“Many of you have been in Inara’s service long enough to understand. You have seen with your own eyes. You have lost—” His words cut off for another cough, but Nim knew well enough what he’d meant. She had lost her father, her mother, her very home. “Because of her treachery,” he said, “I’ve been forced to take measures unbefitting a king. To secret away wives just as the lot of you have so happily prattled about to your associations outside this castle.” An unsettled murmur passed through the shifting onlookers. Stewart waved his free hand.
Nim looked back at Warrick who stared at the king, stone-faced. She could feel him, raw and harrowed, and could feel nothing of Calum or Rhen beyond. She had not imagined the sense of one of them or the feel of their magic. She worried that one was still present and that he might somehow do worse than what he had already done and reveal Warrick as a man who held magic.
Stewart hissed in pain. Nim’s gaze went back to his, but the king’s attention was on Warrick. “It should come as no surprise to you all that only one of my attempts succeeded.”
A strange sensation shot through Nim, something like a chuckle, sending her hairs on end. But there was a gasp from the crowd at Stewart’s declaration, entirely outside what brushed over Nim.
He did not wait. he was running out of time. His skin had gone dry and powdery beneath Nim’s hand. “In all my years, I have managed a single heir. One son to carry on the Stewart reign.”
Nim’s flesh went cold, her gaze finding Warrick. Save him, she wanted to scream. Bind him, cure him, whatever you did to me. But she could not. Revealing Warrick’s magic would see him killed. And she knew it would not work because all she felt from Warrick was hopeless rage. He could not save his father, could do nothing to stop what she’d done.
She, the head of the Trust. Not Calum, not his brothers, but the queen.
Panic welled inside Nim, hot and sharp at what the queen had done. The head of the Trust had killed the king of Inara. The Trust had won.
Stewart was still talking, but his grip went suddenly limp in Nim’s hand. As she swung her gaze back to him, her unease at the magic rose anew. He’d gone thinner still, suddenly so, at odds with the man he’d been only moments before. The unsettling urge to back away nearly took her, but she held firm. It was all she could give him.
“And so,” he said, pausing to draw an unsteady breath, “I have kept him among my closest advisors, so that I might have him near.” Before the crowd’s murmurs could rise and overpower his voice, Stewart spoke again, his eyes on his son. “My sole heir, successor to the throne, is your venerable seneschal Warrick, my son.”
Warrick did stride forward then, threat of burning be damned. He was no more than to the steps of the dais when a laugh echoed through the hall.
Chapter 25
The laugh rang through the throne room like the alarms that had sounded for the king. Shocked gasps rose from the crowd before movement shifted the group at one edge of the hall. Courtiers shuffled hastily backward, clutching their hands to their costumes, making signs to ward off curses. The king’s guard drew their swords.
A dark-haired figure sauntered forward without a second glance at the commotion he’d caused. Beside her, at the knees of a king, Nim felt the darkness rise in Warrick anew.
Rhen gave a devilish smile.
“Ahh,” he crooned as he came to stop before them, well away from Warrick’s reach. He dragged a palm over his chest, as if wounded, and his eyes met the king’s. “To be so publicly cast aside.” He shook his head. “But it does hurt, truly.”
Nim could not know what the king was thinking but she could feel past the rage in Warrick’s intimation that it was the first Stewart had seen of the queen’s youngest heir. She felt, too, something far darker. Nim did not take her eyes off of Rhen but watched as he looked on, relishing the exchange between Warrick and the king.
Stewart was no fool. He took in the lines of Rhen’s face. He saw the saunter, the dress, the persona of a man who was born to a queen. A man who was one of the Trust.
“Yes,” Rhen murmured. “That’s it. I can see that you’re taking it all in. Warrick’s brow, the cut of his jaw.” Rhen snapped his teeth then gave the king a playful wink. “That charming smile.”
A warning sound came from Warrick with a very clear intimation that Rhen should run.
He only shook his head. “No, brother, it’s far too late for that.”
Warrick stood, but before he could move from the dais, Stewart’s hold went tight—one hand in Warrick’s, the other in Nim’s. Warrick turned to look down at him, the only family who had shown him anything resembling constancy. In Stewart’s expression, Warrick saw nothing but his own betrayal.
Rhen chuckled. “Perfection, that’s it. That look right there. You’re remembering your second encounter with our mother, putting together pieces you’d long since buried with the past.”
Cold dread swam through Nim, her gaze going from Rhen to Warrick then the king.
“I wanted to tell you,” Warrick said to the king. “For all that is—” He shook his head, fury at Rhen and guilt for his treachery nearly stealing his breath. “I wasn’t able.” She bound me to it.
Memories slipped past Warrick’s guard of a dark night in the queen’s chambers and a boy so small as to not understand. Before she’d given him over to Stewart, the head of the Trust had tied Warrick up in magic, making him unable to reveal the secret that Stewart had fathered a second son.
Rhen was not only heir to the Trust. Rhen was Stewart’s spare.
The king’s reaction to the most horrific of all possible betrayals stole over his entire being, and Warrick lunged forward to plead forgiveness, to make his father understand. It was too late for anything. The worst was done. “Please,” Warrick begged. “Please.”
“Enough of this,” Rhen snapped, gesturing to the crowd. “They see what he has done. They see that the king has borne not one son but two.” Rhen’s posture took on a self-satisfied air, his shoulders seeming to want to raise in victory at what he had won and his stupid smile seeming to want to steal over his lips. “They see that not only does my blood run with magic, but so, too, does yours.”
Warrick might have turned to growl at Rhen as his baser instinct demanded, but his first concern was the dying man before him, the man whose grip had slipped from Warrick’s hand.
The onlookers had roared to life, though, the revelation apparently taken with more than a little doubt. Rhen was responsible for the magic, surely, that was surrounding their throne room, that had attempted to take their king. Rhen could not be trusted.
Warrick, they knew. Warrick was seneschal, nearly above reproach. Warrick had just been named son of the king.
“I swear to you,” Warrick told the king, just as warmth spread through the room.
“Enough,” Rhen said again, snapping a wrist in the air with dramatic zest.
“No!” Warrick shouted.
Nim turned to see blood blooming from Stewart’s chest, just where Warrick held his hand forward in petition. Just as Warrick moved, the king’s breath seized, his eyes went wide, and then, suddenly, right beneath his seneschal’s hand, King Stewart slumped to his death.