39

“Where are we?” I asked.

“My study,” the king said sharply.

“Then what’s the room upstairs in the library?” I asked.

“My archival study,” he snapped. “Why am I letting you ask questions?”

He guided me to one of the chairs at the table and pushed me down to sit. I swallowed. Goosebumps rose on my arms. I was still riding high from the adrenaline of the fight and reeling from the way the king had carried me—I was offended while my wolf was preening. Right now, I was too tired to untangle those reactions. He exhaled. “Are you hurt?”

I looked down at my hands. They were covered in blood, sticky and darkening as it dried, and it had reached my clothes as well. Certainly it had flecked my face, too. The same dark blood stained the king’s hands where he had grabbed me.

“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s not my blood.” Suddenly, renewed anger surged through me. “Care to explain why I just got attacked in your library?” “Attacked?” the king asked.

“Yes, attacked!” I tried to stand up to get in his face, to demand answers, but my knees were still weak and I dropped back down into the chair. That only made me angrier. “I’m supposed to be protected while visiting the Court of Nightfall, am I not? Are all your guests threatened with such savagery? I know the coloring of the Nightfall wolves, and I know that was one of your packmates!” The king clenched his fists. Then he strode to a basin on a small hutch against the wall and poured water into it from a jug. He rinsed his hands, toweled them, then brought the basin over to me. “Here,” he said. “Clean up a little.” “I need to bathe,” I grumbled.

“At least wash your hands.”

I almost said no out of pure contrarianism, but the blood was beginning to dry into a sticky, rancid mess on my hands. I dipped my hands into the basin and carefully scrubbed it off. As I did so, the king reached into the hutch and pulled out a small opaque bottle and two glasses. He poured a small amount of rich brown liquid into each, then walked back toward me with the two glasses easily balanced in one hand and a mildly anguished expression on his face. He set one of the glasses down on the table by the basin and sighed.

I dried my hands then picked it up. “What’s this?” The liquid smelled so strong it made my hair stand on end, and I nearly reeled back.

“Bourbon,” the king said. He took a sip of his own, as casually as if it were a cup of coffee. “And it’s not poisoned. Believe it or not, I don’t want you harmed.”

My wolf trusted him. But still I didn’t touch the alcohol, leaving it in the glass by the basin. I wanted to have my wits about me. The king wouldn’t poison me, though—if he wanted me dead, he could just snap my neck whenever he wanted, just had he had Lord Cazzell. No reason for theatrics. “I must admit, I am finding that a bit hard to believe.”

The king said nothing, just pressed his lips together into a tight line. It was an expression similar to the one he’d worn when he’d showed up at my door, worried that I was sick or injured. There was concern in that expression, but something else, too. Something else I couldn’t quite read.

“But if you didn’t arrange the attack,” I said, “who was that? They obviously knew where to find me. This was planned.”

“She’s been dealt with.” He stepped back over to the hutch and poured another finger of dark brown liquid into the glass.

“Dealt with?” I gaped at the broad expanse of his back. “She? You mean a woman attacked me? I’ve done nothing!” It couldn’t be—no, that wouldn’t make sense. Would it? It had to have been a guard, or a spectator.

The king exhaled a short, humorless laugh. “I wouldn’t say you’ve done nothing,” he said. “You’ve managed to do something no one else has been able to do.”

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve caught my attention.”

A knock on the door interrupted us before I could fully process that statement. The king turned around and exhaled, shaking his head like he was vaguely irritated—like there was more he wanted to say. I balled my hands into fists in my bloodstained lap. Capturing the king’s attention went against my entire plan. The plan was to be dull, be boring, be adequate, and then get sent home. And yet everything that I seemed to do in Efra was drawing me closer and closer to him.

I swallowed. It didn’t help that I was curious about him too. About the weight of his gaze on me— and whatever he was about to say.

He strode to the door and pulled it open. A slim man with dark hair cut close to his skull, dressed in the guard’s dress uniform, stood with Lady Glennis at his side. Lady Glennis looked like she’d just been pulled from her own quarters, in a fine but plain dress and her hair hastily pinned back.

“Roth,” the king said, waving them both over the threshold and into the room. “What’s the update?”

“Sire, the woman—she’s dead.”

The king furrowed his brow in shock.

“Dead?” I asked. “Was she executed?”

“Executed?” Roth asked with a sneer. “She was with our healers. There was nothing they could do.”

“She had a single knife wound,” I said. “How is that possible?” The blade was small—the gash had been deep but not fatally deep. I hadn’t even nicked an artery. The blood on my dress was the dark oozy blood of veins.

“We should be asking you that, Lady Reyna,” Lady Glennis said in a clipped voice. “Since you were the one who struck her with a poisoned blade.”

The king watched me carefully, his glass still in hand.