“What did she say to you?” I asked.
“She said she was sorry,” Rainier said.
‘Sorry’ didn’t cut it. ‘Sorry’ wasn’t enough to undo that she’d tried to kill me. Why was everyone so calm about it? Because she was the future queen? Or was it something else? What if it was magic?
“Does everyone like her?” I asked.
“She has her flaws,” the King admitted.
Understatement of the year.
“Lucia is a problem,” I said.
Rainier raised his brows. “She’s a little unsure of her role as the future queen, but she’ll learn. We should all have the luxury of space to learn and grow.”
“Her magic is wrong,” I said.
Rainier put his hand on mine, and electricity jolted through me at the touch.
“You have a lot to learn, but you should watch your tongue. She is the future queen.”
He removed his hand, and I felt his absence acutely. My mind spun.
He believed Lucia had just made a mistake. He was taking her side. She was doing this. She was controlling them somehow, making them believe she was in the right place.
How did she do it?
I wanted to challenge him, to counter him. I wanted to know what she was doing and how. But he wouldn’t know if he was in the same boat as everyone else.
I turned my attention to the King. He seemed more open toward me, warmer, but not the way it had been between us in the arena when he’d trained me. It felt like an eternity ago now. He saw something in her. Had he seen something in me back then, too?
“How did you know Lucia was your mate?” I blurted out.
I colored when the words left my mouth, and Rainier looked surprised. He raised his eyebrows, lips parting.
“The way the Fae create bonds with their mates is foreign to me,” I said.
Actually, love was foreign altogether, since I’d grown up mostly without it. I didn’t tell him about my upbringing in the orphanage or the abusive family that eventually adopted me. Lucia’s words stayed with me. I didn’t want his pity.
Rainier shook his head. “Lucia isn’t my mate.”
I frowned. “I thought… Don’t Fae mate?”
“They do,” he said, nodding. “A mate bond is the strongest form of love. As Fae, we can get married without having a mate bond, like humans do. We still have the ability to love our partners, even without it. In fact, a mate bond is rarer than you might think. Most married Fae aren’t mated.”
“And you don’t have that with her? The mate bond?”
He hesitated. I was asking him very personal questions, come to think of it.
“Our relationship is a political alliance. Lucia’s family is very powerful.” That was interesting. Exactly how powerful were they? “They have a lot of influence over the kingdom. In my position, I need to look at the bigger picture when I choose a bride.”
I nodded. That part made sense. I saw what pressures he was under as a king. It didn’t seem that his life belonged to him at all, but to the kingdom he served. It was backward. I would have thought, as king, he could do what he wanted. But it looked like the opposite was true—the more important he became, the less freedom he had. Ironically, it was almost like the slaves in the kingdom.
“I’m sorry about your father’s death,” I said instead.
Rainier looked surprised. “Thank you.”
“It’s been a bit of a wild ride since I arrived,” I admitted. “I never got to tell you that. It was Conjurite magic that killed him, wasn’t it? I read about it in something that Nylah made me read about the current political state of Jasfin.”