Page 3 of The Royal Gauntlet

“He ceased being my brother the moment he pursued my wife against her will. Daphne, I’m not going to agree to bring Galen back unless it’s an absolute last resort.”

“Octavia said she’ll help us if we do it. What if we need her?”

Essos shakes his head and tries to settle me back into bed by gently pushing my shoulder so I have to relax into the pillows. I allow it. In truth, I want the bed to swallow me whole, only to spit me out once we’ve defeated Posey.

“We won’t need her. I won’t let us rely on her goodwill—she’s too capricious. This is all so new. We need time to come up with a plan to take Posey down. My mother is just looking to get in your head. Don’t let her.”

“I just…I need abreak, Essos. I’ve died, gone through the Calling, and been dealing with the Trials. All I want is to be able to lie down andsleep.”

Essos climbs into bed and pulls me toward him, dislodging Waffles. The cat glares at both of us and hops off to make himself at home on the lounge in front of the window.

“I’m making this suggestion as your concerned partner, not as a father-to-be trying to restrict you. Let me handle what is going on with the realms for a little while. If something dire happens, I’ll loop you in, but you said it yourself—you’re tired. I’m sure we can find something for you to do. Gods, we both know Cat is going to need help adjusting.”

I let him hook his body around mine, creating a comforting cocoon in the form of arms and legs. “Do we tell Xavier and the others about Octavia’s offer?”

Essos’s body goes stiff, but then he seems to consciously relax himself as he tugs me tighter. “No one needs to know.”

CHAPTER2

“Are you certain?” I ask, sitting up. Essos is beside me on the bed, and he squeezes my hand. My shirt is pulled up and away from my stomach as a midwife checks me over. Her soft hands still frame my belly. I miss the modern technology of the mortal realm that would have let me see and hear the baby. There’s knowing, and then there isknowing. I want that hard evidence.

“As certain as I can be. I would estimate conception sometime after the Calling ended. You’re around seventeen weeks.” The healer’s wording is careful but pointed. She wants Essos to know that I got pregnant after he left, while I was putting on the best performance of my life.

I pull down my shirt, knocking her hands aside. “If you’re trying to insinuate that this child is not my husband’s, save your breath.” I move out of Essos’s grip and get off the bed to push past this woman. A carpet of greenery follows in my wake, energy and righteous anger crackling through my veins.

I move to the large bay windows and cross my arms. I can feel how my stomach protrudes, like I’ve had too many tacos and chips on dollar-taco night.

Essos comes up behind me and places a hand on my shoulder. It’s silent solidarity, and I reward him by reaching a hand up to his.

“I didn’t mean to insinuate anything,” the woman tries to hedge, but the way she glances at Essos tells me all I need to know. She thinks my husband is a cuckold.

“Thank you. That will be all,” Essos commands. His voice is firm and dismissive even while being the height of politeness.

When I hear the door close, I turn to him. “This child is–”

“I know, love. You don’t have to defend yourself to me.” His rich blue eyes soften me like butter left out too long.

“No, I’m just going to have to explain myself to the realms. Why did I think the Trials were a good idea?” I pace away from him, cutting across the floor toward the paper Essos was reading this morning. He’s been trying to shield me from the vitriol spewing in my direction. I went from being a beloved queen welcomed back from the dead with open arms the night of the Calling Ball to…to this cloistered pariah.

Essos scoops up the paper and throws it onto the chaise lounge by the window. Today’s headline wonders when the Underworld will reopen to our employees. We’re being accused of keeping people from their livelihoods; meanwhile, we’re just trying to get a full grip on what went wrong and what we need to fix.

It hasn’t even been a week since Posey turned our world upside down. In an effort to keep tensions low, I’ve let Essos be the one to venture out, whether to the Underworld itself or to check on his brother Xavier, King of the Gods, who is staying in our apartment in Solarem. Meanwhile, I’ve had Sybil help me back into the Underworld banking systems, which I’d been locked out of during the Trials.

I’ve sat at home, biding my time, reviewing numbers while Essos has been out investigating. It worked out somewhat because, after the stress of my almost-wedding to Galen, my body wanted me to sleep forever, but now I’m feeling clearheaded and ready to face the world.

Our biggest struggle to date is that as each soul passes from life, it comes to the Underworld only to boomerang back to the mortal realm. Nothing Essos has tried works to keep the souls inside, and his continued insistence that I not get involved is only making things worse.

At Cat’s request, I’ve given her the space she wants to try to digest this new revelation that she too is a goddess reborn, only, unlike me, she’s been subjected to centuries of reincarnations.

It’s left me with precious little to do other than my husband and relearning everything I thought I knew.

I glance at the paper on the chaise, trying to see what is frustrating Essos. In the paper, Posey is featured with a quote listing all the ways in which Essos and I have managed to fail. The length of her comment lends itself more to an op-ed than just her “simple” opinion on the matter. Looking at the paper sends a flash of fury through me. There is too much wrong to even figure out where to start to fix things.

Just as abruptly as the conflict with Posey started, life went quiet. The papers have been relentless in their coverage of me, going as far as blaming me for the death ofSolarem Timesreporter Celestina, who was actually killed by Galen. Posey has conveniently thrown her own crimes at my feet, and the people of Solarem just…believe her, because I also spent the past few months being torn apart by the media. Something I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Posey orchestrated.

She broke the veil between Solarem and the mortal world during what was supposed to be my wedding to Galen, exposing the realm of the gods to the mortals. To add insult to injury, she also unleashed the zombie apocalypse on the mortals.

And that was just Tuesday.

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