“I haven’t heard. The king is with him now.” Galo rubbed a hand over the scruff on his jaw. “I need to apologize for—”
“No, you don’t,” Cas interrupted. “I don’t want guards hovering at my side all hours of the day. You can’t protect me all the time.”
“That is actually our job. Protecting you all the time. Though it appears Mary is more than willing to pick up the slack.”
“Yes, she is,” Cas murmured, the image of her fist connecting with that man’s face flashing through his brain. Years of battling the Ruined had made her an excellent fighter.
“But I do need to apologize on behalf of your entire guard,” Galo said. “We wouldn’t blame you if you replaced all of us.”
“You know I’m not going to do that,” Cas said.
“It wouldn’t be the worst idea.” Jovita appeared in the doorway. She jerked her head, indicating that Galo should leave, and the guard quickly exited the room.
She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “How’s the shoulder?”
“Fine. It’s not that bad of an injury, but the doctor insisted I stay in bed today.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t serious.”
Cas snorted. “Sure you are.”
Jovita gave him an annoyed look, but a smile tugged at her mouth as she plopped down in the chair near the window. “I would be very sad if anything happened to you, Cas.”
“I’m sure. You’d be devastated all the way to the throne.”
Jovita sat sideways in the chair, her long, dark braid dangling off the armrest as she tilted her head back. “You’ve caught me. It was me who hired that man to try to kill you at your wedding. I’m horribly jealous of you.”
“I knew it. Though I always thought you’d go with poison.”
“Much more theatrical this way.” She turned her head, grinning at him. “I’ve come with official news, though,” she said, swinging her legs around and sitting straight in the chair. “The man who stabbed you talked. He was a hunter.”
Cas’s eyebrows lifted. “A hunter? Of the Ruined?”
“Yes.”
“What did he want with me?”
“A small group of hunters have organized against the king. They’ve been demanding changes to the hunter policies for a while. Mainly that we make it a voluntary position.”
“Would people actually volunteer to hunt down and kill Ruined?”
“Not many, which is why the position is used as a punishment instead of prison.” She rubbed a few fingers across her chin. “What criminals want is irrelevant. We need hunters. The king had heard rumblings about them organizing, but clearly we need to start taking them more seriously. He hasn’t given up any others yet, but he must have had help. We’ll find them. In the meantime, we still have plenty of hunters making multiple Ruined kills every day.”
They were being hunted down and murdered, so yes, they defended themselves often. Mary’s words ran through his brain for the hundredth time since she’d said them. He’d never heard anyone even come close to defending the Ruined. No one used the word murdered. They were eliminated or killed or disposed of. Mary’s word hung in the air, taunting him.
“Do you ever wonder whether it was the right decision, to kill all the Ruined?” he asked slowly.
Jovita’s eyebrows shot almost to her hairline. “No.”
“Are they really all bad? Every single one of them?”
“Yes, every single one of them,” Jovita said, a hint of exasperation in her tone. She’d only been an adviser to the king for a year, but she always acted like she knew more than Cas. “The Ruined ruled over us for centuries without an ounce of compassion. We’re returning the favor.”
“True,” Cas said quietly. He hadn’t been alive to see the days when the Ruined enslaved humans and killed them for sport, and neither had his father. His grandfather had driven them out of Lera, but the Ruined had lost their hold on humans years before, after their powers weakened. Punishment from the ancestors for misuse of them, his grandfather used to tell him.
The ancestors had nothing to do with the Ruined losing their power, Cas’s father had said with a roll of his eyes. He was never the type of man to believe in things he couldn’t see. The Ruined will rise again. Unless we stop them.
The Ruined will rise again used to send a chill down Cas’s spine. Now he felt nothing but the weight of those lost lives. For all the Ruined’s power, they couldn’t rise from the dead.
Jovita stood. “The warriors from Olso arrive in two days. Will you be well enough to attend the dinner?”
“I’m sure I will be. I’m not going to miss the warriors’ first visit to Lera in two generations.”
“Good. Try not to get stabbed at that event too. We don’t want the warriors thinking we need someone from Vallos to save our prince.” She said Vallos as if it were distasteful, but a smile crept onto her face.
“The horror. Almost as embarrassing as getting beaten by their princess in the Union Battle.”