My Beloved Queen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

His eyes moved slowly about the room and settled upon the cruelly joyful figures of Ceorid nobility only long enough to sharpen his stare upon their crooked faces. He watched them, observed with sharp eyes as they drank and ate and drank some more. Never before had Isil gazed upon people more deserving of the reign of a monster.

The Ceorid nobility gorged themselves on the fruits of his queen's sorrow and delighted in the crooked pursuits of their tyrant king, and the longer Isil cast his glare upon them, the sourer the taste cutting his tongue.

The frown that weighed upon Isil's lips deepened, and a hot itch spread into his fingers. They started for his hip, but his sword was gone. He'd given it up at the gate like an enemy—a creature worthy of suspicion and wary eyes.

All this talk of peace, and in the end that was all it really was: talk. Cheap words, agreeable enough to ears willing to receive them.

With no handle around which to curl, his fingers instead wound themselves into a tight fist, and if he were not wearing gloves, perhaps he could look down and find that his knuckles had turned the color of snow.

The guard standing at the near end of the hall did not see his hand slip; the man did not see Isil at all. His gaze was intent upon the revelry before him. He watched with jealous interest as noblemen and women did as best they could to drink themselves into stupors that reeked of beer and wine, but as Isil scrutinized the guard, the Ceorid man was suddenly freed of his trance.

The guard started, and his head turned away from the revelry, to the door, behind which nighttime shadows were slowly gathering. The man moved to open it just a crack, and in doing so, his stature shifted. Isil saw him make to disappear into that growing darkness, but he hesitated, and instead, he merely peered into it.

His head was tilted, as though he'd heard something odd, but perhaps he thought it not too strange to risk abandoning his place. However, not a second later, Isil saw the guard turn again to the door, and this time, reluctance did not hinder the man.

The guard slipped into the night, and the shadows were eager to swallow him. He moved soundlessly; the uproar of joyous revelry deafened the ears of any possible spies, but it held no sway over their eyes.

Suspicion, dark and thin, began to crawl up the length of Isil's spine, and he narrowed his eyes at the door through which the guard had disappeared. Uncertainty was not a kind feeling, and it certainly had no business infecting the halls of a foreign castle.

Where had the guard gone?

Suspicion prodded at his feet, and his fingers began to slowly uncurl from their tight fist. Perhaps he should go after the man—see what exactly it was that had given him reason to abandon his duties—but no, he couldn't do that. If he left then he would be abandoning his queen—leave her to fend for herself in a den crawling with ravenous, crooked wolves.

He would not leave her.

He could not.

It was cruel enough that she was here, bound to a tyrant and his foreign castle, far from the only land she had ever known. It would be only further cruelty to force her to endure such strangeness alone, even if only for a breath.

So Isil did not move from his place behind his queen, and instead, he continued to watch the door, waiting to see when, or perhaps if, the guard would return. The suspicion climbing up his spine grew heavier with each second that passed, and slowly, he felt it begin to sink its fangs into the base of his skull.

Where was the guard?

What was keeping him?

"Sir Isil?" The queen's voice cut like sunlight through the dark fog suspicion had cast, and Isil's eyes fled with haste from the door. He turned abruptly to look at her, and the cloudy call of uncertainty spurred his hand to again reach for his hip.