Her golden tree limbed crown sat on her desk. She pushed her raw tourmaline ring on her ring finger and pushed her fingers through her stark ginger hair. The elbow-length curls cascaded down her back. She stared at the crown again before placing it on her head.
This should piss him off.
She left her room a moment later and was not surprised when she found Lex waiting outside her door. Lex’s brows raised upon seeing her.
“Wow,” she mused, looking Aydra over deliberately. “Someone is looking to royally piss off the king.”
Aydra smirked and fell in step with her down the hall. “He deserves it after yesterday.”
“I told you we could make it clean,” Lex said, arms pushed behind her back. “Very quiet. I doubt many would be upset.”
Aydra almost laughed. “You sound like the raven.”
“Knew there was something I liked about that creature,” Lex grinned.
“Take a gander at which one he had Willow leave on the bed.”
Lex chuckled under her breath. “The pink one?”
“Powder blue,” Aydra told her.
“Oof,” Lex mused with a squint of disgust. “I can’t wait to see the look on his face when you walk in.”
The white stone hallways mocked Aydra as they strode down them. She fumbled with the sleeves of her dress, trying to pull them down enough to wrap the string around her ring fingers. She twisted her ring upon seeing the great portrait of herself and her brother at the end of the hall. The painters had drawn it onto the white rock, just as they had the last three kings and queens.
Lex paused a moment in front of it. “They didn’t do you justice, my Queen,” she affirmed.
“They rarely do the Queens justice,” Aydra agreed. “Makes me wonder if we were meant to only ever be an accessory on his arm.”
“Perhaps Arbina should have thought about that before creating you,” Lex said with a raise of her brow.
Aydra almost laughed. “Come. We are later than usual, I think.”
“I’m positive we are.”
They finally reached the double doors of the Chamber a few flights of stairs later, and the pair paused in front of it. Aydra twisted the ring on her finger once more and allowed a shiver to run down her spine. The Belwarks on either side of the door stared at her. She cracked her neck and gave them a nod.
The doors opened, and the great room went silent. Corbin stepped inside before her and started to announce she and Lex, but Aydra pressed her hand on his chest and pushed him to the side.
“I think they know who to expect this many minutes past the hour by now,” she uttered. She raised a brow at the staring faces around her, and every member quickly rose to their feet—all except one.
“Sister!” her brother, Rhaif, announced upon rising from his own chair. She could see the annoyance written in his dark eyes as he crossed the room towards her, his dark burnet cloak billowing behind him, the noise of his shoes echoing off the floor. He’d pushed his navy black hair back to one side, allowing his curly bangs the liberty to fall over his left hazel eye, the golden crown on his head standing out against the dark of his hair. One look over him and she knew she was not the only one who had gone swimming that morning. His natural golden skin glistened in the firelight.
“My dear sister—” he clasped her face tightly in his hands and brought her towards him, kissing her cheek in a manner than made her cringe “—what are you wearing?” he suddenly hissed in her ear. “I left you—”
“Did you have fun on the beach today, brother?” she mused, ignoring him as she acknowledged a few of the Nobles in the room with smiles and small fluttering waves of her fingers. “Your skin is positively glowing.”
He wrenched her arm down from her insistent waving and glared over her, his gaze daring to tear through her to her core. “You embarrass us before our people,” he whispered.
Her nostrils flared as she finally met his gaze. “Why? Because I choose to embrace who I am instead of hiding it?”
“And you—” he turned his attention to Lex as though Aydra had not spoken “—you encourage it!”
“You mean do I encourage my Queen not to shove her desires down into her core and instead wear it as she should be allowed to? Yes. I do encourage it,” Lex replied, her stature towering over the king’s.
One of the men at the table cleared their throat, and Rhaif turned back around and gave the Council member a smile. “Ah. Back to where we were, of course.” He linked his arm around Aydra’s shoulder and squeezed it as he led her to the table. “Sister, join us,” he said as he pulled out the chair beside him.
She took her seat, and without meaning to, met the eyes of the one person who had not stood up upon her arrival. The man sitting directly across from her at the other end of the twenty person table.
Venari King and Alpha, Draven Greenwood.
King of Noctuans, born beneath the cursed fated tree: Duarb Fatum Infinari.
Ruler of the southern realms.
Her enemy King.
The man whom the Chronicles say’s giver had once tried to ensnare Aydra’s own giver, Arbina Promregis Amaris, into a slave relationship. The man who’s only reason for even being at that table and invited to their kingdom was because of a deal struck between previous kings, King Stephan of the Promised and the Venari King Bailnor a hundred years earlier. A deal that said the Venari King would never have to kneel before the Promised throne so long as he kept to his own realm and swore to protect the south while the Promised kept to their own in the northwest.
Their races’ trust in one another had never recovered even after such a deal was struck, and the enemy hatred between them stirred at the surface of the room during every meeting.
Draven
