He hums beneath his breath as he looks back at Slade, running his hands down to straighten his shirt, pulling the luminescent blue to swell and settle like lapping waves. “All we’re asking for is a fair trial, as is the right of our joined alliances. Do not be so quick to declare war on the rest of Orea, King Ravinger, to be responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. And remember, you and your rot cannot be everywhere at once.”
Manu’s eyes find me for a split second before he turns and drifts away, the door shutting behind him like the slap of a tidal wave that threatens to swallow us whole.
When Slade relays everything to Lu, Judd, and Digby, it’s met with a commotion of blunt anger and cursed threats. Except for Dig—who’s reaction isn’t one of noise, but of the burrowing of his scowl.
“Fucking Queen Kaila,” Lu says with a shake of her head, the shape of the dagger shorn into her hair looking sharper with the warm light cast off from the fireplace.
We’re in a new room I haven’t been to before, this one on the top floor, just a few doors down from Slade’s personal rooms. There isn’t much in here apart from a large table at the center and a small bar top to the left with bottles and goblets just waiting to be poured and filled. A scattering of glasses is set around the table, clutched in hands or left abandoned.
“How long?” Judd asks.
Slade takes a long drink before he answers. “Warken and Barley ran the numbers. If we implement rationing immediately across the entire kingdom, we can keep our people fed solely on reserves for…roughly four weeks without any imports.”
Only a month?
My eyes shift to Slade, his elbow bent on the table, hand running over his jaw in thought. I’m stranded in the sticky unease, wondering how monarchs can justify making innocent people starve. The stickiness glues up my memory, tacking to the time when I went through Highbell’s city—into the denied parts of the shanties. The hardship carved out into every rundown building, the weightless rags hanging on people’s thin forms. I only had that single glance at the people’s hardship, at how they’d gone without.
“Four weeks?” Judd whistles. “Well, that’s not ideal.”
“I thought they’d be too stuck on our oil and gems to do something that bold,” Lu adds.
Slade drains the last dregs of his drink. “Morale will drop with the rationing. Which means unrest and spikes in crime. We’ll need more patrols. Not an easy ask of the returning army when they’re coming off of weeks of travel through the frozen fucking Barrens.” He shakes his head. “We can sustain a siege from another kingdom. Our army can win against any other that meets them in battle. But we can’t win against all of them at once. Not with our food supplies cut off. Not with our army already tired.”
“They’re hitting when we’re most vulnerable,” Lu goes on. “And cutting off our food… It’s a pretty steep punishment for not agreeing to bring Auren for this stupid trial.”
“They’re scared of her,” Digby says. When everyone turns to him, he shrugs. “If they’re believing these rumors, then they’ll be thinking she can steal their powers too. They don’t want that.”
“What they truly don’t want is to make an enemy of me,” Slade practically snarls. “Starvation takes a hell of a lot longer than rot.”
Cold sweat curdles in frigid droplets against my skin, the dark threat of his words like a heavy fog I can’t see through, can’t breathe through. Beside me, I feel Slade’s tension as if it’s a string tied from his chest to mine. The taut line thrums with strain, knotting me with stretched pressure.
An entire kingdom. All of Fourth can only go one month living on reserves, or they’re in danger of starving. And that’s just Slade’s people. If he retaliates against the other kingdoms, it won’t just be Fourth that suffers, but everyone.
“Slade…”
“Don’t,” he snaps out. “Don’t even suggest it.”
“But maybe I should go. I don’t want your people to suffer. Or any innocent person.”
Green eyes brined with anger flick to me. “You are not going.”
My gaze drops down with the weight of the guilt on my shoulders.
Lu reaches over and taps me on the back of my hand. “Slade’s right, Gildy. That’s the worst plan. We can’t give in to threats and blackmail. Fourth is strong, and so is Rip. They’re too afraid of him to do anything for long. In the meantime, we’ll figure this out, and he’ll retaliate just enough to make them back off.”