In the Wake of the Ruined (The Siren Mage, #2)(6)
“This is what she requested, Eftan, only the Gods know why,” I said, simply. It wasn’t a lie. I swallowed past a sudden block in my throat. “There is a second point we are in the midst of negotiating. Those terms will be decided upon shortly.”
Eftan’s fist slammed to the table. “Damn your negotiations—this is a half marriage! If you do not bind yourself, if your blood does not mix, the princess will not be Varya’s legal and rightful queen.”
“I’m aware.” I kept very still. “You’ll do well to remember that I am king. And despite the way you vie for control, you and the council have no power over me unless I compromise the kingdom’s safety.”
The look he gave was lancing. It was the sort of look that dove beneath my well-crafted facade. But over all these years, I had grown more protective layers than I think Eftan—or I—realized. I’d crafted them so expertly that a part of me was still in shock over the way Imogen had managed to breach them so thoroughly.
He gave an impressed, if angry, chuckle. “Well done, I must say. You’ve decided that these amendments will be your little act of rebellion, haven’t you? Your way of keeping an opening in your life for the woman that you’ve come to love.” His look hardened. “I’ll warn you, though, no matter how you try to make a space for her, she will never fit.”
Nerves shot through my stomach, but I mastered myself. “These amendments,” I said, “are how I will keep my kingdom safe from an alliance with Obelia that I cannot fully trust, now that I know who they worship. The princess is content. There will be no war. So I cannot parse your objection.”
His face stretched with incredulity. “You will not fool me into believing that you did this for the kingdom!”
“Everything I do is for the Godsdamned kingdom, and you are toeing treason to suggest otherwise, Chancellor.” That made him still. “What was it you always said to my father, Eftan? There is no devotion so rapturous as the devotion between a king and his crown.”
Eftan’s mouth flattened as he cast his gaze down. As if in apology, he swiped a caress over one of the contracts. “I said it to your father often, and little good it did.” Disappointment lowered his voice. “It’s a shame to see that you have jumped from your bright and promising path to follow his instead.”
And this was our impasse: Eftan’s belief that I had fallen into the very same compromising position that my father had with his lover, and that because of Imogen and how I’d grieved for her, I was no longer fit to rule.
After she’d taken the severing draught, I’d spent every waking moment at her side. Through the days and night, I’d wiped the thick black blood from her eyes and nose and mouth myself. I’d poured my power into her and counted her breaths as they struggled to fill her chest.
What I had not done in that time was “see to my duties.” I’d attended neither council nor war meetings. For two days and one night, I’d not done what my crown required of me, and that had been enough to send Eftan into a whirl. He’d worked to set my council against me, urging a vote while I’d been caring for her. Even while keeping her alive, I’d not been able to protect her—it was during that vote that he’d suggested she be proscribed.
Eftan rose and straightened his dark suit. He turned up the lantern beside him, so the flame burned brighter, and let his gaze dart over the black ink that littered nearly every page of parchment. “Do you think that the council members aboard this ship will allow this? These amendments show clear disregard for the well-being of your kingdom—” He cut himself off, overcome. “I’ll get them now, and we’ll put these changes to a vote. You are the crown, but you have succeeded only because the council allows it.” His hand beat once upon his chest. “Because I allow it.”
I stiffened. “Do you mean, Eftan, that I am the vessel, and you are the captain? That I am the sword and you the fist?” I waited, anger rising in my chest like the burning sun, but he only stared at me with a clamped mouth. I picked up my goblet and hurled it at the wall above his head. “I am the captain, and you are a single fucking line of rigging. When you are snapped, you will be readily replaced.”
He’d frozen, his dark gaze touched with surprise. A gnarled silence grew between us, and it struck me that Eftan had never known this sort of resistance. When my father had been king, Eftan had all but run the kingdom for him, my father having been more concerned with pleasure and adventure than with duty. It was Eftan who had prepared me for the crown the way my father should have. My childhood was a litany of his lessons, his reprimands. I’d been pliant and unquestioning beneath his tutelage. Him, setting an expectation, and me, easily, unquestioningly, meeting it.
“There will be no more Godsdamned votes,” I said through a tight jaw.
“The law is clear—”
“I know the law. I am not unfit. This choice poses no greater threat to the kingdom than the union itself. And you will do well to remember that I am the king.”
He dipped his chin. “You are the king.” He took a quiet moment. “You are also cock-led, imprudent, witless—”
Without thinking, I reached across the table and took the front of his shirt into my fists. The contracts creased and spread as I heaved him toward me. “I said careful.”
“Careful is all that I have ever been. And unlike you, never once have I wavered. Did I ever tell you of how your father came to the decision to transfer his crown and power to you? How he decided to let his rule end, so that yours might begin?”