Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
“It’s good that it’s only us here.” Brenna sighed. “If anyone else in the palace heard us, we’d all be crucified for disloyalty.”
Zev grinned at her. “Lucky it’s just us idiots, then.”
“I really was looking forward to my vacation,” I murmured, knowing I was going to Greenland instead.
“Yes,” Brenna said acerbically, her eyes narrowing. “And it was humorous that you thought, even with the king granting you permission to take only Zev and Dae-Jung, that the four of us weren’t going as well.”
“I was merely thinking of you all because you would have been bored out of your minds in New Orleans doing nothing.”
“I like doing nothing, and people-watching is always fun,” she countered. “But really, none of us, including you, are going anywhere but Greenland.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said with a resigned sigh. “And may I say, the council members are going to murder me for asking them here for nothing.”
“You didn’t ask them here for nothing,” Zev apprised me. “Regardless of where you’re going, to Greenland or on vacation, replacements for you were needed.”
That was true.
“And honestly, they should check in more often.”
“I really wanted to go home,” I whispered.
“Is this not your home?” Dae-Jung asked me.
“It is,” Brenna told him. “He just wanted to visit his friend.”
“I love all of you, but I hate it here.”
“Because you have no power at the moment to change anything,” Zev stated flatly. “You’re like Sisyphus with the damn rock. All you’re allowed to do is patch that which we all know is broken.”
“It does seem as though you perform similar tasks on a daily basis,” Dae-Jung said kindly. “One wonders if those you have filling in for you in your absence will allow the same—
what is the word?” he asked Brenna.
“Shenanigans,” she said.
“Yes. It will be interesting to see if Countess Minsi will be as tolerant as you.”
“I’m going with no.” Zev chuckled. “She was never one to mince words or waste time.”
“But really, that’s not going to be your problem,” Brenna offered. “You won’t be here to see that.”
“Don’t jinx me,” I warned her.
“I think you jinxed yourself with your interference,” Zev told me.
I glared at him.
“Or not. We’ll see. Maybe everything will be fine.”
TWO
It was not fine, and really, none of us thought it would be.
First, the assassin we captured would not speak to anyone but Varic.
“What do you mean?” I asked Zev when he returned from the dungeons—really, a prison—inside the palace. Dungeons sounded ancient, like something out of The Count of Monte Cristo, but it was a new, modern, biometrically enabled jail with sensor plates and all manner of technology.
I had taken a shower while Zev removed the assassin, and when I got out, now in jeans and a T-shirt, feeling much more like myself, he was back. My four guards and Dae-Jung were all in my loft, waiting for me. Everyone stood up when Zev strode into the main room through the heavy rolling warehouse door. He left it open because we were in our wing and no one else was supposed to be there for fear of Varic’s mandate.
“I don’t understand your question,” Zev replied, arms crossed, biceps bulging.
“The prisoner wants to speak to Varic?”
He glanced at Eris. “Isn’t that what I just said?”
She made a motion with her hand for him to calm down.
“I mean,” he began, “the assassin, who goes by the name of Sorin, is not, as it turns out, an assassin at all. And neither is he one of Decimus’s men.”
“What does that even mean? I thought you said they all had those scars on their faces and—”
“They do. His is plaster that’s stuck to his face. He said he and his fellow conspirators only wanted to hold the king in his quarters until they could parley with Varic.”
My head was going to explode. “What?”
“Their plan was to take the king hostage in his suite of rooms and barricade themselves in with him until Varic returned.”
“That’s insane. The king would have killed them all.”
“Yes he would’ve. But apparently, they know little about our sovereign.”
“Considering where they all came from, that’s not all that surprising, is it?”
He shook his head.
“And he won’t say what he wants to talk to Varic about?”
“No.”
I was quiet, thinking about the implications.
“Of course, Kaan thought to have him tortured to get information.”
The king’s new kenningar, leader of his elite private guard, was a brute. He was horrible to his men, who always appeared to be bruised and bloodied, and he was not at all charming or bright—unlike Zev, his predecessor—so he was unable to defuse situations with words as Zev had been. All in all, he turned out to be a poor replacement.
When Hadrian was at the palace, as he was the champion, not only for the prince but the entire house of Maedoc, he kept Kaan in line. He alone had the power, not counting the king or Varic, to rein Kaan in. I should have been able to control him as well, but because Varic and I were not yet married, Kaan felt I was not above him in the palace’s hierarchy, so he wasn’t taking orders from me.