The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12)(51)
Author: J.R. Ward

But the scent of her anxiety and depression were too well known to him.

In truth, the court’s treatment of his beloved angered him to the point of violence—and created a rift between him and all who surrounded him. He felt as though he could trust no one. Even the Brotherhood, who were supposed to be his private guard and those whom he should have faith in above all others, even those males he was suspicious of.

Anha was all he had.

Leaning down to him, her hands cradled his face. “Wrath, my love.” She pressed her lips to his. “Let us proceed unto the festival.”

He gripped her forearms. Her eyes were pools to drown in, and the only terror he knew in this mortal coil was that someday they might not be there for him to stare into.

“Halt your thinking,” his shellan beseeched. “There is naught that will happen to me now or ever.”

Drawing her against him, he turned his head and laid it against her womb. As her hands threaded through his hair, he studied her table. Brushes, combs, squat bowls of chromatics for her lips and her eyes, a cup of tea beside its pot, a wedge of bread that had been nibbled upon.

Such prosaic things, but because she had gathered them, touched them, consumed them, they were elevated to the heights of value: She was the alchemy that turned it all, and him, to gold.

“Wrath, we must needs go.”

“I do not wish to. This is where I wish to be.”

“But your court awaits.”

He said something vile that he hoped became caught in the folds of velvet. Given her soft laughter, he ventured it had not.

She was correct, however. There were many gathered for his attendance.

Damn them all.

Rising to his feet, he proffered his arm unto her, and as she looped hers through the crook of his elbow, he led them out of their chamber and past the palace guards who lined the hall. Some distance thereafter, they descended a curving stairwell, the sounds of the gathered aristocracy growing ever louder.

As they closed in upon the great hall, she leaned on him more, and he puffed out his chest, his body growing in stature as a result of her reliance upon him. Unlike so many courtesans, who were eager to be dependent, his Anha had always retained a certain prideful decorum within herself—so when, on occasion, she did require his strength in some way, it was a special gift to his most masculine side.

There was naught that made him feel his male sex more keenly.

As the cacophony became so loud it swallowed the sounds of their footsteps, he leaned unto her ear. “We shall bid them a hasty good evening.”

“Wrath, you must avail yourself of—”

“You,” he said as they approached the final corner. “That is of whom I must be availed.”

When she blushed beautifully, he chuckled—and found himself in fervent anticipation of their forthcoming privacy.

Rounding the last turn, he and his shellan came up to a set of double doors that were for their use only, and two Brothers stepped forward to greet them in the formal proper manner.

Dearest Virgin Scribe in the Fade, he detested these gatherings of the aristocracy.

As trumpets announced their arrival, the portals were thrown wide and the hundreds assembled went silent, their colorful dress and sparkling jewels to rival the painted ceiling above their coiffed heads and the mosaic floor below their silk shoes.

At one point, when his father had still been alive, he could remember being quite awestruck by the great hall and the finery of the aristocracy. Now? Even though the facility’s confines were as vast as a hunting field, and its dual hearths the size of civilian dwellings, he had no such illusions of grandeur and honor.

A third member of the Brotherhood spoke in a booming voice. “Their Royal Highnesses, Wrath, son of Wrath, ruler of all that is within and without the race’s territories, and Queen Anha, beloved blooded daughter of Tristh, son of Tristh.”

In a rush, the obligatory applause rose up and rebounded upon itself, each individual’s clapping lost within the crowd’s. And then it was time for a royal response. According to tradition, the King was never to lower his head to any living soul, so it was the queen’s duty to thank the assembled with a curtsy.

His Anha performed such with unrivaled grace and aplomb.

Then it was the gathereds’ turn to acknowledge their fealty with bows for the males and curtsies for the females.

And now, with the group formalities exchanged, he had to go over to the line of his courtiers and greet them one by one.

Striding forth, he could not recall what festival this was, what turn of the calendar’s page or phase of the moon or change of season it marked. The glymera could think of countless reasons to congregate, most of which seemed rather pointless, considering the same individuals showed up in the same venues.

The clothes were e’er different, of course. And the jewels upon the females.

And meanwhile, whilst gourmet dinners were prepared and picked at, and slights and offenses were exchanged with every breath, there were issues of substance to be dealt with: suffering of the commoners because of the recent drought; encroachment on the part of humans; aggression from the Lessening Society. But the aristocracy worried not about such things—because in their view, those were problems largely confronted by the “nameless, faceless curs.”

Contrary to the very basic laws of survival, the glymera saw little value in the population that harvested the food they consumed and built the structures they lived in and stitched the clothing that covered their backs—

“Come, my love,” his Anha whispered. “Let us greet them.”

Lo, it appeared he had halted without knowing.

Resuming his footfalls, his eyes focused upon Ench, who was as always at the front of the line of gray-robed males.

“Greetings, Your Highness,” said the gentlemale—in a tone as if he alone were master of ceremonies. “And you, my queen.”

“Enoch.” Wrath looked down the courtiers. The twelve males were arranged by virtue of hierarchy, and as such, the last in line was barely out of his transition, from a family of great blood but lowly means. “How fare thee.”

Not that he cared. He was far more interested in who amongst them had upset his beloved. Surely it must be one, if not all: She had no handmaidens, at her own request, so these were the only figures she had any contact with at court.

What had been said. Who had said it.

It was with no small amount of aggression that he proceeded down the line and greeted each one according to protocol. Indeed, this ancient sequence of private address in the midst of a public gathering was a way of acknowledging and reaffirming the advisers’ position within the court, a declaration of their importance.