Page 66 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“You have not formally asked me—to be your king.”

She took a deep bored breath and rolled her pretty eyes to me. “Darling of my heart, my sweetness, my all, would you do me the kindness and play pretend to be king until I kill you?”

I leaned back on my seat. “I’ll think about it.”

“Would threatening to slit Driada’s throat or Mal’s help you think a bit faster?” Her expression pinched with pain and the silk glove she wore burned on her right hand to reveal the band of our bargain flickering bright.

I tsked and stood to get a water jug from the middle of the table to wet my handkerchief and put it over her hand. “Play nice, love.”

She pulled her hand away from me, breathing hard. Not from the imaginable pain that breaking part of the bargain had caused, but from anger. I’d won a round, and from the deadly look on her face, she’d make sure to win ten others from me.

“Was the pain worth it when you gave Driada that necklace?”

She smirked, a wicked tilt to her face and her eyes lit with fire. “Don’t like that, do you? Me messing with your little family.”

“No, actually, I don’t,” I said, leaning back in my seat.

That seemed to please her because she was more amused than what I’d seen her be in ages. “Heard of your little outing,” she started. “Hanging is not my thing, I prefer bloodier displays, but it was fascinating to see you do it, nonetheless. What will Adriatians think of this cruelty you’ve committed on your people?”

“That you are mine and no one touches what is mine without deadly consequence.”

Her eyes flashed and grew hooded with gilded ire, but she seemed to quickly recover because a feigned smile was plastered back on. “Your paper leashes are unnecessary.”

“Love, if I ever leashed you, you’d know.”

“How do I say this simply?” Her mouth curved with to a sneer. “Stop putting claims on me.”

“I put a ring on you.” I looked at her empty fingers. “Though you chose not to wear it. That claim is called marriage. Want me to explain how that works?” I asked, leaning forward on the table.

She mirrored my movement, coming close to my face and tracing a finger over the silver band I wore on my ring finger. “It melted off my finger. Not lightning approved. Are you lightning approved?”

“Are you flirting with me?” She made to pull away, but I wrapped a hand around her wrist and pulled her to me again. “What’s wrong?”

Her lids were heavy with exhaustion. It was perhaps why she said, “Everything.”

“Let’s start with one.”

She swallowed. “There was something that caught my eye in one of the Ahmes Lore pages,” she lazily said, pulling a folded piece of paper from her pocket and passing it to me. “All the other symbols have a similar shape in construct, clean cut lines and shapes. Mostly made of circles, squares, crosses and rectangles. This one looked nothing like that. Visha could not read it, nor could any of my court or scholars. Olympians were very secluded before and after the attack, the outer world sparked no curiosity for them enough to learn forgotten languages. There was nothing in our libraries when Visha and I checked. I got a feeling that you might know.”

And she was right. “The writing is in old Laoghrikrease, the original language the unblessed spoke before they changed the alphabet to match our common tongue. It means: Vas son of Zoltan, born of…Norodoh.” What? Picking up the paper, I flipped it sideways and upside down. No, it still said the same. “Love, are you certain these were the letters?”

She nodded and then leaned forward. “Why is the unblessed Isle named in her diary? Who is Vas, son of Zoltan?”

“I don’t know. We have very little on any important figure of the unblessed.”

She blinked in surprise. “But you can understand their language.”

“Only learned it because I was bored, love, it was not in my teachings. Nothing on the unblessed ever was. Now I’m thinking I should have been more bored and learned more. Only to impress a little Winter Princess.”

“You’re grating.”

“And you like it.”

She dropped her head back on the rest and stared at me.

I did the same, staring at her.

And we stayed like that till the sun disappeared along with her light.