“What?” Elijah stroked his dark beard as he met the many stares. “She’s asking what most of us are thinking.”
Delano blinked and then slowly looked at Elijah. Casteel said nothing. His tight-lipped smile spoke volumes as the piercing weight of his gaze moved from me to farther down the table.
Fingers stilling on his beard, Elijah cleared his throat. “I thought the plan—”
“What you think is irrelevant.” The Prince silenced the older man.
“You mean the one where you thought to use me as bait to free your brother?” I demanded. “Or has that magically changed in the last couple of hours?”
A muscle popped along Casteel’s jaw as the full focus of his attention returned to me. “You should eat.”
I almost lost it right then and threw my scavenged knife at him. “I’m not hungry.”
His gaze dipped to my plate. “You’ve barely eaten.”
“Well, you see, I don’t have much of an appetite, Your Highness.”
His jaw tightened as his eyes met mine and held. The golden hue of his irises had chilled. Goosebumps prickled my skin as the air around us seemed to thicken and become charged, filling the room. There hadn’t been an ounce of respect in my tone. Had I pushed Casteel too far? If so, I didn’t care.
My fingers tightened around the handle of the blade. I was no longer the Maiden, bound to rules that prevented me from having a say in matters of my life. I would no longer be controlled. I could and would push harder than this.
“She asks a very valid question,” someone said from the end of the table. It was a man with short, dark hair. He looked no older than Kieran, who, like Casteel, appeared to be in his early twenties. But Casteel was over two hundred years old. The man could be even older, for all I knew. “Has the plan to use her to free Prince Malik changed?” he asked.
Casteel said nothing as he continued watching me, but the utter stillness that crept into his features was a far better warning than any words could be.
“I am not trying to question your decisions,” the man stated. “I’m attempting to understand them.”
“What do you need help understanding, Landell?” Casteel leaned back in the chair, his hands resting lightly on the arms. The way he sat as if completely at ease, raised the tiny hairs all over my body.
A tense moment of silence descended, and then Landell said, “We have all followed you here from Atlantia. We stayed in this archaic, cesspool of a kingdom, pretending loyalty to a counterfeit King and Queen. Because, like you, we want nothing more than to free your brother. He is the rightful heir.”
Casteel nodded for Landell to continue.
“We have lost people—good people trying to infiltrate the Temples in Carsodonia,” he said. I tensed as images of the sprawling, midnight-hued structures formed in my mind.
If all that Casteel had alleged was true, the purpose the Temples served was another lie. Third sons and daughters weren’t given over during the Rite to serve the gods. Instead, they were given to the Ascended—the vamprys—becoming nothing more than cattle. Much of the pile of lies I’d been fed my entire life was terrible, but that was possibly the worst of them all. And as revolting as what Casteel claimed was, I feared it was the truth. How could I deny it? The Ascended had told us that the Atlantians’ kiss was poisonous, cursing innocent mortals and turning them into these decaying shells of their former selves—vicious, blood-hungry monsters known as the Craven. But I knew that to be untrue. The Atlantians’ kiss wasn’t toxic. Neither was their bite. I was proof of both of those things. Casteel and I had shared many kisses. He’d given me his blood when I was mortally wounded. And, he’d bitten me.
I did not turn.
Just like I hadn’t turned when I was attacked by the Craven all those years ago.
And it wasn’t like I hadn’t begun to develop suspicions about the Ascended before Casteel entered my life. He had only confirmed them. But was it all true? I had no way of knowing. My fingers ached from how tightly I held the knife.
“We haven’t found any leads on where our Prince is being held, and too many will never return home to their families,” Landell continued, his voice steadying with each word, thickening with anger I didn’t need my gift to sense. “But now we have something. Finally, something that could be used to gain knowledge of your brother’s whereabouts—to possibly free him, keep him from being forced to make new vamprys, living through the kind of hell you’re all too familiar with. Instead, we’re going home?”
I knew of some of that hell.
I’d seen the numerous scars all over Casteel’s body, the brand in the shape of the Royal Crest on his upper thigh, just below his hip.
But Casteel said nothing in return. No one spoke. There was no movement, not from those at the table or the ones near the hearth at the back of the banquet hall.
Landell wasn’t finished. “The ones hanging on the walls of the hall outside this very room deserve to be there. Not just because they disobeyed your orders, but because if they had succeeded in killing the Maiden, we would’ve lost the one thing we could use. They put the heir in jeopardy for vengeance. That is why I believe they deserve their fate, even though some of them were friends of mine—friends of many at this table.”
I will kill them.
