Crown of Shadows (Court of Midnight and Deception #1) - K. M. Shea Page 0,63
Indigo, but I didn’t want to spell out my actions to her.
With fae it’s important to make sure you aren’t indebted—you never want to owe them a favor, because it can get pricy fast.
Increasing their pay was the easiest way I had to make sure we were balanced—but I couldn’t even tell them that because there was a possibility they might be able to use that knowledge to claim I owed them somehow.
I hate the way I have to second guess everyone just to survive in this cesspool. Fae culture is the worst.
Chapter Fifteen
Rigel
“She shot at Lady Chrysanthe! With a gun!” Dion pulled on his hair, then draped himself over his horse’s neck to complete his dramatics. “The Paragon wants me to marry the equivalent of a wild animal.”
I loosened my reins—since Dion seemed mostly interested in dramatics at the moment, there was no point in riding off. He was annoyingly persistent enough that he’d just ride after me, wailing at the top of his lungs.
“Are you opposed to the Paragon’s plan?” I asked.
Dion peeled himself off his horse. “Not really. She doesn’t seem unpleasant—and I’d be marrying her for the sake of securing the Night Court’s future. It’s just when she does stuff like shooting at people, I don’t know that I can handle it.”
“I suspect you should be more worried about surviving our Court than your potential wife turning on you,” I said.
“Probably. It’s just…she’s wild.” Dion sighed, then peered in my direction. “What do you think of her?”
I thought for a moment of our previous meetings.
In the never-ending struggle we fae engaged in for power, Queen Leila upset the status quo by ignoring traditions, speaking bluntly, and reacting openly rather than veiling her actions like a real fae would.
She was sending ripples through the whole game—something I hadn’t seen before, and something I wasn’t sure was good.
The fae’s thirst for power was unavoidable. Given her conduct, Queen Leila would never win it. The question was, how many would she take down with her when she fell?
“She’s unpredictable,” I finally said. “Which can make her dangerous.”
“That is the understatement of the century.” Dion smoothed his hair, already returning to his façade of handsome, smiling courtier. “I’ll just have to teach her. She seems reasonable.”
“On the one occasion you spoke to her.”
“What, and you’ve seen her so many more times than me?” Dion shot me a look.
I kept my silence—Dion didn’t know I’d tried my hand at killing our mad queen before I knew she was bound to the Court. And if Queen Leila wasn’t going to reveal that, I saw no reason to tip the game of power one way or another.
Of course, I’d seen her several additional times since then, but then I’d have to explain why she had the tendency to hiss at me like a cat.
“Although, now that I think about it, she did say when we met at the party that it was nice to finally be introduced. What do you think she meant by that?” Dion, in his irritating wit, raised both of his eyebrows at me, waiting for a response.
I heard a voice around a bend in the trail, and I held up a hand to silence my longtime friend.
“—good neighbors—the best, really. I miss Hazel, she’s hilarious, and—oh.” Queen Leila and her steward rounded the corner, stopping when they saw me.
The steward bowed graciously. “Lord Dion, Lord Rigel, good afternoon.”
Queen Leila, perched on top of the biggest night mare I’d seen—who looked like he was slashed through with glowing lines of red dotting his body—seemed to be warring between a look of politeness and open distaste.
Yes. She’s the only one with the guts to openly shoot at someone. I can only imagine the reaction provoked.
For a second, I wished I had been present to witness the act. Queen Leila was funny in her anger.
I stared the new queen down, but it seemed that she wasn’t in the mood for any rude sayings today. She was hastily turning her massive beast around.
Dion turned on his charm, oozing likability and flashing a grin that had multiple ladies in the Night Court cooing over him. “Queen Leila—you look lovely today.”
“Thank you, Lord Dion.” She twisted around in the saddle with the familiarity of someone used to it.
It wasn’t surprising—I’d seen her parents’ farm.
It was interesting, though, that when she placed her hand on the night mare’s rear to stabilize herself, the giant creature didn’t budge.