A Feast of Dragons - By Morgan Rice Page 0,10

affected his kingship,” she snapped. “Every moment of it.”

“If you’re so unhappy with my inabilities,” Gareth fumed, “why don’t you just leave this place? Leave me! Leave our mockery of a marriage. I am King now. I don’t need you anymore.”

“I’m glad you raised that point,” she said, “because that is precisely the reason I’ve come. I want you to end our marriage officially. I want a divorce. There is a man I love. A real man. One of your knights, in fact. He’s a warrior. We are in love, a true love. Unlike any love I ever had. Divorce me, so I can stop carrying on this affair in secret. I want our love to be public. And I want to be married to him.”

Gareth stared back at her, shocked, feeling hollowed out, as if a dagger had just been plunged into his chest. Why had Helena had to surface? Why now, of all times? It was too much for him. He felt as if the world were kicking him while he was down.

Despite himself, Gareth was surprised to realize that he had some deep feelings for Helena, because when he heard her actual words, asking for a divorce, it did something to him. It upset him. Despite himself, it made him realize that he did not want a divorce from her. If it came from him, it was one thing; but if it came from her, it was another. He did not want her to have her way, and not so easily.

Most of all, he wondered how a divorce would influence his kingship. A divorced King would raise too many questions. And despite himself, he found himself jealous of this knight. And resentful of her rubbing his lack of manhood in his face. He wanted vengeance. On both of them.

“You can’t have it,” he snapped. “You are bound to me. Stuck as my wife forever. I will never let you free. And if I ever encounter this knight you are cheating with, I will have him tortured and executed.”

Helena snarled back at him.

“I am not your wife! You are not my husband. You are not a man. Ours is an unholy union. It has been from the day it was forged. It was an arranged partnership for power. The whole thing disgusts me—it always has. And it has ruined my one chance to truly be married.”

She breathed, her fury rising.

“You will give me my divorce, or I will reveal to the entire kingdom the man you are. You decide.”

With that Helena turned her back on him, marched across the room and out the open door, not even bothering to close it behind her.

Gareth stood alone in the stone chamber, listening to the echo of her footsteps and feeling a chill pervade his body that he could not shake. Was there anything stable he could hold onto anymore?

As Gareth stood there, trembling, watching the open door, he was surprised to see somebody else walk through it. He had barely had time to register his conversation with Helena, to process all of her threats, when in walked a too-familiar face. Firth. The usual bounce to his step was gone as he entered the room tentatively, a guilty look on his face.

“Gareth?” he asked, sounding unsure.

Firth stared at him, wide-eyed, and Gareth could see how bad he felt. He should feel bad, Gareth thought. After all, it was Firth who put him up to wielding the sword, who had finally convinced him, who had made him think that he was more than he was. Without Firth’s whispering, who knew? Maybe Gareth would have never even attempted to wield it.

Gareth turned to him, seething. In Firth he finally found an object in which to direct all his anger. After all, Firth had been the one that killed his father. It was Firth, this stupid stable boy, that got him into this whole mess to begin with. Now he was just another failed successor to the MacGil lineage.

“I hate you,” Gareth seethed. “What of your promises now? What of your confidence that I would wield the sword?”

Firth swallowed, looking very nervous. He was speechless. Clearly, he had nothing to say.

“I am sorry, my Lord,” he said. “I was wrong.”

“You were wrong about a lot of things,” Gareth snapped.

Indeed, the more Gareth thought about it, the more he realized how wrong Firth had been. In fact, if it were not for Firth, his father would still be alive today—and Gareth would not be in