Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
“I thought I made it clear that we are, for the time being, in this together. My fate is tied with yours.”
“Doesn’t that mean you could use me in whatever way you wish to get your desired outcome?”
“Given what you’ve heard about my asshole father since you’ve been here, I get your concern. But I’m not him.”
“But you follow his orders. Like marrying me.”
“He is the king. And until that crown is on my head, I need to at least appear to be playing into his hand.”
“But you’re not?”
“I am doing everything in my power to keep this court together while he devolves into madness. And to keep it out of the greedy hands of his so-called friends.”
“Like Grimwood.”
“Precisely. The more I think about it, the more I think this move of putting you in his daughter’s place was less about saving her from me and more about keeping her for his own future plans. Perhaps a political marriage to another of the power families.”
“But he had to know I’d speak eventually.”
“Not if he thinks whoever he has on the inside of the palace is still drugging you. I doubt his plan is for this to go on forever. He likely has a scheme that takes place within the next few weeks. A poisoning or an outright attack to take the palace by force.”
“Wouldn’t he need more than one person on the inside to do that?”
She wasn’t wrong.
It was something I had mentioned to Vishen briefly—the possibility of the entire staff at the palace being turned against my father and by extension, me. He saw my staff concern and raised me the military.
“If worse came to worst, the soldiers will go with who makes them the biggest promises. Whether or not they have any intention of making good on them.”
And as talented as Vishen was—and, if he approved of her, Nira was—they stood no chance against an entire army.
“Are we in danger?” Serin asked, likely reading the play of emotions across my face.
“Probably.” Then, not wanting her so scared that she fled and fucked things up before I could work them out, I added, “That is why it is important we found your lake, and that you continue to drink from it to keep your strength up. If at any point we need to flee, I need to know you can keep up.”
“Okay. But what is your plan?”
“It’s still in the beginning stages. Now that your situation is figured out, I can dedicate more time to working on the possible coup.”
“Can I do anything?”
“Not that I can think of right now. But I might need you and Nira at some point. I’m a little short on allies right now.”
I was hoping to change that soon, though.
I already had a way in with a lot of the common fae, since I’d been letting out prisoners and forgiving astronomical debts my father had placed on others.
But I needed better allies. Ones with coin and power. I was hoping to work on that over the next few weeks—if I had that long. There were several royal events coming up: a royal feast, a tournament, and a ball.
Everyone important would be showing up.
Which made it extra dangerous for me if there were enemies all around, but it was also my only chance to reach out to others and curry favor. There was no other way for me to get away from the castle with my father’s redcap spies tracking me down.
“What can we do? As allies?”
“Nira will protect you for me.”
“While I just stand there like a target?”
“Do Daughters of the Lake have any skills?”
“I have… water skills.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can sense things through water.”
“Sense what? Who has visited the water?”
“Well, yes, but also, I can sort of read the emotions of others through their water.”
“Their… water?”
“Tears or sweat.”
“Hm.” That might be useful. If she could possibly sense someone’s feelings toward me just by their sweat, that might be something valuable. “Anything else?”
“Well, there was this one time…” Her gaze went far away like she was lost in a memory.
“What happened?”
“A man came to my lake, and I’d… I hadn’t been dressed. He wasn’t someone who took ‘no’ for an answer…”
A growl crawled its way up my throat, making me need to cough to cover it. It was ridiculous to feel pissed off and possessive of a past version of Serin—before she was even mine.
For fuck’s sake.
She wasn’t mine now.
“And?”
“And I don’t even remember asking it to or anything like that, but the water rushed up and crashed down on him over and over. I think it might have drowned him if I hadn’t called out to beg it to stop.”
Now that, that could be very useful. But only if we were close to her lake, I suppose.
“Have you ever tried to command water other than your own?”