Page 35 of To Wake a Kingdom

With a defiant glare, I picked up the bottle and took another long swig, staring him dead in the eye. I’d drink alone, and I’d drink a lot if I damn well wanted. I was a princess with some serious issues.

“Is that a problem?” I asked, wiping my mouth with my sleeve. That won me a roll of his eyes.

“Would you like some company?”

I shrugged, but I also scooted over, making some room.

“What are you doing?” he asked, wrapping a hand around the bottle in my grip, but I resisted his pull. He gave it a small jerk and glared, tugging harder, and finally, I relented. He offered me a dubious look and then tipped his head back, taking a long swig. I watched the bob of his throat, mesmerized by the rugged lines of his profile.

“Wallowing,” I replied, letting my head drop against my mother’s knee.

“I don’t see why. You’re in the middle of a snowstorm, sitting next to the most handsome man in the entire kingdom.”

I snorted. “Thanks, I needed a laugh. You should be a court jester if this whole commander thing doesn’t work out.” The sound of his deep laughter rattled something loose inside me before he took another sip from the bottle.

“Give that to me,” I said, snatching it from his grasp.

He snatched it back and held it high over his head where I couldn’t reach without standing up or leaning on top of him.Though I considered the latter option, I sat back with a petulant scowl.

“Fine, you win.” A gloating smile spread across his face before he took another pull of wine. “But this isn’t your kingdom.” He stilled, the bottle poised in midair. “We are in Ravalyn. Tenby and all the surrounding villages once belonged to us, but your father stole them.”

The words hung between us, thick as sugar-spun webs, the truth we’d been avoiding finally laid bare.

“How do you know the king is my father?”

“I heard you that night at the Whitefeather Inn. I was sitting at the table next to you. You are a prince, and your father—the king—is missing. I know that’s why you go out looking every day. Also, I doubt most soldiers travel with a manservant.”

It took all my willpower not to let my gaze wander toward the forest where the king lay buried under an inadequate layer of dirt and snow.

“Why are you really here?” I asked. “What are you hiding from? You didn’t stay here because of a little snow, and you certainly aren’t staying longer because of some silly festival. What aren’t you telling me,PrinceRonan?”

“I am not a prince,” he growled, and there were so many layers of unvoiced truth buried in that sound that I could dig forever and still not uncover them all. “My brother is the crown prince. I just command the king’s armies.”

“And why aren’t you there commanding them now?”

Now that I’d started this, I couldn’t stop myself. As he ran a hand down his face, his shoulders pinched together with tension.

“Because I can’t go home without answers about the king. We’ve searched for weeks, but the trail is cold. No one outside Tenby remembers seeing him the day he left the Whitefeather. Our kingdom’s rule is tenuous at best. My family’s hold on the crown is fragile, and if my father’s absence is discovered, it could mean war.”

Since Ronan appeared to be in a sharing mood tonight, I pressed further.“From the noble houses?”

He flashed a glare at me. “You really heard everything, didn’t you?”

I raised my hands in a gesture of mock helplessness. “You should be more careful when you have your top-secret meetings.”

He narrowed his gaze but replied, “From them, yes, but the greater threat comes from outside our borders.”

Quietly, I waited for him to continue.

“The true threat lies to the south. The Faerie kingdoms.” I took in a sharp breath, remembering the two brutal Fae I’d witnessed in the town square.

“Why does your father employ them? I saw them that day in Tenby. At the…execution.” Slaughter would be a more apt description.

“My father doesn’t employ them. Humans don’t employ Fae. They hang around, watching, spying, and doing what they can to torture us. Riding the confines of laws that bind them from exacting the brutality they once subjected on humanity. They are biding their time, waiting for their moment. Accords drawn between humans and Fae are a weak veneer for what still goes on in the Faerie realms. There are plenty who desire a return to the old ways, when humans were used for their entertainment or torment and nothing more.”

He sighed, leaning against the leg of my father’s throne.

“Those two you saw are of a particularly nasty breed. My reason for being in Tenby wasn’t only because of my father, but to keep an eye on Maida and Alban. But it’s futile because they recognize no orders from me—or the king, for that matter.”

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