Page 92 of A Kingdom of Monsters

I closed my eyes. That bitch.

She knew we couldn’t allow their independence, and now she was going to make some absurd demand in exchange for staying.

Beside me, Lonnie was grinding her teeth loud enough that I could hear every movement, but she wisely said nothing.

“That gives me an idea,” Bran boomed, also in common tongue. “If you want the diamond, perhaps you should hunt for it? All those of us here today would happily stand witness. Some might even like to participate.”

“No!” I blurted out before I’d had a chance to think about it.

Lonnie looked up at me. “If it’s the only way, I could do it,” she muttered. “I’m not nearly as breakable anymore.”

“No,” Ambrose echoed me. “We won’t be playing any absurd games. We’ve done you the courtesy of asking for the jewel rather than ordering you return it. Don’t take advantage of our generosity.”

Bran’s eyes flashed with anger. “You take advantage of our generosity every year in taxes. All we ask is to be afforded the same privileges as the other provinces. We expect to see the queen hunt.”

They expected to see her blood soaking into the snow.

I vibrated with anger. It would be all too easy to just kill them all now. The consequences didn’t matter. We’d have the diamond and Lonnie would be alive. Everything else could be fixed later.

I rose from my seat, lifting a hand in the air.

“Wait!” Lonnie yelled. She grabbed my arm and shoved it back down. “I’ll do it. I accept.”

Cassinda grinned wickedly. “Excellent. We’ll see you out in front of the castle in an hour, then.”

“E-excuse me?” Lonnie stammered. “An hour?”

“Of course,” Cassinda said, her voice sickly sweet. “In Nevermore, the hunts begin at midnight. And conveniently, we are only one hour away.”

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

The shout echoed all around the room, but for once, it wasn’t me who was yelling.

We’d stood and left our seats, and were now standing back in our upstairs guest room. The moment I shut the door, Ambrose rounded on Lonnie, screaming at her loud enough that the entire castle could likely hear.

“I was thinking about saving the lives of three dozen people,” she screamed back just as angrily. “You two were going to kill them. I could tell.”

I glanced at my brother, who returned my look with a guilty one of his own. Clearly, I hadn’t been the only one intending to end our dinner with a funeral.

“I told you,” Ambrose barked, his gaze snapping back to Lonnie. “If they were speaking the common language they wanted you to understand. They were setting you up. Why the fuck do you think there were so many people here tonight, or how they’re managing to set up a hunt in under an hour. They planned this.”

“That makes no sense.” Lonnie said hotly. She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled, not seeming the slightest bit cowed by Ambrose screaming at her. “They didn’t know what you were going to ask. They couldn’t have planned for this ahead of time.”

I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. I felt suddenly exhausted. “They didn’t know about the jewel, no,” I said, myeyes still closed. “But they were clearly going to ask you to complete the hunt anyway. They would have come up with some other reason to trap you into it. We just made it easier for them.”

Lonnie faltered, looking slightly nervous for the first time. “Why, though?”

By the fucking Source. We’d fucked up.

I let out a long frustrated breath and fell backwards against the bed, putting my head in my hands. “We should have told you about the issues in Nevermore,” I said angrily. “It seemed too complicated to bother explaining, but you should have known. They’ve been trying to become an independent nation for centuries.”

“And you can’t let them?” she asked, tapping her foot absently against the wooden floor.

“No. It’s complicated.”

“Don’t say that,” she snapped. “Acting like things are too complicated for me to understand is exactly what you just said you shouldn’t have done.”

“Fine.”

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