Page 3 of The Broken Elf King
My heart pounded in my chest and I turned to one of them. “He grabbed me, you must have seen. I didn’t kill him or anything,” I pleaded.
The double doors opened and then I was being walked down the ornately decorated hallway and into another room, this one smaller and with a man sitting behind a desk, a gray cloak pulled up to obscure his identity.
“Okay, I’m obviously new here, so now that I know the rules maybe we can give me a free pass,” I begged. I didn’t want to be hanged for kneeing the trader in the balls, but I couldn’t let that fly. The Bow Men dropped me before the desk and then left the room.
I stood there, frozen, as I stared at the person in the cloak. “I—”
“You talk too much. We will need to work on that.” His voice was gruff, powerful, and I immediately knew I was in the presence of someone in charge.
“Yes… sir. I can do that. Assuming you let me live?” I wasn’t sure what was going on here.
The man reached up with long slender fingers and pulled back the cloak, revealing the strong jaw and handsome face of the freaking king of the elves.
“Raife Lightstone,” I breathed, curtsying deeply.
His blue eyes ran over my body as if assessing my curtsy, and my cheeks reddened.
“Your curtsy indicates you come from a highborn family,” he observed.
We didn’t really have highborns in Nightfall. Educated and uneducated was what we called it, and ninety percent of the people were educated in Nightfall because the queen mandated it and made it free. I was considered poor but highly educated, so for all intents and purposes a highborn in his mind.
“Yes, my lord,” I said, trying to keep my answers short since he’d said I spoke too much.
He stood and I froze, taken aback by how lanky he was, at least a head and a half taller than me, and that was saying something as I was tall for a woman. He stepped out from behind the desk and faced me. “What’s your name?”
“Kailani Dulane, sir.”
“Are you aware of the one gift that all the kings of Avalier share?” he asked, and I knew where this was going.
Oh Maker.
I swallowed hard. King Valdren of the dragon-folk, King Lucien Thorne of the fae, King Axil Moon of the wolven, and King Raife Lightstone of the elves, all had the gift of smelling a lie.
“You can smell a lie,” I said.
He looked surprised. “Youarewell educated.”
The Nightfall library had books on every magical race. It was all to aid in the queen’s plot to eradicate them. The more we knew about them, the more we could hurt them and eventually wipe them out.
“I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and based on your answers it will determine your fate,” he said, walking in a slow circle around me.
Dizziness washed over me but I nodded.
He inhaled through his nose. “Half elf?” he asked, sounding pleased.
“Yes, lord. My father,” was all I said, trying to be brief as possible.
“His name?”
I swallowed hard. “Rufus Dulane. He lived in the fishing village of King’s Burrow.”
He nodded, seemingly pleased with that answer.
“Why were you sold into servitude?” he asked.
I sighed. “I took a loan I could not repay.”
“Obviously.” He sounded annoyed with my shallow answer. “What for?”