That was Casteel’s promise when he saw the wounds the others had left behind. And he had. Mostly. Casteel had staked those Landell spoke of to the wall. All were dead now, except for Jericho. The ringleader was barely alive, suffering a slow, agonizing death to serve as a reminder that I would not be harmed.
“You can use her,” Landell fumed. “She is the Queen’s favorite—the Chosen. If they were ever to release your brother, it would be for her. Instead, we’re going home for you to marry?” He jerked his chin toward me. “Her?”
The distaste in that word stung, but I’d been on the receiving end of far more cutting remarks from Duke Teerman to show even a flicker of reaction.
Across from me, Kieran’s head snapped in Landell’s direction. “If you have any intelligence, you would stop speaking. Now.”
“Let him continue,” Casteel interjected. “He has a right to speak his mind. Just as Elijah did. But it seems as if Landell has more to say than Elijah, and I would like to hear it.”
Elijah’s lips pursed, and he emitted a low whistle, eyes widening as he leaned back in his chair, dropping an arm over the back of Delano’s seat. “Hey, sometimes I speak and laugh when I shouldn’t. But whatever you plan or want, I’m with you, Casteel.”
“Are you serious?” Landell’s head whipped toward Elijah as he shot to his feet. “You’re okay with giving up on Prince Malik? You’re fine with Casteel bringing her back home, to our lands, and marrying her, making her the Princess? An honor meant to bring all of our people together, not to divide them.”
Casteel moved slightly, his hands sliding off the arms of his chair.
“As I just said, I’m with Casteel.” Elijah lifted his gaze to Landell. “Always, and no matter what he chooses. And if he chooses her, then we all do.”
This was…that was entirely ridiculous, the whole argument. It didn’t matter. And I didn’t care why there was a need to bring the people of Atlantia together because Casteel and I weren’t getting married. I didn’t get a chance to point that out, though.
“I do not choose her. I will never choose her,” Landell swore, the skin of his face thinning and darkening as he scanned those who sat around him. Wolven. He was a wolven, I realized. I adjusted my grip on the knife and tensed. “All of you know this. The wolven will not accept her. It doesn’t matter if she has Atlantian blood or not. Neither will the people of Atlantia welcome her. She’s an outsider raised and cared for by those who forced us back into a land that is quickly growing too small and useless.” He stared down the table, looking at Casteel. “She didn’t even accept you, and we’re supposed to believe that she will bond with you?”
Bond? I glanced at Kieran and then Casteel. I knew that some wolven were bonded to Atlantians of a particular class, and it took no leap of logic to assume that Casteel being a Prince was just that. The two of them seemed the closest out of everyone I’d seen Casteel interact with, but I knew of no other bond.
However, again, it was irrelevant since we were not marrying.
“Are we supposed to believe that she is worthy of being our Princess when she flat-out denies you in front of your people while reeking of the Ascended?” Landell demanded. My nose wrinkled. I didn’t smell like…like the Ascended. Did I? “When she refuses to choose you?”
“What matters is that I choose her,” Casteel spoke, and my stupid, stupid heart skipped a beat, even though I did not choose him. “And that is all that matters.”
The wolven’s lips peeled back, and my eyes widened at the sight of his canines elongating. “You do this, and it will be the downfall of our kingdom,” he snarled. “I will not choose that scarred-face bitch.”
I flinched.
I’d actually flinched, cheeks burning as if I’d been slapped across the face. I lifted my fingers, touching the uneven skin of my cheek before I realized what I was doing.
Landell’s hand dropped to his hip. “I’ll see her dead before I stand by and allow this.”
Seconds, mere heartbeats passed from when those words left Landell’s mouth, and the frenzied stir of air as it lifted wisps of hair at my temples.
Casteel’s chair was empty.
A shout, and then something heavy clanged off a dish. A chair toppled, and Landell…he was no longer standing by the table. His plate was no longer empty. A narrow dagger lay there, one designed for throwing. My wide eyes followed the blur that was Casteel as he pinned Landell to the wall, his forearm pressed into the wolven’s throat.
Good gods, to be able to move that fast, that silently…
“I just want you to know that I’m not even particularly upset about you questioning what I intend to do. How you’ve spoken to me doesn’t bother me. I’m not insecure enough to care about the opinions of little men.” Casteel’s face was inches from the wide-eyed wolven. “If that had been all, I would’ve overlooked it. If you had stopped after the first time you referenced her, I would’ve let you walk out of here with just your overinflated sense of self-worth. But then you insulted her. You made her flinch, and then you threatened her. I will not forget that.”