He finally stops moving. “I found out some things about your brother and it has put us in danger.”
No. My brother may be cold and he isn’t a saint, but he wouldn’t actually-
My thoughts break off as Kofu turns around and I let out a gasp. His right eye is black and swollen shut, there are lacerations across his beautiful dark skin that I recognize as wounds left from a whip, and his lip has a cut across it.
“My brother did that?” I ask softly as my heart rate kicks up.
There’s no way-
“Yes.”
Chapter Seven
Why would I think my brother isn’t capable of beating my husband?
I’ve seen him do much worse.
And yet-
My brother’s threat rings through my head to tell Kofu to mind his business.
I blow out a breath of air and move away from Kofu, sinking down on the bed and placing my head in my hands.
He’s telling the truth and you know he is.
I look up and find Kofu watching me.
“Tell me what happened,” I say lowly.
After a moment’s hesitation, he drops the bag he was in the process of filling and moves over to me. He takes a deep breath as I finally notice the smudges of blood on the collar of his shirt.
“I went with you brother on his meeting with the king of Rhauft,” he starts as he pushes his hands in his pocket. “It was supposed to be just a routine meeting, one of the ones where they just bullshit and ensure that the peace between the two kingdoms is still good, it's why the guards are still allowed in the room, because the matter isn’t supposed to be too private.”
I can sense the but coming and sure enough it does.
“But the prince and king began to discuss some sort of trade, I wasn’t sure what exactly until the king gestured for his adversary to bring something out. That’s when they came out.” His body shudders.
“Who are they?” I ask as I look up at him with worried eyes.
He presses his lips into a thin line. “The women. I thought they were just your run of the mill prostitutes, it's not uncommon for the prince to… indulge.” His eyes leave mine for a moment before he looks back at me and it appears as if he’s going to be sick. “But then they started to get younger and younger until I found myself looking at a young woman who can’t have even hit puberty yet. She was scantily dressed and I was almost sick on the spot, especially as the king leered at her.” He sways on his feet for a moment before getting ahold of himself. “And that’s when they started talking about the king trading the women to your brother as a token of his support and to show he’ll have his help when he needs it in the future. He never mentioned quite what he would help your brother with, but I suspect…”
He trails off as my stomach drops and I feel ill. “What do you suspect?” I manage to get out.
“I suspect that it will be helping your brother overthrow some of the other kingdoms and take their lands and people. They never directly said it, but it was implied multiple times.” My heart rate picks up at his words. “There was the mention of the deadkrest.”
My heart stops at that because if there was talk of the deadkrest then Kofu has to be right. The deadkrest were the last to try to change the way the Six Kingdoms of Wysata were ran. From my understanding, they’d tried to change it for the better but their plan was thwarted and they were exiled to Ezowel.
That was over a century ago and no one has tried such a thing again.
My mind thinks of my brother and the cold eyes he tries to hide behind charming smiles.
If what Kofu says is true, he will start a war.
“What else happened?” I ask as I stand and pace, trying to push back the nerves that are overtaking me.
Kofu pauses before he lets out a sigh. “The king wanted to have… interactions with the young girl.”
Bile rises in my throat.
“He demanded that she be taken to wash up first, so I volunteered to be a part of the guards who took her back.”
My head whips around at that and Kofu holds his hands up in surrender. “Just listen, my love.” The words that usually bring a flutter to my heart don’t in this moment. “We took her back and I knocked out the other guard on duty and let the girl go.” He shakes his head. “I knew it wasn’t smart, that there’d be no way to hide what I’d done, but… I couldn’t-” His voice cracks as his body shudders.
“Of course you couldn’t.” It's the reason I fell in love with him, a man with a heart bigger than the moon.
“I tried to lie and say the girl possessed some sort of power and I lost control, I’ve heard of body jumpers before and it's a skill they have, to control others. The king was irate, and I knew the prince didn’t believe it but he calmed the king down. When we returned to the kingdom, the prince requested to speak with me and in my gut I knew I was in trouble. The next thing I knew, I was bound and chained and someone was beating the living daylights out of me. That was when your brother knelt in front of me and demanded that I stay out of his affairs. He told me that if I stepped one more foot out of line, it wouldn’t only be the end of me, but you too, Aphaedra.”
