Page 37 of To Claim a King

“You don’t mind, do you?”

He nodded at Xandrie and Nathos, just as the man trod on the hem of his partner’s gown.

“Go, rescue her,” Elza rolled her eyes.

Rhey practically ran, incapable of staying away another second. He tapped Nathos on the shoulder. “May I?”

The Elder looked as if he’d just won some windfall at the card table. He couldn’t have been more grateful.

“Red becomes you,” Rhey said. He bent close and whispered in her ear. “But you should wear gold.”

She smiled, knowing how much he liked his gold, after spending so many nights in his den now.

But that was it; he just liked it. The only thing he was obsessed with these days was her.

He felt her falter. Surely he hadn’t done a Nathos and trodden on her hem? She sagged in his arms. He relaxed his hold on her, confused by her limp body. Her eyes rolled back in her head until only the whites showed. Her knees gave way and she was slumped in his arms, entirely unable to support herself.

“Andera?” he bellowed.

The orchestra ground to a halt and the dance floor was clear of guests in seconds.

“Get me the head mage, now. Tell her we will need a compound of willow bark and oak-burned brandy.”

Vincent was at his side. “You suspect poisoning?”

Rhey bent close and inhaled her breath. “I don’t suspect it. I know it. That smell of rotting fruit?” He lifted Xandrie into his arms and stormed towards the doors. “You’ll find who did this, Vincent. Find them before I do.”

Because if he got his hands on them, they’d wish they’d never been born.

Andera, their best mage, rushed to Rhey’s private chambers to administer the antidote to a recumbent Xandrie. Rhey had to hold her head back, while the solution was trickled into her slack mouth.

“If you’d been but a moment longer, Sire, the lady would not merely be blue in the lips. She’d be laid out on a slab, colder than ice.” Andera pressed a vial into Rhey’s hand. “Three drops, every hour on the hour and no visitors. She needs rest.”

The mage left Rhey’s chambers. Never in a thousand suns or a million moons had he imagined Xandrie would be on his bed, gold piled high about them, but on the brink of death, rather than ecstasy. He gathered her in his arms and held her close. He could not bear to think of her being cold. The shoulder strap of her dress slipped. He took it gently and returned it to that magical dip where her clavicle met her neck. He wanted, more than he’d ever wanted anything, to press his lips to the sweet hollow, but instead he rocked her and wished her back to health.

“Red becomes you, but you will wear gold. Every day from this day forth. I don’t give a damn about this tournament - I’d renounce the throne if that’s what it takes. I just want you.”

He spent a fitful night, administering the antidote Andera had left him and checking Xandrie’s pulse. Little by little the color returned to her cheeks, her breathing deepened, and she shifted from her drugged state to plain sleep.

There was a light tap at the door and Vincent let himself in.

“Have you found him?” Rhey growled.

Vincent approached the King’s four-poster bed. “I have my suspicions, but this is a capital offense. We don’t want the wrong person to lose their head. I tread with caution, but I will bring the perpetrator to justice.”

Rhey wanted to blast Vincent from one side of his lair to the other, but he was merely the messenger and, in any case, he was right. It wouldn’t do to part someone from their head then find they deserved to have kept it. He grumbled and shifted his weight, so that Xandrie was balanced on his chest, rather than his shoulder.

Xandrie stirred.

Rhey loosened his hold on her, propping her on the bank of pillows he’d arranged behind them.

Xandrie licked her lips. “My mouth tastes like some spiky rodent has crawled inside it and died.”

That made him crack a smile; if she could jest, she wasn’t quite on her deathbed anymore. She slept most of a day, and no army could have chased him from her side.

Ally

Vincent had orderedher out to the weapons range, hours before sun up, to practice her chain-mace skills, which he flagged as the weakest of her skill sets. She preferred her sword but until the task was announced, there was no knowing what they’d have them do for the quarter final. Unlike her sword lessons, in which he urged her to keep her wrists still, swinging the mace away from her body required her arms to “Undulate like snakes” and “flow with the wind.” He got poetic when he was in the groove.

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