Page 20 of Kingdom of Rot & Ruin
“You have this little mud rat to thank for your existence,” she told him, not talking to me, but she might as well have been with the self-satisfied smirk that twisted the corners of her mouth.
“Experiment?” I repeated again like the dumb rat she accused me of being.
“We are done here,” she called out regally, dismissing me in one motion.
Vession’s hand on my shoulder was a vice grip, but I refused to move.
“What experiment?” I shouted at her.
The little boy stared at me, open-mouthed with wide eyes.
The queen laughed, waving her hands at the Fireguards. “Away with him. He bores me.”
Vession tried to manhandle me but I was stronger thesedays. Two Fireguards stepped in to assist, and in short order they wrestled me out of the audience chamber, shoving me out into the corridor and slamming the door behind us.
I shoved away Vession and the Fireguards, who didn’t look the least bit insulted as they took up posts outside the door.
“What the hell are you thinking?” Vession snarled at me. “She could execute you!”
“Like she did my mother, you mean?” I shot out, on a limb.
His lips tightened, and he shot a glance at the listening Fireguards. They kept their faces stoically uninterested.
“Back to my chambers. Now.”
Fine by me.
I followed behind as he stomped down the corridor.
“You are an idiot.”
It felt like I was twelve years old again, being yanked away from my mother’s bosom and thrown into the viper pit. I shook the insult off. Vession calling me an idiot was a term of endearment at this point.
“What experiment?” I grit out, undeterred.
Vession sat down in his chair, his head resting on his steepled hands. His shoulders slumped forward, a deep sigh leaving his chest.
It was the most … atlossI’d ever seen him.
“You figured it out in the throne room. Must I say it?” he spat at me.
My heart skipped a beat.
“Yes, you must,” I confirmed. Otherwise, I wouldn’tbelieve it. Not that I needed yet another reason to murder the queen.
He brought his hand to the armrest of his chair, wrapping his knuckles against it.
“Very well.”
I braced myself.
“Youwere the experiment. Remember how I said years ago that your mother was a friend of the queen, entrusted with an important task? Well … your father is the king.”
Suspecting it was one thing; hearing it said out loud, quite another. My pulse raced inside my veins, and the room swam around me.
“I—”
“The queen wanted assurances she could have healthy sons with the king. So there was an experiment.”
