“The king summoned the freak.” The guard laughed, looking at the others with some puffed-up sense of superiority.
A snicker, a few more words. I ignored them. After what I’d been through as a child, words were nothing.
My father lay in bed. It had been at least a few weeks, maybe a month since I’d last seen him. I didn’t care, it was that simple. I’d never forgotten the words of the duke, that my mother was dead and that if it had been up to my father I would be too. I stayed in the castle because to not do so would mean running for the rest of my life. I was strong, but not compared to the entire might of the kingdom. They couldn’t allow someone with my face to simply be out in the world. It would be too much of a risk to the throne.
Seeing him now, he had aged decades since I was last here. I went to his bedside, and saw little of the old light in his eyes. Gone was the strong, authoritative lion that I had met when I first arrived here, replaced by a frail old man that would have already been dead if not for the benefit of his wealth.
He smiled at me, clearly unaware of who was at his bedside, and I turned my nose up in disgust.
“Patara? Is that you, my love?” He reached out to grasp me by the forearm, and I shook him away.
“It’s me, you blind fool. What the hell do you want?”
He grunted. “I don’t want anything from you. Bastard. Where’s Patara?”
“Who knows? With any luck, she’s discovered some poison that will hasten your demise.”
“She…she loves me,” he said weakly, reaching to pour himself a glass of water from the pitcher at his bedside.
I snorted a laugh. Patara did not love him, that much I knew for certain because she’d told me. She saw the way he looked at her when they came to bring me to the castle after the duke’s body was found by his men, when I was fourteen, and used her friendship with me as an excuse to visit the capital.
The king might have been old, but he was certainly not wise. She twisted him around her finger with the talent of a master artist, and on the few occasions they’d made love she’d swallowed a potion meant to stave off pregnancy. The last thing she wanted was the old man’s child.
“Tell me what the fuck I’m doing here, or I’m going to leave.”
My father coughed. “Why don’t you do us all a favor and throw yourself from the battlements?”
I growled and turned, and in a few strides I was out of the door.
And straight into the presence of his chief adviser.
“Ah, Randal, there you are.” Giles Aaron’s accent was deliberately cool, never excited, never betraying a hint of his thoughts. “I trust your father is as well as can be expected? Can we talk?”
“Will it be quick?”
“A few moments to change everything,” he said enigmatically. “Shall we?”
“What’s this about?” I asked once we were out of earshot of the guards. I was aware that Iris would by now be wondering where I was. Moreover, I wanted nothing but to be by her side.
“Your father is dying, quickly.” He said, and didn’t for one second try to sugar coat it. “I know you don’t care about that, but his death changes your position.”
“How? I’m a nobody now, I’ll be a nobody after his death.”
“Don’t feign ignorance, I know you’re not stupid.” He took a seat on a bench at the edge of the queen’s garden, a sheltered courtyard within the castle’s walls. “You might fool others, but not me. Don’t imagine for one second I haven’t had my eyes on you since you came here. I’m impressed with what I’ve heard from my spies. To be frank, you’re exactly what this country needs after the degradation of your father’s reign.”
So that was it. He wanted me to be king after my father’s death. At least he didn’t pretend to regret that it would soon come.
But I didn’t want the kingship and never had.
“The queen should take the throne,” I said, sitting beside him. “She wants it. I don’t. I know the two of you don’t get along, but that’s nothing to do with me—”
He snorted. “Don’t get along is an understatement. She is a snake, Randal, and in this one regard I think you are blind. Or stupid. Perhaps both.”
I gritted my teeth. “Patara is—”
“Your friend, yes I know. At least for your part I believe that’s true. I can be a friend to you, too. In fact, I already have been, all your life. You know the circumstances of your birth, I’m sure. Your father took a fancy for your mother, a low-born girl who grew herbs and flowers that were delivered to the castle. Their affair, if an old man’s obsession with a pretty girl can be called that, resulted in your birth, and it should have been kept as quiet as possible. The queen, however—the old queen, that is—was somehow made aware, and since she’d yet to produce an heir, you were a threat from the moment of your birth.”