The King's Spinster Bride, (Royal Wedding #1)(25)

His tongue.

Gods above, but I am utterly infatuated with him. I fling myself back on my bed and sigh like the young girl I no longer am.

“Whore,” someone spits at me.

I sit upright on my bed, glancing around my room. I thought I was alone. Fear hammers through me and I go stiff as an elderly woman emerges from my private garderobe and into my chambers. She doesn’t carry a knife, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t here to do me harm. “Who are you?” My voice is calm and steady. “What are you doing in my rooms?”

“I am one of your people.” She scowls at me as if I am dirt beneath her feet, her lip curling in disdain. She pushes into my room as if she owns it, storming toward me to point one age-withered finger in my face. “And you should be ashamed!”

I’m too stunned to say anything. There are guards outside my chambers. I could scream and they would be on this woman in an instant. She’d be sent to the dungeons—or simply executed for putting my life in danger. And yet…she carries no knife on her, no rope to strangle me—if she even could with her wizened arms. And she is Yshremi, as I am. “Ashamed?”

“For spreading your thighs for that cyclops! He and his people murdered your father! Stole our lands!” Her eyes shimmer with tears. “Destroyed everything our people stood for. My sons died in that war. Sixteen years and we’ve hated the cyclops invaders with every beat of our hearts. Imagine how it felt to hear that Princess Halla, last of the royal line of Yshrem, would be marrying the beast that killed her father.”

“Mathior didn’t—” I whisper, but she cuts me off with a baleful glare.

“He’s the spawn of King Alistair, is he not? You might as well coat your bed in your father’s blood.”

I flinch, because her words are cruel. “It’s not like that.”

“Is it not? Do you think he wants you because you are young and nubile?” She gives me another scornful look. “Because you are rich? Or simply because it’s an easy way for him to quell any sort of uprisings? And you are foolish enough to fall for such a thing!”

Her words are like daggers. I lean away from her as she looms over me, and I feel like a naughty child. “It’s not like that,” I say weakly. “He loves me. He told me.”

“Of course he said that. You would have to be a monumental fool to marry him if he treated you as if he hated you.” She lifts her chin and gives me another scowl. “I hope his mouth is worth the lives of your people.”

I’m shocked at the vitriol in her voice. I simply stare at her, aghast, until she crosses her arms over her chest. “Are you going to call the guards on me? Have me executed for telling you the truth?”

My mouth works silently for a moment. “No,” I say finally. How can I when she’s one of my people? She doesn’t understand how it is between myself and Mathior. How kind and caring he is. How much he loves me and makes me feel pretty.

You would have to be a monumental fool to marry him if he treated you as if he hated you.

Am I a fool? As I remain on the bed, silent, she harrumphs and returns to my garderobe and shuts the door behind her once more. I hear something that sounds like the scrape of stone. A secret passage, then. Castle Yshrem is filled with them. I get to my feet and lock the door, then press on the side of the large wooden trunk against the wall until it’s in front of the door.

I return to my bed, my happiness draining out of me instantly.

Am I falling for pretty words and a talented tongue simply because it’s an easy way to subdue the budding Yshremi uprising? Is Mathior truly that devious?

Can I marry him? Should I? I pick up the cloak with the white fur edging and pet it, but it no longer gives me pleasure. All I can think of is Mathior and his smile…and I wonder if I am betraying my people.

I have a day to decide.





11





The Next Day





MATHIOR



The wedding ceremony will be held in the Hour of Storms, at sunset. That is the hour devoted to the god of battle and patron of the Cyclops, Aron of the Cleaver. I spend the afternoon in prayer, offering up gifts and the promises of many future battles if only I get what I want this day.

And what I want is Halla.

But Aron, if he is listening, has always known this. My prayers have not changed in sixteen years: I want a long life full of glory and battle, prosperity for my people, and Halla at my side. I never make demands of the gods, but on this day, I send a fervent thank you to Aron of the Cleaver for granting me at least some of that. Hours from now, Halla will be mine. I will kiss her lovely face, take her to my bed, and make her my wife. No one will take her from me ever again, and she will be at my side, always. I do not care if we live in Cyclopae in tents, or if she wishes we settle in Yshrem. There are initial visits to be made to my other lands, of course, but after that I do not care where we go. Let her choose. I will be content as long as she is in my bed.

The strongest offerings are those of blood, though, and I pull out my knife, say a prayer to Aron once more, and then cut a deep slice into the meat of my bicep. Not my sword arm, because only fools would do such a thing. Aron wants no fools worshiping him, I imagine. I set down the knife on the altar and raise the prayer bowl to my arm, watching it fill with blood. When it is done, I bind the wound and leave the room to dress for my wedding.