Color flushed his neck. “And you didn’t think to tell me?” His eyes were hard steel looking into mine, and his words clipped. “I am the king, after all. But maybe you only saw me as a simple farmer shopping for Suri.” He looked away and a deep breath filled his chest as if he was trying to shake the resentment I’d heard in his tone. But where there was resentment, there was awareness. He wasn’t completely oblivious. He knew how others viewed him and his reign.
“Please,” he said, walking back to the chair. He pulled it out a little farther. “I thought you should have a more substantial meal. You have some catching up to do.”
I eyed the chair, and then him. I remembered the luxurious bath and the fine bed linens and didn’t move. “Why am I feeling like a goose being fattened up for a holiday dinner?”
He sighed. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe I’m trying to make up for overstepping my boundaries? For the egregious break in protocol? For being busy with other matters and not paying attention to who was taken prisoner and how she was treated?”
Had he only been juggling—and dropping a few balls in the process? I knew from Jase that Montegue had become king unexpectedly a few years ago when a draft horse crushed his father. He was only a little older than Jase, who would be—
An angry fist grabbed my heart and shook it. I still expected Jase to walk through a door. I couldn’t stop thinking of him as alive, busy, vibrant, taking care of what needed to be done, already scouting out borders, drawing up new trading rules, explaining to his family about me. None of that was going to happen. I felt myself being pulled under the current once more, everything about me unsteady, trying to breathe. I reached up and felt his ring on my finger.
Don’t fight it, Kazi,
lean back, feet forward.
His voice, so clear in my head. So close. So determined.
The king’s eyes remained fixed on me. Curious. And, strangely, patient.
I walked over to the chair and sat, but it felt more like I was collapsing into it. Every word, every effort, drained me. Jase was not coming through that door. Not through any door ever again. He’s alive, Kazi. He has to be alive. My head ached with the battle going on inside. I had lived through this battle before. I couldn’t do it again. Did anything the king had to say even matter?
Head up. Breathe. Jase pulling me up again and again.
“Explain,” I said.
“Please, let me serve you first.” He lifted a silver cover from a dish and spooned some perfect, tiny roasted potatoes onto my plate that were delicately coated with herbs, and then beside them he set three boiled quail eggs. He drizzled a smoky golden sauce over it all, making it look like a piece of artwork rather than something to be eaten. It made me want to laugh. It was a glaring contrast to the grim news coating my mouth.
As he returned the silver cover to the dish, he hesitated, spotting my hand on the arm of the chair. “You’re wearing the signet ring?”
“Your general pulled it off the—” I blinked away the sting in my eyes. “He gave it to me. He called it a trophy.”
His brows pulled down and he shook his head. “He shouldn’t have done that. I can dispose of it if you’d like?”
I stared at the ring. Dispose of it? It’s only a cheap piece of jewelry to me. Did either the king or his general have any idea of the history this ring held? It’s been in my family for generations. Once it’s put on, it never comes off. I spun it on my thumb.
“Are you all right?” The king stared at me, waiting for my answer.
“I’ll keep it.”
He sat opposite from me and explained that almost two months ago, Hell’s Mouth had come under siege by miscreants who raided businesses, burned homes, and preyed on its citizens. He was in Parsuss, and by the time news reached him, the lawlessness was out of control. A league run by a fellow named Rybart was conducting an all-out war, trying to gain control of Hell’s Mouth and the arena. Citizens were panicked. Some were dying. Worse, the Ballengers were doing nothing to help them, instead demanding more protection money first.
Impossible. Jase would never do such a thing—but would Gunner? I already knew he was impulsive and short-tempered. Trying to blackmail me to send a letter to the queen had been his idea. And I would never forget how low he had stooped when he held Zane out to me as a bribe. But would he break the Ballenger vow to protect the town and hold the citizens hostage for more money? Surely the rest of the family wouldn’t allow him to do that.
“It seems they had to find some way to finance their latest illegal endeavors,” the king went on. “As you are aware, they’d been harboring fugitives for some time, but it was for a very specific purpose. They conspired together to build weapons. They had stockpiled quite an arsenal.”
“But that’s not possible. There were no weapons. Beaufort said—”
“They were there, all right. Luckily one of General Banques’s advance squads of soldiers found the stockpile in a Ballenger warehouse and confiscated them. There was some damage done to the town in the battle for retrieval, but we used the weapons to eliminate Rybart and his ruffians. That’s what the army’s using now to protect the town.”
My mind reeled with a different truth. I knew what I had heard. Kardos had complained that Jase had taken their only working weapon, and we had arrested them before their arsenal could become a reality. There were no weapons, except for the one prototype that Sarva had fashioned—one weapon—and Jase had taken and hidden it. Who had made additional weapons? Had it been Rybart’s league all along, working with Beaufort to terrorize the town and turn them against the Ballengers? And now a whole army was—
That was another thing that made no sense. “But you don’t have an army,” I said. “How can—”
“I do now. I needed one quickly and had to hire private militia. My advisors recommended it and—”
“Mercenaries? You have hired mercenaries roaming the streets of Hell’s Mouth?”
“I’ve been assured they are professional qualified militia, and really, I had no choice. You have to understand, there was a war going on here. As I mentioned, property was being destroyed. Citizens were dying. I had to do something. It’s costing me a fortune, but Paxton assures me that profits from the arena will help me recoup some of the expense. If not, I will have no fields to plant next season.”