Page 17 of Dare

“Ah,” Rhys hummed with spite. “So you’ll continue to snub me like they all do. You, who should have been my staunchest ally against that cunt of a princess and her slut of a jester. What did they offer you?”

This again. He’d been trying to get the details out of me ever since I stabbed him in the neck with a syringe, back when Poet and Briar revealed his duplicity to the Royals. Like a reflex, my thoughts strayed to the beast and her inflammatory golden eyes.

“Dismiss me now, but it won’t last. I’m no lowly spy you can discard like rubbish,” the king grated while the infernal sharks coasted in the backdrop. “We’re the same creature, you and me. We have the same hatred, only with different temperatures. That’s why you showed no mercy to my spies. What did you do to seek compensation? Numb their balls with a single look? Dismember their ligaments? What did it take to vanquish the opposition?”

“Ask the wolves who mauled them,” I deadpanned.

That shut him up. Under the mustache, Rhys’s laryngeal cartilage bobbed like a cork.

We were not the same creature. For instance, if I had set out to vanquish Autumn, I would have succeeded. Because I would have done it smartly.

The king digested my reply, then flung up his arms. “Summer doesn’t trade children.”

“Summer will make an exception,” I instructed with velveteen malice.

Rhys’s protest had nothing to do with benevolence. This court valued child simpletons for their diminutive hands, which enabled them to weave nets.

However, regional diseases thrived in this kingdom. To compensate, I had developed a painstaking method of inoculation, which Winter had offered to Summer in exchange for test subjects.

The monarch scratched the living shit out of his mustache. He could not refuse vaccines over a few striplings. “I will excuse this insolence. You’re ambitious, ruthless, and hoping to set a precedent.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m shrewd, intelligent, and immune to trivialities such as hope.”

“I will require a greater number of doses.”

“Not attainable.”

“I warn you, Sire. I’m on the brink of fury, and I’m surrounded by sharks.”

For shit’s sake. Did this moron think those vaccines were easy to produce?

Someday, he would bring upon himself a painful and timely death. When that inevitability happened, Giselle should donate his brain to research. If only to display as an example of what happened when one’s cerebrum shrank, due to inactivity. This, assuming I did not murder Rhys myself.

“For the customary supply, I will have twenty simpletons, five of them children,” I repeated, then flicked the starving king a bone. “And ten of the mad.”

“Say that again?”

“No.”

A hypocritical grin lifted the king’s mustache. “I believe I still like you.”

I couldn’t give less of a fuck. “The little beast you caged for me. Who tattooed her neck?”

The prompt brought a fatal edge to my words. Because the beast had refused to say who’d marked her, and because the guard had changed the subject, I sought an answer from someone who lacked the intellect to question my interest.

Why would the Prince of Winter care who inked a prisoner?

Rhys was too self-involved to wonder. “Don’t expect me to recall minor details,” he scoffed. “The fool was originally captured at a fledgling age, long before I chose her for Autumn, so hell if I remember who tattooed her.” Then he gave it a second thought. “Though, a neck marking means she’s deadly. I’d advise you not to get close to such an animal.”

He was advising the wrong prince. I allowed that thought to show on my face.

Despite himself, the king’s pupils gleamed as if he’d swallowed a mood booster. “And how do you plan to break in the prisoner?”

In the same manner I broke them all. “I’m patient.”

The meeting adjourned. I would sit with Giselle later, to discuss other political matters. In the meantime, Rhys extended me an invitation to dine, then left the throne room, not noticing when his guest didn’t follow.

I lingered, glancing briefly at the aquarium. Despite the sharks’ vacant expressions, only an idiot would mistake them for harmless. They knew their powers, knew what their teeth could do, knew what they were capable of. And they saw me quite clearly.

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