18

6

“O

h, Gods above,” Fina said, grinning widely as she took a sip of a bubbly, sweet drink. “I swear Adora and I nearly knocked the carriage over when the guards shifted back to their human forms. I do not remember seeing that when I came here as a girl.”

“I know!” I said. “I was shocked! And they just stood there!”

“I’ve never seen a royal guard act like that,” Adora said. Her cheeks were flushed pink just talking about it. “It’s so interesting.”

“Interesting, huh?” Fina teased. She kicked at Adora’s ankle under the table. “Maybe we need to find you a nice duke here to marry. Do Shiangans have those?”

I laughed and stole a sip of Fina’s drink. It was crisp on my tongue and slightly fruity. Just sitting with them had lifted my spirits substantially. Even though Elias was getting on my nerves with his hot and cold behavior, my friends always made me feel better.

“Come on,” I said. “I need to stretch my legs after that carriage ride. Shall we poke around the grounds a bit?”

Fina sprung to her feet. “Absolutely!” she nearly squealed. “I’m dying to get a better look around. And I’m fed up with the cold, the weather here is so much nicer already.”

Adora looked a little less certain, but after some playful urging from both of us, she relented and came along. I led the way down a narrow hall in the wing, toward the far east side of the palace. A small door, made mostly of glass, led into a private courtyard. The three of us stepped outside, and two royal guards followed. They were tall and dressed not in ornate golden armor, but a more functional brown leather, not too different from Nightfall’s uniform. They stood flanking the door, eyes forward, but decidedly not looking directly at us.

I wondered what their purpose was. Were the guards here to ensure our safety, or to ensure the kingdom’s safety from us? The lack of privacy irked me. I had to be sure to watch what I said to the girls, lest they listen in and pass our conversation along.

“Oh, wow,” Adora said. Her eyes widened as she gazed around the courtyard. “I thought the front gardens were impressive, but this is amazing.”

Indeed, the area was lush. It was as if we’d stepped into the heart of the jungle. The plants here weren’t carefully arranged and tended like they were in the solarium at Nightfall—here it was an explosion of color and life, as if the trellises and fence couldn’t contain everything. Overhead, vines snaked around an ivory trellis and dropped heavy purple blossoms in full bloom; the tall grass was nearly up to our knees and soft to the touch. Immense ferns reached upward and outward, there were flowers of differing colors and sizes, as well as some big-mouthed flycatchers that moved lazily in the breeze.

I reached up and smoothed my thumb over the velvety petals of one of the flowers. “I’d love to have some of these growing in the solarium,” I murmured. “Do you think we could sustain it?”

“I don’t see why not,” Adora said. “It’d be a fun project, regardless.”

“What should we do while we’re here?” Fina asked. “I know you’ll have to do some diplomacy things—”

“Queenly things,” Adora said.

“—Yes, queenly things,” Fina said with a laugh. “But we should have some time to ourselves, too.”

“Obviously, we need to see the tailor in town,” Adora said. “I must know what that fabric was the king was wearing. It really looked like liquid gold.”

“He seems like a character,” Fina said quietly. “Those teeth! And the way he looked at you, Reyna…”

I swallowed. “He was perfectly polite,” I said. That was true—he had been, but something about the gleam in his eyes had made me nervous. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle on my own though, and the last thing I needed was to make Fina and Adora worry about me.

“Still,” Fina said. “He seems intense. But the grounds are beautiful. I wonder if I could get a hunting party arranged. I’d love to get a sense of the game in this part of the world.”

I was grateful neither of them seemed keen to press on my brief interaction with King Draunar. Instead, we wandered the courtyard admiring the gorgeous plant life as we sketched out our plans for the next few days.

“I hope the palace has a library,” I said, and Fina and Adora both groaned good-naturedly.

As we made our way back into the wing of the building, idly discussing plans to have tea before dinner, the door to the wing swung open. In marched a Shiangan guard I hadn’t seen before: taller than the others, and in the same leather armor, but with gold gauntlets on his tan, muscular forearms. The men who had flanked the door to the courtyard saw him enter, and disappeared back into the courtyard like dismissed children. It jangled my nerves again.

“Queen Reyna,” the man said sternly. “The king has requested your presence this afternoon.”

I blinked. “What do you mean, requested my presence? Is he with my husband?”

“The king would like a private word with you before dinner,” he said.

I balked. Alone? The image of his golden-toothed smile flashed in my memory. I folded my hands together in front of me and then glanced over at Fina and Adora. Adora pressed her lips together, and Fina offered me a small shrug. I knew we were all thinking the same thing: I couldn’t exactly refuse the king. If I wanted these negotiations to go well, and to build up my reputation as a diplomat in my own right, I couldn’t just blow him off because he’d smiled at me oddly when we’d first met.

But at the same time, my wolf had her hackles raised in my chest. Something felt off about this meeting, yet I couldn’t put my finger exactly on what it was. It was the same feeling that had led me to slip a knife into my waistband just hours before Rona had attacked me in her wolf form. I’d learned it was best not to ignore it.

“Of course,” I said politely. “I’m with my attendants, though, so I’d like them to join me.”