Page 69 of Amidst the Insidious Courts
I stay silent, unwilling to repay Neila’s loyalty by outing her to her queen or get involved in whatever is going on between them.
Without warning, Aiyana points to a fae three deep in the crowd, the motion so sudden it jostles the crown on her head.
Immediately, the high fae male collapses to his knees, palms outstretched as all the colour bleeds from his classically handsome face. “No! Please, my queen! I don’t deserve this!”
“I’ve known you were a spy for the Autumn Court for years, Lord Gawain,” she says, bored now. “There’s no use trying to plead your innocence when this is exactly the sort of thing Cressida would do to undermine me.”
She thinks the queen of autumn did this, and if I say nothing, this male will pay the price.
I open my mouth to stop her, then close it again. In the time it’s taking me to come up with something, Aiyana’s golden soldiers have dragged the courtier forward and shoved him down before the throne. My indecision will kill him just as surely as Aiyana will.
Gah, I just have to think! What would my grandmothers do?
Probably more than just stand here quaking in their boots, I grumble to myself.
“If you’re going to waste your time killing the wrong male, can you do it after we’ve got this over with?” Delivering the words with a bored tone takes a lot more work than it should, but it freezes the whispering court in their tracks. Even Aiyana leans a little closer, though I suspect that’s just another calculated move. “You want to demand a trial of restitution. Get on with it. I have a realm to save once you’ve finished throwing a tantrum.”
The whole room holds its breath. Shit, evenI’mholding my breath.
I never meant for my anger to spill out like that, but Aiyana’s selfishness is costing us time. Time which could be spent saving Elfhame. People are dying while she stalls us here.
The spring queen’s rage flickers, changing targets rapidly until all of it is focused on me. I swear the clouds in the sky above draw closer, and the room noticeably darkens as she draws herself up to her full height.
“Sir Jaromir Macblaid is to be held accountable for breaking his family’s banishment before I will offer my allegiance to anyone.” The acidic bite in her tone is a line drawn in the sand. “And I’ll rule my court as I wish. End him.”
Before I can speak, the soldiers have taken Lord Gawain and shoved his hands into a pair of thick cuffs that dangle from a wooden hoist at the side of the room. The fae lord screams as they yank the chain tight, pulling him into the air by his arms, and then shove his writhing body out of the enormous open window. The hoist rotates, and his body swings in a wide arc, leaving him suspended over the glittering canal that runs alongside the room, screaming like a child.
“Don’t watch,” Bree murmurs in my ear, but I don’t listen to his advice.
I can’t. I don’t even manage to blink as the first golden eel jumps from the moat and rips into the fae’s guts.
The first drops of his blood splattering the surface of the water acts like a dinner bell. In seconds, dozens of the creatures are leaping straight at him, ripping off his flesh in great mouthfuls. They’re smaller than the eels I’ve seen so far, so they must be the young of the larger eels in the canals.
This is no better than Elatha killing fae to make me behave. The comparison chills me as the screams cut off. In Fellgotha, I was held back by force, but here I’m kept still by the knowledge that wecan’trisk a civil war on top of the invasion we’re already dealing with.
Aiyana’s face is lit with satisfaction, her eyes gleaming. What does it say for my chances that she’s considered the most moderate of the four minor royals? Once he’s stopped twitching, but before all of his bones are gone, she turns back to us with a pleasant smile.
“Now that we’ve dealt with that, Sir Jaromir, how do you answer?”
“Accepted.” Jaro steps forward before I can say anything. “And when I win, you will offer your allegiance without argument, prepare your armies to assist Elfhame, and allow the Nicnevin and her full Guard to continue on her pilgrimage without hindrance.”
“Agreed.Ifyou succeed.” Her soft smirk tells me she doesn’t expect him to.
I’m not sure which worries me most: that she entered a bargain so easily, or that she expects to best someone who is—for all intents and purposes—immortal to lose. The gathered fae, however, seem to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Perhaps they were expecting some huge magical showdown where the Goddess would show up in a rage.
I kind of wish she would. It would certainly make things simpler. As it is, her fury at Caed’s imprisonment is duller, and it doesn’t take me long to realise that it’s because of the queen.
She wasn’t actively using her magic to suppress my own earlier, but sometime between me entering the room and now, she must have snuck under my defences.
“Come, court is tiring, and we shall have tea together.” Gone is the terrifying female who fiercely ordered a male to his death not ten minutes earlier, and in her place is an almost girlish charm as she stands from her throne, holding out her arm for me to take. “I do so despise the inconvenience of dealing with traitors.”
My gut is telling me that taking her arm is the best option, lest her mood change again and she decides to sentence someone I care about to death by eel next. Though my Guard is immortal, my brothers aren’t. Fear for them is the only reason I slide my arm in hers and allow her to lead me out of the throne room and into a smaller, more private chamber.
My Guard follows, but Kitarni, Prae, and my brothers stay put, getting the hint that they’re not invited.
This new room is a lavish parlour, laden with cushions which are already occupied by a handful of beautiful fae. Aiyana ignores them as she settles on a plush chaise in one corner, pulling me down with her as she tucks her feet up beneath her with easy familiarity. The room is decorated in pastels and soft fabrics, the space obviously used for entertaining guests. Rather than sit amongst the cushions, my Guard stands stiffly around the edges of the room, surveying our company.
The other fae are dressed in barely there silks that just manage to cover the important parts, and Aiyana beckons two of the males over to us with a long finger. In the back of my mind, I notice that both of them are conventionally attractive, their muscles oiled and carefully displayed as they kneel before us, but I’m more worried that Aiyana is about to try to have another conversation with me while one of them tongue fucks her.
