The cruel smile that curved on his ancient lips might as well have sealed my Fate.

I’d lost the favor of the King of Dwellen, and I would suffer for it.

CHAPTER 26

EVANDER

This was one of those situations where, if Jerad had still been with us, I would have sidled up next to him in the corridor, dangled his favorite pastry underneath his nose, and asked him for a favor.

He would have known immediately what I wanted. It was always the same—there was something I needed from Father that would only be granted if requested by his favorite son.

I couldn’t think of a single time when Jerad hadn’t come through for me. It didn’t matter how petty the request was, or even if it were something so frivolous it was likely to get him stuck mucking stalls for a week. Our boys need to learn the consequences of a mislaid request, our father would often say when my mother attempted to intercede for us.

Father preferred Jerad to me, but their relationship wasn’t perfect.

Sometimes I’d sit outside the throne room, my ear pressed against the door as they launched into a screaming match over something Jerad couldn’t care less about.

But Jerad always convinced him.

Always.

Even if it meant enduring hours of intensive training or a night spent in the dungeon as punishment for asking.

Well, this was one of those big things, and Jerad wasn’t around to present my case.

Or, more accurately, to present Ellie’s case.

I just had to pray to the Fates I could make him listen.

I’d seen his face at the end of the second trial when the scribe had read aloud that delightfully inappropriate note in front of the crowd.

My father had favored Ellie.

It had taken Ellie ten words to obliterate that favor.

I had to get it back.

I inhaled a ragged, shaky breath and let myself into my father’s office.

It was as neat and pristine as he was, marble bookshelves lining the walls, all the books special editions my father had rebound in silver ghost leopard leather to match. The desk in the center of the room was white granite, which would have been a foolish choice for someone less intentional with a quill and ink than my father.

If his verbal words were carefully selected, then his written words were selected like one might appoint officers as personal guards.

The office was beautiful in a sterile kind of way. Also like him.

He didn’t look up from his parchment as I entered.

I cleared my throat and received no response.

“Father,” I finally said, agitation already setting in. He hadn’t even spoken to me yet, and my anger was already simmering. Off to a great start.

He still didn’t look up.

“You’re angry with Ellie. I can tell.”

My father let out a measured sigh before placing his quill back in the ink bottle, folding his perfect, suspiciously not-ink-stained hands together and meeting my stare with a boredom to match my resentment.

There was resentment there too, though, hidden under than unruffled facade. My father wasn’t one to flush from embarrassment. Such outward expressions of emotion were deemed beneath him.

So he masked it in the rage reddening his cheeks.

Because, as everyone knows, anger isn’t an actual emotion.

That would be feminine.

“Have you come here to defend her? Surely Miss Payne is more fit to such a task.”

Like I said, great start.

I breathed through his insult, refusing to allow it to find root. “What do you plan to do with her?”

My question hung there in the silence for a moment, my father letting it, probably reveling in my discomfort. He’d always complained that I was an impatient child, but it wasn’t as if he ever tried to accommodate for that.

“Why should you care, my son, my heir?” There was something about that word, heir, that he always enunciated like it was an explicative. “You do not wish to marry her, correct?”

I swallowed. “Of course I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I wish any ill to befall her.”

A smile snaked across my father’s marble-cut face. “Now, why would you think I intend any such thing?”

I gritted my teeth, fisting my hands to keep them from trembling in rage. “Because I know you, and I know she embarrassed you today.”

“Embarrassment does not befit a king. Jerad would have known that.”

I couldn’t fight back the wince that jolted through my jaw at the sound of his name on my father’s lips. “Be that as it may, there’s flesh and blood underneath that iron exterior of yours, Father, and there’s nothing that makes it past your armor like a few well-placed words.”

I thought I sensed my father bristle. Actually bristle. But his face hardened, and I decided it must have been a trick of the light, a game of shadows that his flickering lamp now played.

“Embarrassment does not befit a king, and ill humor does not befit a princess,” he said, his smile eerily pleasant, but his jaw bulging as he gritted his teeth all the same.

I let out a scoff. “What do you mean, ill humor does not befit a princess?” My memory flitted back to the first dinner Ellie ever ate with my parents. I have no desire to flirt with a male with a list of bedmates behind him that could probably span the length of this table. “I seem to remember you enjoying her ill humor when it was directed toward me.”

Again, that eerie smile overtook his face. “You’re correct. I find Lady Payne amusing. But the time always comes to put away amusing things.”

Put away. I didn’t like the sound of that.

“What will you do to her?” I tried to keep my voice steady as I asked, but the edges of a plea dripped through. That wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t add a single day to Ellie’s life by sounding like a beggar.

“Me?” he asked. “I will do nothing.”