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They both giggled.
“Oh, we’re doing vorarephilia now, are we?” Lilia asked, rubbing small, soothing circles on my back as she joked with the other woman. “Kinky.”
I lifted my head. “What did you say?”
“You know, eating someone while fucking-”
“Not that,” I said, disgusted. I pulled free from their arms. “You said…him leaving me.”
We’d just assumed…oh, how could we have been so blind?
I sought out the bald-headed guard from among the mass of people crowding the corridor. “What was the king’s mood this morning, when you last saw him?”
Aitor blinked at me. “Your Highness?”
“Hismood,” I insisted. “What was he like?”
“Um, quiet?”
I rounded on the four councillors. “And in your meeting,” I demanded, “how was Ren then?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Perhaps His Majesty was a taddistressed,” del Olmo began delicately, but Morales cut her off.
“Irate,” she clarified. “He was pissed.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Any of you care to explainwhy?”
Councillor Vidrio cleared his throat. “What we discuss in our Council meetings is hardly for anyone else’s ears, king consort, especially not guards, teachers, andgardeners-”
“I don’t give a fuck,” I said flatly. “Talk.”
More awkward glances. More shuffling of feet. I was about ready to ask Jiron to do that threatening thing with his arms again when Zapatero looked over at me warily.
“The matter of the king’s lineage, sire, and the…ah,problemsassociated with such. Specifically, the absence of an heir.”
Morales took over. “And how he could obtain one,” she continued bluntly, clearly having taken to heart Dima’s words about not prettying things up when talking to me. “We…even went so far as to suggest that His Majesty might consider siring a child out of wedlock, as a bastard would still bear his royal blood.”
I turned on my heel, walked to the entrance of the storage room, and promptly sat down cross-legged on the floor without another word.
“Your…Highness?”
“Mathias?”
“Are you…”
I ignored all the fussing, forced in a deep inhale, and then let the breath go.
“The king hasn’t been kidnapped,” I informed the open door in front of me.
Shock quietened them all down. For a moment, blissful silence reigned. And then the incessant questions started up again.
“How do you know?”
“Are you saying-”
“Then where is he?”
