The Beginning of Everything by Kristen Ashley Page 0,82
five realms to find the culprit and exact his vengeance.
And if Mars were to be harmed, the waif had much magic. She might not yet know how to use it, but he did not like to think if she harnessed it through emotion, but without the knowledge of how to control it, what she would do.
And obviously the priest had to survive. Not only to bring forward the Beast, but to master him. He couldn’t be hunted down by a barbarian or magicked to another realm (or the like).
No, that wouldn’t do.
“Nandra, as you know, is here tonight,” Mars shared. “After dinner, I will have her brought to me and I will ask about this.”
“I’m not certain it was a bad thing, my king.”
“We will make certain, my bride.”
Yes, the least likely couple.
“Think no more of it. I will find answers,” Mars stated and changed their subject. “Now tell me, do you worry about the ceremony tomorrow?”
The eavesdropper tensed.
What ceremony?
“I don’t know, does it hurt?” Silence asked.
“It is a piercing of the flesh, Silence,” Mars said gently.
Well then.
As they would do, they were preparing her for her Firenz wedding which was to take place three nights from that one.
She’d endure their odious piercing ceremony.
But of course.
“So it hurts,” Silence murmured.
“Ice is used to numb the flesh. It’s mostly painless at the time,” Mars assured. “Though there can be some discomfort after.”
“Well, everyone is pierced here, so it can’t be all that bad,” Silence stated gamely.
Mars’s slow grin did not hide his approval.
The priest tired of their discourse, studied the couples, and turned his attention to what he perceived was the next least-likely pair, especially considering the pirate king’s current demeanor.
That being, he was resting back in his chair, his large bulk shifted toward his wife, his long arm along the back of her chair.
“Of course you would think that,” Queen Ha-Lah was saying, but she sounded amused. “You’re a man.”
“I am that.” King Aramus also sounded amused.
“Though I cannot agree,” she said.
“That I am a man?” he teased, raising his brows.
His queen gave him a small smile and an exaggerated roll of her eyes, answering his tease without words.
“They returned to the room with her on his arm, close to his side,” Aramus observed, returning to their discourse.
They were discussing Prince Cassius and Princess Elena and the earlier shenanigans.
Really.
These Airenzian men.
Would they never learn?
That would not go well for Cassius.
But it might go well for the priest.
“They did, though he looked furious and she looked like she wished to whirl her Nadirii staff straight into his head,” Ha-Lah retorted.
Aramus chuckled before he repeated, “Yes, wife, but he brought her into the room on his arm and close to his side.”
“I see this says something to you about Cassius,” she noted, watching her husband closely.
Aramus’s expression grew serious. “I worried about him most of all with these allegiances. He much loved his wife.”
“And?” Ha-Lah prompted when he did not go on.
“Cassius is a man of honor. His father, and the brother he lost, were, and in his father’s case, still is fond of war, whether it spills blood, or the wounds inflicted are unseen. Power. Control. Demonstrations of might. Conflicts to determine supremacy. It is, for them, an addiction. Cass is a man of peace. He is good at making war, even if he doesn’t have the heart for it. But he still has Laird blood.”
“And that means?” Ha-Lah asked.
“That means he might have found the kind of clash he cannot only stomach, but that he will enjoy.”
“Ah,” she murmured, grinning at the plate of food set in front of her.
Aramus captured a curl of her hair and wound it around his finger.
His queen seemed discomfited for a moment at this gesture before she hid it, and hid her fondness for his touch, as minimal as it was, by reaching toward her wineglass.
“There is more, my wife,” he murmured distractedly.
He was speaking but he was much caught up in the twirling of her hair.
After taking a sip, her voice was husky when she asked, “There is?”
“My friend, he is a man lost.”
Ha-Lah set her glass aside and turned her head his way, which took her tendril from her husband’s fingers.
And they both looked like something was lost with that.
Aramus recovered first. “Tonight, when he walked in with his future bride, his eyes were full of fire. I have not seen that from my friend, not once, not in six years.” He leaned toward his wife. “It brings gladness to my heart,