Page 98 of A War of Crowns

“You will be allowed to stay,” she declared to the Crow instead, with all the magnanimous authority she could muster in that moment. She was sure they both realized, though, that she couldn’t exactly evict him now. Not in front of her Privy Council and the vast majority of her court.

Which was precisely why he had raced her to the palace in the first place.

Seraphina paused a moment. She allowed those words to sink in before she added in soft warning, “But I expect you to be a gentleman while you are here,Crow. There will be no violence in my court, no whisper of”—she shot the man’s bronze-eyed shadow a look for good measure, including him in her instructions—“indecentbehavior.”

“And our wedding?” he asked at once, pressing that point with all the insistence of a varhound hot on its prey’s scent.

“I will marry you when I am good and ready and not a moment before,” Seraphina insisted on a soft hiss.

But clearly, that was not what the man wanted to hear, given how his lips twisted with displeasure. Before she could even process the shift in his stance, the Crow suddenly stood too close, with his face drawing nearer by the moment.

“I fear, Your Majesty,” the Crow snarled up to her within that suffocating nearness, “thatneveris not an option.”

Chapter twenty-eight

Aldric

His heart pounded as he drew closer to the Queen of Elmoria. She stank of the sea and usuru. Her eyes shone with open disgust.

He wanted nothing more than to throttle her in that moment.

Who did she think he was?Edmund?

Did she think he had not seen the way she had hurried back to her pavilion and packed her things the very moment the new treaty with his brother had been signed? He had but one eye, it was true.

But it was a perfectly usableeye.

While looking up at her, her face closer to his than he would have reasonably liked, he bit back the urge to suddenly snarl at her in annoyance. To ask her what kind of fool she took him for.

She may have outwitted Edmund twice, but she was playing with the elder Hargrave now.

Her breath ghosted against his face on a murmur of, “Let us not forget that you are in my arena now, Crow. You may have bested Sir Dacre in the tourney. But I have no intentions of dueling you with a dulled blade.”

Calix choked on a laugh from somewhere behind him at that.

He fought the urge to throttle him, too.

“You know, you rather remind me of akirei,” Aldric softly informed her. As he had anticipated, that unfamiliar Kunishi word earned naught but confusion from the woman.

“Akirei?” she repeated.

He feasted on her clear agitation that he knew something she did not.

“A type of weasel found only in Kuni,” he explained, sending the queen's nose wrinkling. “They are exceedingly beautiful creatures, heavily prized for the coloring and softness of their coats—”

“If this is an attempt atflattery,” his unwilling bride breathlessly scoffed, “then you are doing ahorrendousjob of it.”

“—but have been nearly hunted to extinction, given the sheer depth of their stupidity,” he finally finished, letting that last word hang in the growing silence between them.

It took a few moments for the full weight of his insult to land, but when it did, he was rewarded by the sight of the queen clenching her jaw as she twitched away from him. No doubt she was eager to restore distance again.

It was a feeling that was wholly and utterly mutual.

“Your Grace,” the queen bid to her Lord Chancellor. She spoke through clenched teeth. “Please ensure our guests are providedwith lodgings appropriate to their station.” She arched an eyebrow and suggested, “Perhaps the stables?”

Before any rebuttal could be spoken, the woman turned and huffed her way off. Clearly, she was keen to have the last word.

Aldric narrowed his eye and watched her go.

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