The sister of no one at all.
The realization that cut the deepest.
Emotional blood that Requiemme, thank the Creator, saw right away. Her fierce whisper in Jayd’s ear proved as much. “Until His Majesty says otherwise, you are still our beloved princess.”
In that moment, those words were more vital than air.
But oxygen fell off her priority list as the younger man moved out of his bow and took a confident stride forward. As he inclined his head toward Evrest again, the afternoon light mixed with the amber glow from the room’s chandelier, snaking through the oils in his hair product. There was a moment Jayd would never get back. From that instance, the man would always be Belly-Crawler Carris in her mind—down to the unctuous undertone of his voice as he addressed her brother.
“Your Majesty Evrest. Thank you for welcoming us back to the palais.”
“You gave him a choice about it?” Jayd’s sneer earned her a cocked brow from the viper before he addressed Ev again.
“We trust you have reviewed the materials we presented yesterday?”
“I have.” Evrest finished by nodding toward Jayd. “Which is, of course, why I asked my sister to join us for this follow-up.”
Carris wasted no time before ticking an eyebrow again as well as shifting his slithery weight.
Jayd straightened too, stiffening as if her cotton shift dress was a regal evening gown. Two could play the let’s-pretend-we’re-in-the-throne-room act. But the thing was, she had logged more hours at it than the snake. They could strip her of her birthright but not her experience.
“As you know, Majesty, I am one of the princess’s greatest admirers…” Down came both the man’s brows, as he flicked another discomfited glance Jayd’s way. “But with all due respect, are you quite certain—I mean, at this particular point—to involve her so fully?”
“Wise?” Jayd’s incensement overrode her decorum before she could think. “To involve me? With all due respect, Mr. Carris, does this entire situation not involve me?”
Her quickest ally was also the most unexpected. Though a chuckle played at his lips, Fortin Santelle sauntered up and said, “My favor of agreement with Her Highness.” He dipped a serene nod at Trystan’s scowl. “This verdict directly affects Jayd, after all.”
“Verdict?” And of course, she still could not seem to find the mute button on her affronted snips. Her nickname had been well-earned. She really was a sass, but only on her best days. On her worst—and this was going down as one of them—she was the shrew of the Cimarrons instead. “I was not aware this was a trial, gentlemen. If that is the case, what is the accusation? Do I get to mount a defense, or have you already erected the gallows?”
“Pardondais, Princess.” Santelle dipped a stiff bow. “A regrettable but accidental choice in vocabulary.”
“Bullshit. Of the highest order.” Luckily, she kept it to a low grumble this time.
It did not stop Ev from driving a fast elbow into her thigh while rising to his feet.
“In any case, gentlemen, we have arrived at the nucleus of your point,” he said. “The facts you have managed to kindly unearth and bring to my attention.”
Kindly?
Jayd kept the riposte completely silent this time. Aloud, she filled in, “Yes. The facts. About my lineage, correct? Oh, come now, brother,” she chided in response to Ev’s surprised gawk. “Do you think I have not suspected until now? Not heard the scandalized whispers in the palais halls as I pass? Not noticed the slurs about our maimanne, uttered too loudly to be misspoken? So now you all do not have to be so coy, do you?”
“We mean no disrespect, Princess.” Santelle’s interjection was harder to pick apart this time around. His tone was earnest, but his gaze was shifty. “Our only goal here is the truth.”
“So you can take it public to every man, woman, and child in Arcadia,” Evrest supplied.
“Not necessarily,” Carris cut in.
Jayd spurted out a laugh. “Well, of course not. Because the necessary thing here is…what, I ask? What serves the people…or the Pura?”
“And what would you have them know, then?” Santelle rebutted. “That the princess they have adored for twenty-four years is a sham? A pretender without a drop of actual Cimarron blood in her veins? That she is the product of an affair Queen Xaria was having while King Ardent was fighting with his men on the Mediterranean? That while he was helping to thwart a secret invasion from Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, Xaria was consorting with a commoner? That we have collected physical evidence, including your maimanne’s recorded confession, to confirm all of it?”
“A recording the queen was not aware of,” Evrest countered. “Secured by a woman she considered a trusted friend.” As he snarled the last three words, he rose to his full height. Jayd could not remember her eldest brother ever looking so terrifying but terror-filled in the same moment. “She was confessing the contents of her deepest heart to that friend, who kept the recording because she knew it would fetch a high price one day—a bribe the Pura were apparently willing to pay. For what it is worth to any of you, that woman’s betrayal has sent my mother to her sick bed.”
“She will see no one,” Jayd all but accused. She will not even see me. The daughter who needs her the most right now. The girl who needs so many answers.
“Perhaps she should have considered the consequences when spreading her legs for someone other than—”
Santelle’s own croak was his interruption, as Evrest charged over his desk and into the man’s personal space.
Jayd hissed in satisfaction as her brother wrapped his huge fist around the bonsun’s neatly knotted necktie.
“Shut. Up.” Ev’s order was low and lethal, making the air itself shudder. “I refuse to suffer the muck from your sewer of a mouth, Fortin Santelle.”
For a second, Santelle looked like he’d be smart about heeding that order. But only for that second. Soon enough, he sputtered, “Every word I speak is—”
“The truth?” Evrest twisted his hold tighter. “You dare use that as your justification, when everyone in this palais knows you were one of the cockroaches who helped my father sneak into half of the brothels in the Eve District?” He loomed in closer, narrowing his glower. “Or is that why you have such solid knowledge of how a woman opens her thighs?”
Santelle’s face became a cosmetic vegetable salad. Tomato red. Beetroot magenta. Eggplant purple. His seething mouth was a contrasting line of furious white. “How dare you, sir!”
“I am not your sir,” Evrest seethed. “I am your king, and you will address me as such.”
“Ev!” But Jayd did not move to stop her brother. In truth, a diced vegetable salad sounded delicious.
“Perhaps we should all take a deep breath and a step back.” Despite the placation, Carris moved up and brushed the air with his palms. “We are not here to start a war, Your Majesty.”
“Just a one-sided trial,” Jayd countered.
“No.” The man spiked a frown her way. “We are here in a spirit of…let us call it partnership. To work together on the challenge before us all.”