Page 17 of Knightfall
I had no choice but to follow him. But as I left the room, I gave my mother a single finger salute.
She wanted to sard with my life?
Just wait.
She would rue the day. I’d make her hand that crown back to my sister so fast her wrist snapped. Then I’d make sure Avia was safe. I’d get rid of this gods-damned curse. And I’d disappear into the forest again.
As we marched down the hall, Ryan turned to Declan. “Find out who’s right. That’s an order.”
Declan’s eyes flashed with heat at the cryptic comment. He and Ryan paused and exchanged a long look. There was something in it. Some underlying tension.
“Are you going to come?” Declan asked.
“Not with you.” Ryan answered.
Declan bit his lip and gave a nod. He started walking again, a little faster.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
No one answered.
At the first split in the hallway, Connor sped off without a backward glance.
Declan did not lead me to my chambers. He led me into a hallway in the royal wing that I’d never been to before. The knights’ hall. The hall where my fathers had resided. The hall where my so-called ‘husbands’ now slept.
The Queen’s husbands had moved to her chambers now that she was so ill, so they could tend to her. It was what my grandfathers had done in their day as well.
Once my mother passed, my fathers would be sent to the cliffs. A knight existed only so long as he was bound to his queen. The archaic, matriarchal laws of Evaness didn’t allow former knights to remain in the palace. Too much room for confrontation. To have authority and lose it—that was a hard battle. No. Knights were destined to end their lives with their queen.
I brushed away the dark thought and focused on the present. I had too much to worry about without becoming maudlin and depressed.
I looked instead at the portraits lining the walls of the knights’ hall.
“Why are you taking me here?” I asked. I had to trot to keep up with the pace Declan set. My other husbands peeled off one by one, in other directions, but Declan continued down the corridor. He didn’t answer me until he came to the very last door at the end of the hall.
“I have work to do,” Declan’s jaw ticked as he held open the door for me, begrudgingly polite.
“You heard my mother. The queen cannot be denied,” I rolled my eyes.
“Your maids will be able to assist you here,” he turned and led me into a room that was full of sumptuous blue velvet and brown leather.
“What if I don’t want to be assisted here?”
“You think I give a damn what you want?” Declan took a step toward me, his boots scraping along the stone floor. This close, the smell of parchment and ink radiated off of him. It was the sort of scent that made me want to curl up near a fire and read. Of course, not with him next to me.
“Of course, you do. I’m apparently your precious wife,” I shot back.
Declan’s frigid eyes warned me to stop. They were little bits of frozen blue sky and they hailed down hatred and disdain. “You’re a coward, Bloss. I don’t know why Quinn bothered to bring you back.”
I hardly knew Declan before I ran. We’d studied together. But he’d been so far ahead of me in analysis and tactics … we hadn’t been friends. So why did his words pierce me like arrows? Why did they make my heart ache? Because they were true.
But harsh truths never made me reflective. They made me want to fight. I stomped Declan’s foot and when he lifted it from the ground and was off-balance, I pulled his hair. As if I were five.
That was a mistake. Despite his scholarly ways, Declan was still nearly six feet tall. He grabbed my upper arms and shoved me. I fell to the ground. When he stomped to the bell pull, the curse yanked at me until I was forced to crawl along behind him over the stone floor.
“Ass!” I screeched.
Declan merely smirked and straightened his hair as his butler scurried into the room. The butler halted when he saw me but knew better than to ask.
