Page 59 of Winter's Fate

In the meantime, Callum decided to pour himself a drink. Surely the master kept decent wine in here. He made it himself, didn’t he? Callum did his best to saunter, to take his time, pretending he couldn’t feel Hawk’s eyes boring into his back as he swirled the wine in its decanter, then splashed a good amount into a cup.

He supposed it was decent wine. A more discerning taste would take the time to pick apart the threads of cherry and oak, the sweetness, the tart aftertaste.

Callum swallowed it down too quickly for any of that. Then he poured a second cup, turning in time to catch Thaddeus rolling his eyes in exasperation.

“What the blazes were you thinking?”

Hawk had the quiet voice going, the one that could frighten his advisors into pretending they agreed with his worst ideas.

Callum held up a finger. “Hold on. If we’re talking now, I need to drink this.” He drained the second goblet, holding Hawk’s gaze as long as he could. He wasn’t sure exactly what he expected or wanted. In some distant part of his mind, he knew that drinking himself into a daze would not help him face this conversation.

Yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop, either.

When he was done, he set the goblet on the nearest bookshelf. “All right. I’m ready.”

The king was standing so still he might have been made of marble. Callum had seen it before. It was the calm before the storm. “You stole my soldiers.”

“Technically, they were my?—”

“No.” Hawk slammed a fist down on the desk, scattering a pile of papers to the floor. “Technically, they are mine. I’m the king, sotechnically, everything is mine. The soldiers. The cities. Even your sorry ass, distasteful though that fact may be.”

Callum knew he should take this seriously, that Hawk could have him dragged away at any moment. But he couldn’t stophimself as he tilted his head, adopting his best bemused expression. It was a cover for the anger, like a lid set on a pot to keep the boiling water from spilling across the range. “Really?” he said, drawing the word into a long, mocking drawl. “Everything?”

“Callum,” Thaddeus said, a warning in his tone.

But Callum was done pretending the king was the reasonable person in this room, that his anger didn’t stem from his desire to punish him.

He’d spent his childhood chasing after Hawk, making sure the heir to the throne didn’t fall from a tree and break his royal head. It had been a job, yes, assigned to him by King Magnus. But it had also been a calling, one he’d taken very seriously.

And they’d been friends, damn it. No, they’d beenbrothers. The first time they lost their heads with drink, it had been together. The first time they’d ridden into a border skirmish, hands clenching their swords in fear, it had been together.

“Are the birds in the sky yours, then?” Callum felt his chest growing warm, the suppressed anger rising to the surface. “What about the Etrans? Do they belong to you?”

“You know very well what I meant.” Despite his desk-punching outburst, the king was disturbingly calm.

Callum poured another goblet of wine, hands shaking. “YourGeneral Moore calledyouremissary a whore. Is that truly the man you want as captain? Asgeneral?”

Hawk’s lips thinned, his disapproval evident. He was a lot of things, but a judgmental snipe wasn’t one of them. He’d never liked the way Laena had been chased from her own capital, shunned for supposed love. “I will deal with Moore,” he said. “At the moment, I’m dealing with you.”

Callum set the goblet back on the shelf, untouched. Mages, but he wanted it. But he needed his wits about him for this conversation. “What of the attacks?” he asked. “The assassins? Silerith is stirring, and you’re wasting time lecturing me.”

Hawk glanced at Thaddeus, then back to Callum, as if he wasnot sure how much he wanted to reveal. He drew in a deep breath, as if to calm himself.

A pity. He was easier to deal with when he shouted.

After King Magnus’s death, Hawk had shut him out entirely. He might have blamed Thaddeus, too, for defying his orders and running off to join the poisonkeepers. Instead, he blamed Callum, who hadn’t wanted the younger prince to risk himself riding alone through bandit-infested woods. The King’s Guard had been so intent on stopping heart-tithers that they hadn’t been paying enough attention to the rest of their country.

None of that mattered. It only mattered that Callum had been absent from the capital. That King Magnus had died. And that Hawk would not forgive him.

He hadn’t shouted. He hadn’t lectured. But he’d made it abundantly clear, in every way possible, that the friendship they had cultivated since childhood had died along with his father.

Now, he was glaring at Callum like he thought anything he said here might be repeated. Like Callum’s disloyalty ran deeper than one mistake.

Perhaps he couldn’t be faulted for that. Callum had ignored Hawk’s wishes, had taken the delegation to Etra. And it had turned into enough of a disaster that Hawk had felt it necessary to leave the capital and come to Inasvale himself.

“I’m no traitor,” Callum said, and though he softened his tone as best he could, the words still came out as a growl.

Again, Hawk glanced at Thaddeus. Brothers in reality, even if Thaddeus’s status as a poisonkeeper should mean that he no longer considered himself part of the family. It was never that simple.

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