“Miss Kailani, you have been summoned,” one of the waiters called to me.
I frowned, nodding, and then entered the dining hall. The king summoned me? Was he worried I hadn’t tasted the food?
When I entered, my gaze immediately went to the woman with the red hair and overly showy cleavage. I recognized her from the photo her mother had brought. She was talking loudly and I had to force myself not to cringe at her annoying laugh.
Bonnie.
“My lord, is there a problem?” I asked Raife, and curtsied deeply for good measure.
He looked annoyed, all but rolling his eyes. “Miss Harthrop would like her food tasted as well.”
I froze, my eyebrows shooting up.
Bonnie nodded. “I am after all an important person in the king’s life, and maybe soon themostimportant person. I don’t want the Nightfall queen to poison me either.”
She shoved her plate over to me and I tried to conceal my shock and disgust for her over-importance of self.
“We wouldn’t want that,” I said dryly.
Reaching out to one of the empty place settings, I grabbed a clean fork. Instead of doing my best not to disturb to food, I stabbed the middle of the meat and cheese pie and came away with a huge bite. Putting it into my mouth, I moaned. “It’s divine.”
Bonnie frowned, looking from me to Raife. I glanced at the king to find he was barely suppressing a smile at my display.
“The roll too,” I told her. “I heard the queen likes to bake her poisons in.”
Her eyes bugged and she nodded, scooting the roll over to me.
I tore it in half, taking a large bite and relishing the flakiness of it.
“Butter?” she asked, grabbing the small cube of butter from her plate.
I took the entire thing, mushed it into my other bite of roll and downed it.
“Water please,” I asked her. “The queen’s poison is tasteless.”
Bonnie handed me the water with a shaking hand and I drank half the thing in one go.
After setting it down I endured an entire minute of the scared girl watching me and waiting for me to grab my stomach. I was half tempted to, just to mess with her, but would never put the king through that. Not even for a joke.
After my watch showed I was in the clear, I reached out and patted her arm. “Food’s safe, my lady.”
She all but collapsed into the chair and then looked at Raife. “I don’t know how you do that every meal! It’s frightening.”
I looked down at her plate. It looked like it had been mauled by a catin, and I had to keep myself from smiling.
“Goodnight.” I grasped the edges of my dress and curtsied again.
The steel gray-blue eyes watched me all the way back to the kitchen doors.
A mere hour later, I was about to take a bath when a note slid under my door.
Bonnie is a No.
-Raife
For some reason, I felt happy about him immediately rejecting her. She was annoying. Who could live with that laugh forever!?
As I was trying to fall asleep, I couldn’t get one image out of my head. The dead people on the ground with foaming mouths, Raife’s family. Just thinking of it, and the accompanying guilt that had rushed through me, made my stomach churn. How long could a person live with that guilt before it consumed them?
It was a long time before I slept.
