The soldiers did not answer. Instead, they roughly dragged Wren to her feet and pulled her from the cell. It was as if they knew what she has just been thinking. As if, somehow, High King Soren had gotten into Wren’s head and seen the bare sliver of hope of escape and planned to snuff it out before it could be realized.
She looked over her shoulder at her cell as the door clanged shut. Wren never thought she’d willingly want to return to the dungeon, with its carnivorous fish, deadly dragons, and mad boys who spoke in riddles.
But anything was preferable than dealing with the High King of Verlanti.
18
Arrik
Arrik was half-tempted to ignore his father’s summons when he received them. He was in no mood to deal with the man’s court, much less put up with the king himself. But ever since Arrik had returned from the Dragon Isles, his father had paraded him around like a prize bull, ensuring no man nor woman nor child was left unaware of what Arrik had achieved for Verlanti during the invasion.
He has a reason for doing so.
He grimaced at his reflection and set down his goblet of wine on the dresser as he threw off the plain gray shirt he’d been wearing in his own chambers for something more befitting his father’s taste. Well, as much as he could stomach to do: Soren was known for loving everything shiny and opulent. Like a dragon with a pile of treasure.
So Arrik slid himself into a silken, black shirt, over which he wore an even darker black tunic that was heavily embroidered with silver, with a double breast of silver buttons running down the front. He did not bother to change the pale leggings he was already wearing, finishing off the look with knee-high, polished leather boots before pulling his braids back with a silver band.
It was as close to the High King’s preferred image as Arrik could suffer, yet he knew it would still not be enough. He was the favorite son for now…but he knew that couldn’t possibly last. Not while he was considered illegitimate. Not while he could be used to rile up Soren’s trueborn sons.
For though the High King adored the wealth Arrik had brought him, through the many nations he’d conquered and shorelines he’d raided, Arrik knew fine and well that only a trueborn son would sit on the throne. Which meant his achievements could only be used to shame and motivate his half-brothers into being half the man the illegitimate prince was.
“As if that will ever happen,” Arrik told his reflection, finishing off the goblet of wine he’d been drinking when he’d been going over the reports on what had been taken from Lorne Castle.
Though he was tempted to take his time reaching his father’s throne room—not the grand one used to entertain foreign guests, but the smaller, far more intimate one that Soren preferred when talking with his advisers and parasitic court followers—Arrik knew it was wiser not to dally. His father’s patience was notoriously thin. No one wanted to be out of his graces.
So, he hastened his step, making his entrance to the hideously gaudy, opulent room only a moment before he would have been considered late.
High King Soren was displeased, nonetheless, looking bored as he picked at his nails. “You have kept me waiting when I have such grand news to share with you, Son.”
Around the king, his true-blood sons barely smothered their sniggers at this admonition of their half-brother. Arrik knew that his brothers despised him. But he did not care; if they’d brought in even half the amount of treasure and land and fame that Arrik had brought to Verlanti, then they, too, would be preferred by the king. While he’d come to accept that he was a tool, Arrik also knew that he was invaluable to the king at the moment and that gave him power.
He passively eyed his brothers in distain. They were just as cruel as their father, and had his taste for shiny and beautiful things. However, they lacked the drive that the king had. Ultimately, the High King’s trueborn sons were lazy. They expected things to be handed to them and did not seem to have any clue about how to get those things themselves.
Instead, they languished around the palace at large, as well as around the kingdom of Verlanti, spending their days partaking in petty trifles, drugs, alcohol, and—of course—women.
Of course, Arrik had tried all of these things, too. But what separated him from his brothers was that he knew how to control his impulses. He was always in control. And he knew that petty trifles were exactly that—petty trifles. Mere distractions from what was important. Letting oneself be ruled by the flesh was the worst mistake any person could make.
None of them should rule.
The worst part was that Arrik was probably the most qualified son to rule, and yet it would never be. Verlanti would inherit a lazy, spoiled king when Soren died, the last one standing after murdering all of his other brothers.
As if they haven’t tried already.
Arrik bowed his head to his father. “Apologies, Your Royal Highness. I was distracted by the bounty reports from Lorne.”
At this, the king laughed easily. “Always business with you, Arrik.” He cast a sweeping gaze over Arrik’s brothers, his eyes narrowing and his lips thinning in what seemed like disapproval. “But I suppose that is why you are the only one who gets things done, isn’t it? So devoted. Too bad my other sons don’t know the meaning of the word.”
The tittering from his brothers stopped. Though it was a jibe entirely pointed at their own faults, they would still blame Arrik rather than themselves for it. He kept his mask of polite interest in place.
Children, the lot of them.
“You mustn’t forget to relax sometimes,” a feminine voice added, all soft and sweet and entirely seductive.
The queen. Astrid. He suppressed a grimace.
Even though Astrid had known Arrik his entire life, and despite the fact she was his stepmother, she was always trying to tempt him into her bed. It disgusted him. The front of adoration she put up toward her husband was exactly that: a front.
The queen was unearthly beautiful, with her long, thick raven hair and deep eyes the color of burnt umber. She did not seem to age which if magic were real, he knew she’d have sold her soul long ago.
She sauntered past him and brushed a finger down his arm before she approached her husband, hips swaying. It still floored Arrik how the queen blatantly flirted with men in front of her husband, let alone one of her husband’s sons. Her affairs were unending, but so were the king’s, even though he’d collected over a hundred other wives and countless concubines.
I will never do that.
Arrik was many things, but cuckold wasn’t one of those. He would never do such an accursed thing as to lie in bed with his father’s wife and queen. Even if the woman hadn’t been his stepmother and married to his father, but to some other man, he still wouldn’t do it. He may not have had many morals in war and battle and many other things but touching another man’s wife was wrong.
He’d never cross that line.
“Perhaps I will find time to relax when there is time to relax,” Arrik said carefully, more than practiced himself in the art of hidden jibes. If his brothers had been snakes, they would have hissed in response. Their barely suppressed rage was almost enough to make him laugh.
Almost.
King Soren seemed thoroughly amused by his quip, as was Astrid, despite the fact Arrik was insulting her own children. She flashed him a dazzling smile, not caring that the entire room of advisers and court-goers in the room could see what she was doing. But they were all under her spell, it seemed. No one would refuse a place in her bed if she asked it of them.
All except Arrik.
He wondered if that was the only reason Astrid kept trying to tempt him: because he always said no.