Page 53 of The Prince from a Cruel Summer
“Your brother is my only lead to the rebels that perpetrated the attack on the queen,” I whisper. “Why shouldn’t he be made to confess his sins?”
A sad smile plays at the corners of Lori’s mouth. “Respectfully, Your Highness, I believe I will constrain him into talking more efficiently than you could.”
“Why?”
“Do you have any siblings?”
My jaw clenches at a sudden burst of emotion, and I avert my gaze. “I did. But she died.”
“Then ask yourself this: who would have been better equipped to make her crack under pressure in an interrogation? You, or a perfect stranger?”
A deep breath rushes out of my lungs. “Alright, I’ll relinquish the prisoner to your care, but he must not be allowed to go free until the rebellion is extinguished. And if he’s found guilty of my mother’s condition, he’ll be put on trial and sentenced here, in Summer.”
Elio agrees to my terms with a quick incline of the head and squeezes his wife’s hand. “You have my word, Aidan. I swear it.”
Magic crackles through the air at his formal promise.
As I stare at their laced fingers, a twinge of jealousy cramps my gut. I relinquish my seat, squeezing the back of the chair for a moment before turning back to Elizabeth. I shouldn’t have discussed matters of the realm in front of her, really, and open my mouth to ask for her discretion only to find her seat empty.
Elizabeth is gone. I search for her in the crowd, but she seems to have slipped out of the ballroom altogether.
“Aidan. Don’t linger near Death, my darling, or he’ll freeze the life right out of you!” Freya Heart, the Spring Queen, shouts. She approaches the table with her usual poise, her long black nails clawing at her golden fan.
Elio bares his teeth at the jab. “Freya. Never a dull moment with you.”
“I wish I could say the same.” The black woman’s attention shifts to Lori, the Winter Queen, a perfect copy of her dead niece but for her round, human ears. “Come along, Aidan. I have a bone to pick with you.”
I school my expression in one of polite interest and let the monarch usher me away.
“Your mother is not here tonight,” she remarks.
“Yes. Sadly, she couldn’t make it.”
Freya arches her perfectly-shaped brow. “Tidecaller trouble?”
“Perhaps,” I answer, keeping my tone aloof.
The Tidecallers are to blame for the queen’s absence because their wicked schemes condemned her to a slow, untimely death, but I keep that part to myself.
Mother did not wish to spark up outrage across the realm by disclosing her current condition. News of her poisoning would have forced us into a quick, half-assed, retaliatory conflict. Sending out our troops blindly into the Breach would be like eating out of the palms of the rebels hands, for that’s certainly what they intended to happen with their cowardly move. Hell, I’d wanted to jump onto the first available boat myself when I’d found out about the source of her sickness, but Heather had talked me off the ledge.
Still... I’ll kill the ones that orchestrated the attack if it’s the last thing I do.
Freya pulls me to her table full of High Fae, where I try my best to assuage their worries about the rebels and the war that’s coming. There’s nothing that makes a High Fae more thirsty for wine and hungry for gossip than the prospect of an armed, deadly conflict.
I get roped into endless political rambles and try to push Elizabeth from my mind.
As we’re about to go to bed, Heather sinks onto the mattress beside me, one hand busy unhooking her ruby ear cuffs. “Elizabeth was a welcomed distraction from all the gruesome political talk tonight. The guests were very curious about her.” She presses her lips together before adding, “And no wonder… She’s the most beautiful woman alive.”
“Agreed.”
“Hey!”
I duck to avoid the pillow coming for my head and chuckle, “You said it first.”
“It’s a big weekend for us. We can’t afford to…proposition our wedding singer, not when she’s as gorgeous as that.”
I point my index finger at her nose, no stranger to the sheepish grimace on her lips. “Oh, I can see it on your face. You’ve thought about it.”
