“You are an odd sort of prisoner, Miss Barrow. I did not realize that, while Maven paints you as a lady in his broadcasts, he requires you to be one at all times.”
Lady. The title never truly applied to me, and never will. “I’m just a well-dressed and tightly leashed lapdog.”
“What a peculiar king to keep you as he does. You’re an enemy of the state, a valuable piece of propaganda, and somehow treated as near royalty. But then boys are so strange with their toys. Especially those accustomed to losing things. They hold on more tightly than the rest.”
“And what would you do with me?” I answer back. As queen, Iris could hold my life in her hands. She could end it, or make it even worse. “If you were in his position?”
Iris dodges the question artfully. “I won’t ever make the mistake of trying to put myself in his head. That is not a place any sane person should be.” Then she laughs to herself. “I assume his mother spent a good amount of time there.”
For as much as Elara hated me and my existence, I think she would hate Iris more. The young princess is formidable to say the least. “You’re lucky you never had to meet her.”
“And I thank you for that,” Iris replies. “Though I hope you don’t keep up the tradition of killing queens. Even lapdogs bite.” She blinks at me, gray eyes piercing. “Will you?”
I’m not stupid enough to respond. No would be a naked lie. Yes could land me yet another royal enemy. She smirks at my silence.
It’s not a long walk to the grand chamber where Maven holds court. After so many days before the broadcast cameras, forced to stomach newblood after newblood pledging their loyalty to him, I know it intimately. Usually the dais is crowded with seats, but they’ve been removed in our absence, leaving only the gray, forbidding throne. Iris glares at it as we approach.
“An interesting tactic,” she mutters when we reach it. As with my manacles, she runs a finger down the blocks of Silent Stone. “Necessary too. With so many whispers allowed at court.”
“Allowed?”
“They are not welcome in the court of the Lakelands. They cannot pass through the walls of our capital, Detraon, or enter the palace without proper escorts. And no whisper is permitted within twenty feet of the monarch,” Iris explains. “In fact, I know of no noble families who can claim such an ability in my country.”
“They don’t exist?”
“Not where I come from. Not anymore.”
The implication hangs in the air like smoke.
She pulls away from the throne, tipping her head back and forth. She doesn’t like whatever she sees. Her lips purse into a thin line. “How many times have you felt the touch of a Merandus in your head?”
For a split second, I try to remember. Stupid. “Too many times to count,” I tell her with a shrug. “First Elara, then Samson. I can’t decide who was worse. I know now that the queen could look into my mind without me even knowing. But he . . .” My voice falters. The memory is a painful one, drawing out a drilling pressure at my temples. I try to massage away the ache. “Samson, you feel every second he’s in there.”
Her face grays. “So many eyes in this place,” she says, glancing first at my guards and then at the walls. At the security cameras looking over every inch of the open chamber, watching us. “They are welcome to watch.”
Slowly, she removes her jacket and folds it over her arm. The shirt beneath is white, fastened high at her throat, but backless. She turns, under the guise of examining the throne room. Really, she’s showing off. Her back is muscular, powerful, carved of long lines. Black tattoos cover her from the base of her scalp, down her neck, across her shoulder blades, all to the base of her spine. Roots, I think first. I’m wrong. Not roots, but whorls of water, curling and spilling over her skin in perfect lines. They ripple as she moves, a living thing. Finally she roves back to face me. The smallest smirk plays on her lips.
It disappears in an instant as her gaze shifts past me. I don’t have to turn around to know who approaches, who leads the many footsteps echoing off the marble and into my skull.
“I would be happy to give you a tour, Iris,” Maven says. “Your father is settling into his apartments, but I’m sure he won’t mind if we get to know each other better.”
The Arvens and Lakelander guards drop back, giving the king and his Sentinels space. Blue uniforms, white, red-orange. Their silhouettes and colors are so ingrained in me I know them out of the corner of my eye. None so much as the pale young king. I feel him as much as I see him, his cloying warmth threatening to engulf me. He stops a few inches from my side, close enough to take me by the hand if he wants to. I shudder at the thought.