Page 108 of A War of Crowns

The baron shot her a withering look. “I had hoped to speak with the queen, if you don’t mind, Your Grace.”

“The queen is busy, I fear,” Edith informed him with another smile. “But if you have a message for her, I would be happy to pass it along.”

“It is a message for the queen’s ears alone,” he insisted, trying to step around her.

But Edith was having none of it. She had known her fair share of men just like this Baron of Crestley over her nearly sixty years spent at court. Men who didn’t like to takenofor an answer.

And there was only one way to deal with them.

A knee to the groin and a dagger to the throat.

But she would never hear the end of it from Percy if she drew a blade in the middle of the Lord’s cathedral. Flinging out her arms instead, Edith braced a hand on either side of the doorframe and declared, “Then it will simply have to wait for another time, my lord. Her Majesty is not to be disturbed.”

The baron’s eyes narrowed. “Is this decree from the queen’s lips or from yours?”

“Both.”

Lord Beaumont snarled like the dog he was and withdrew from that nearness. Like a caged varhound, he paced the hallway.

Edith watched him in silence.

“But I need to speak with her,” the man insisted again when next he whirled to face her.

Edith frowned. “Yourneedsare of no concern to me.” Narrowing her eyes, she added, “And let us not pretend as if I do not know why you are here.Now. When Her Majesty finally has a chance to be free of you.”

For years, her goddaughter had mooned over this boy. Back and forth and around and around. They would flirt. They would fight. She would pray Seraphina was free of his influenceat last.

But then when next she looked, there was Tiberius again, tugging her goddaughter every which way. It was maddening to watch.

But Silvie had been the same way—determined to see only the good in people, no matter how many times she had been burned by them.

“You speak of the dwarf?” A bitter-sounding laugh escaped Lord Tiberius’s throat. “You surprise me, duchess. I would have thoughtyou, of all people, would be against such a match.”

Edith hesitated at that. She didn’t know what to think of Aldric Hargrave. She had yet to gain his measure. But she didn’t like hisreputation. Nor did she like the complications he brought with him.

But she wasn’t about to tell this young man that.

It didn’t seem like she needed to, though, when in the face of her hesitation, Lord Tiberius smiled. “You don’t approve of the match,” he whispered, stepping in closer. He spoke softly. Intimately.

Edith recoiled from the younger man’s nearness, though she had nowhere to truly retreat unless she wished to step away from her post guarding the door. “Whether or not I approve is beside the point, my lord.”

“And what is the point, then, Your Grace?”

“The point,” she bit out through clenched teeth, “is that I have a better chance of becoming a pirate queen of the Stygian Sea than you willeverhave of becoming the King of Elmoria. So perhaps you should leave now before you embarrass yourself further.”

The baron’s smile withered. “You assume much about me,” he uttered just as the door behind Edith abruptly opened, startling them both.

“Your Grace,” one of the Queensguard whispered at her back. “Come quickly. Sir Dacre is awake.”

Edith’s heart fluttered at the news and she dove into the chamber without hesitation, the baron forgotten in an instant.

“Sir Dacre is awake?” she echoed to those gathered about the bed, earning for herself a tired smile from Father Perero and a teary-eyed glance from her goddaughter.

“He’s awake,” Seraphina confirmed a mere second before Edith spied such a thing for herself.

There the young knight lay, his eyes blinking as he looked at the faces of all those gathered around him. When his gaze finally landed on Olivia, though, he stopped at once and whispered, “Thereyou are,” with such a heart-rending sweetness, Edith’s hand pressed against her chest in an attempt to stop the sudden ache there.

Seraphina looked away and turned in toward her instead. While they stood there, pretending not to hear Olivia’s stammered reply of, “Yes, I’m here,” her goddaughter’s fingers found the necklace about her throat, as they so often had when the queen was still a little girl.

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