Free Web NovelChapter 21: Chapter 21
Every servant he passed either scurried away or darted their gazes away. They were wary of him, ever since they saw what he was capable of with a blade in his hand. They were right to be wary, especially those who knew what he truly was.
Their fear didn’t stop them from whispering hushed words behind his back.
As he stepped into the grand foyer, his hand shot out and grabbed a young male servant by the arm before he could scurry away like the others.
" Where is she?" Exhaustion from the day’s events made it hard to keep the harshness from his voice. He had a short temper on the best of days but he was always in a foul mood when he was surrounded by the palace walls.
The boy’s adams apple bobbed with a swallow. " I...I..."
" The queen. Where can I find her?" Ragnar’s narrowed eyes weren’t helping matters. This was why Casilo always accompanied him whenever the queen summoned him. Casilo was a hardened warrior like Ragnar but the servants didn’t flee his path in fear. Coming alone had been a huge mistake.
The boy was probably imagining how he was going to spin their encounter into something more nefarious. A sordid tale he could regale his friends with later on. It had happened before, simple benign moments being skewed into something completely different and false. And the tales usually travelled faster than the actual truth.
" Throne room." The boy squeaked.
Ragnar released him immediately and went in the direction of the throne room, leaving the slack-jawed servant behind. The sooner he got the meeting over with, the better.
The voices coming from the throne room halted when he pushed through the heavy double doors. Entire conversations were abandoned in favor of gawking at him. He hadn’t expected to find the queen alone but there were far more people in the room than he had anticipated. About twelve in total. Men and women. Lords and ladies and their gazes had settled on him.
Ragnar was only seven years old when he first laid eyes on the tall marble columns of the palace interior, when he first walked the halls leading to his father’s throne room. The first time he came before the king, it wasn’t an interaction between a son and his father but as a subject and his ruler. He had been on his knees, forehead pressed down on the cool stone floor. His father had enjoyed the display.
The king loved winning on the battlefield but he loved when people came to him in supplication even more. It made him feel powerful. Like a god. freёwebnovel.com
Once again, he stood in the throne room, this time not as a small child forced before the king but as a man, a prince. There wasn’t much of a difference. He still felt on display.
The first thing Ragnar noticed was the king’s empty throne. It was a habit at this point. His eyes always went to the slightly larger golden throne before scanning anywhere else.
Lounged on her throne was queen Nheera. Like everyone in attendance, her gaze was pinned on him, her pale eyes like ice shards on his skin, scrutinizing him.
" Your majesty." He bowed in greeting.
" I expected you here sooner." Nheera gestured to the others in the room with them. " You kept us waiting."
Ragnar kept his head low. " My apologies, your majesty."
Nheera simply waved his words away.
" Do you know why I sent for you?"
Ragnar knew from experience that the queen didn’t want an answer to her question. He straightened and stared back at her with the blankest expression he could manage. It was the only way to survive an interaction with her.
" I was rather shocked when I found out you took your wife and her brother out of the castle without informing me or the king." She said. There was a deceptive gentleness in her tone as she spoke, like a mother affectionately chastising her child. It was an act she had perfected along the years, a role she slipped into in times like this when they were in the midst of others
Ragnar would rather be tied to the whipping post a hundred times over than be forced to endure a minute more of the queen trying to pretend in public like she wasn’t his biggest tormentor.
" Pardon me, your majesty but I didn’t know I needed to seek permission from the king before taking my wife to my residence." He said.
The queen’s expression didn’t change. " Being married to you doesn’t change the reason she is here. She was supposed to remain here until I and the members of the court have determined that she no longer posed a threat to anyone else. Have you forgotten so quickly that your marriage to her is the only thing keeping her and her brother out of the dungeons?"
How could he even forget when it had been one of the thoughts constantly on his mind.
The queen didn’t give him a chance to speak. " I sent someone to your manor in Amris to retrieve Circe, so the matter is already being resolved. They will be here by sundown, a shame you chose to live so far away."
A sharp ringing filled Ragnar’s ears, dulling his senses. He tried to keep his face neutral but it was a struggle. He knew that Casilo remained back to watch over Circe but when the queen’s men came, he wouldn’t be able to disobey the queen.
His eyes hardened. One step forward, two steps back. That was the song and dance they played. His hands clenched into fists by his side.
Everything. She was trying to ruin everything.
The gazes of everyone there bored into him, flaying his flesh open. Their stares grew more intense with every minute that passed. He turned and caught the gaze of Laheir Tavish, the king’s chief advisor. The man looked away almost immediately but not before Ragnar saw the impish smile on his face.
Ragnar belatedly realized that the queen was still speaking. He had momentarily tuned her out.
" While you were taking your time getting here, the members of the court voted on whether or not to reinstate the Dowry Act." A sharp smile stretched across Nheera’s face as she spoke, her emerald ring glinting in the light from the stained glass windows. " I never understood why it was abolished in the first place."
The vampires had a problem with their female population. The numbers of women among them were significantly lesser than that of the men. Males outnumbered females three to one.
Daughters weren’t being born as much as sons in Lamora, the very reason the royal family hasn’t had a daughter in three generations. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
It was a problem then as much as it was a problem now.
The Dowry Act was one of the oldest laws the vampires abided, so old that it predated Lamora itself. It was popular during Marzan’s rule and it allowed multiple men to fight themselves for a single woman’s hand in marriage. Marzen approved of this act, he believed it gave the men the ability to prove their worthiness to their intended bride. But it only ended up causing several men to lose their lives each year in these duels, and trials organized by the king himself, with the women involved being seen as nothing but prizes to be won at the end of it.
" It was abolished because the law was barbaric." The words erupted out of him. " We aren’t barbarians anymore. That was in the past, we are civilized." Ragnar glanced at every face gathered there. His words were met with silence.
This was why he hated coming to the palace. Something always went wrong, and it was usually the queen’s doing. She enjoyed him best like this, lost and scrambling to regain his grip on the situation.
The queen gave a derisive scoff. " Says the man whose name is whispered in the halls of fallen kingdoms."
Ragnar gritted his teeth. " I fought in those wars at the king’s command." He wasn’t the war-obsessed general like everyone tried to paint him as. Every battle he joined, he did so because the king ordered him too. It so happened that the king had sent him to fight in battle after battle, and Ragnar returned victorious every time.
" Without a doubt. Tell us, Prince Ragnar," the queen practically sneered his title. " You speak of being civilized. Do you behave civilized on the battlefield while slashing down your opponents?"
Laheir came to stand at the base of the dais. He exchanged a brief silent look with the queen before turning to face Ragnar and the rest of the gathered courtiers. He was a tall, slender man with an aquiline nose and thin lips that were now pressed into a line. His eyes were that of a raven, deep fathomless dark pools, sharp and brimming with forgotten secrets.
The look on the man’s face sent shivers down Ragnar’s spine.
" Half of the court strongly disapproves of your marriage and so do I." Laheir began. " The other half is still torn on the matter. They believe that if princess Circe should be married then she should have been given to someone else more deserving since you, by all accounts, have been married in the past. Perhaps given to a soldier or a lord. The members of the court have several unwed relatives, they are upset with the fact that you, your highness, were given freely on a platter what many of them might never experience."
" The court has requested the queen make the situation a bit fairer, and she acquiesced to our demands by reintroducing the Dowry Act where you will have a fair chance to prove yourself worthy of taking another wife. The trials will commence tomorrow at noon. Failure to comply will be followed by the immediate dissolution of your union with Circe Valdris of Westeria."
