Instead of returning to see me himself as he’d promised, the king had me brought to him. But not before I was given another change of clothes, curiously complete with leather vest, high boots, and a weapon belt—minus the weapons. I looked almost like a real soldier again. My escort was unarmed. The king had a very different regard for my talents than Banques and his goons. As I padded forward, a fog ebbed in and out around me. It wasn’t hunger, but memories and words I couldn’t flush from my head. I squeezed my eyes, trying to make horrific images vanish. Animals got him. I made myself focus on a distant point down the hall. The faraway point was all that mattered. It kept the world from turning upside down.

The guard stopped at a door, and I was led into what appeared to be the king’s private dining room, the drapes drawn against the bright of day. Tall candles glowed atop golden candlesticks on a table set for two.

The king turned as I entered the room, his hand absently pressed to his side, and I wondered if there was a pocket inside his vest that held treasure

—or were his ribs simply aching? These are hard times. Had he been injured? His eyes swept over me, and he smiled. “I see they brought you proper clothes this time. Good. You deserve to look like the premier soldier you are.”

“You mean the premier soldier who was stabbed, starved, and held in a dark cell for countless days?”

He grimaced. “Fair enough, but if I could explain.” He pulled a chair out for me to sit.

I shook my head, refusing his offer.

“It was a mistake,” he said. “They didn’t know who you were.” “I screamed it through the door every day.”

He looked down and sighed as if dismayed. “Prisoners scream a lot of things, I’m afraid.”

“Why do you have prisoners? Why are you here?”

He stepped from behind the chair, walking closer to me, taller than I remembered. “I mean no disrespect,” he said, “but if you don’t mind, that’s a question I would like to ask. Why are you here? At the arena I saw you slug the Patrei in the jaw, and then shortly after that, you arrested him at knifepoint and hauled him back to Venda to face trial for harboring fugitives.”

“At knifepoint? How would you know that last part?”

“Oleez, a servant who was there, told General Banques about the confrontation.”

Had Oleez been there that night? I didn’t remember seeing her, but she could have been hanging back in the shadows. It would explain her sharp look in my direction.

I studied the king. He was an enigma. Different. He was still the tall, broad-shouldered king I had met at the arena, though more well-groomed now, and with an air and presence about him I hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t his clothes or how he carried himself—it was his demeanor that had changed. The king before me was brooding, almost meditative, his words calm and even. Thoughtful. Where was the clueless buffoon who shrugged and grinned and tapped his fingers together like a child? Was it the hard times he had mentioned that made that king disappear?

“I’m here because I had orders from the Queen of Venda to escort the Patrei back to his home,” I answered, still uncertain how much truth was safe to share. “She said I had overstepped my bounds by arresting him. There was no evidence he knew who the fugitives were that he harbored. Some of them didn’t even have warrants.”

“So hunting down fugitives is what you were really here for all along?

Not treaty violations?” I nodded.

Color flushed his neck. “And you didn’t think to tell me?” His eyes were hard steel looking into mine, and his words clipped. “I am the king, after all. But maybe you only saw me as a simple farmer shopping for Suri.” He looked away and a deep breath filled his chest as if he was trying to shake the resentment I’d heard in his tone. But where there was resentment, there

was awareness. He wasn’t completely oblivious. He knew how others viewed him and his reign.

“Please,” he said, walking back to the chair. He pulled it out a little farther. “I thought you should have a more substantial meal. You have some catching up to do.”

I eyed the chair, and then him. I remembered the luxurious bath and the fine bed linens and didn’t move. “Why am I feeling like a goose being fattened up for a holiday dinner?”

He sighed. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe I’m trying to make up for overstepping my boundaries? For the egregious break in protocol? For being busy with other matters and not paying attention to who was taken prisoner and how she was treated?”

Had he only been juggling—and dropping a few balls in the process? I knew from Jase that Montegue had become king unexpectedly a few years ago when a draft horse crushed his father. He was only a little older than Jase, who would be—

An angry fist grabbed my heart and shook it. I still expected Jase to walk through a door. I couldn’t stop thinking of him as alive, busy, vibrant, taking care of what needed to be done, already scouting out borders, drawing up new trading rules, explaining to his family about me. None of that was going to happen. I felt myself being pulled under the current once more, everything about me unsteady, trying to breathe. I reached up and felt his ring on my finger.

Don’t fight it, Kazi, lean back, feet forward.

His voice, so clear in my head. So close. So determined.

The king’s eyes remained fixed on me. Curious. And, strangely, patient.

I walked over to the chair and sat, but it felt more like I was collapsing into it. Every word, every effort, drained me. Jase was not coming through that door. Not through any door ever again. He’s alive, Kazi. He has to be alive. My head ached with the battle going on inside. I had lived through this battle before. I couldn’t do it again. Did anything the king had to say even matter?

Head up. Breathe. Jase pulling me up again and again. “Explain,” I said.

“Please, let me serve you first.” He lifted a silver cover from a dish and spooned some perfect, tiny roasted potatoes onto my plate that were delicately coated with herbs, and then beside them he set three boiled quail eggs. He drizzled a smoky golden sauce over it all, making it look like a piece of artwork rather than something to be eaten. It made me want to laugh. It was a glaring contrast to the grim news coating my mouth.

As he returned the silver cover to the dish, he hesitated, spotting my hand on the arm of the chair. “You’re wearing the signet ring?”

“Your general pulled it off the—” I blinked away the sting in my eyes. “He gave it to me. He called it a trophy.”

His brows pulled down and he shook his head. “He shouldn’t have done that. I can dispose of it if you’d like?”

I stared at the ring. Dispose of it? It’s only a cheap piece of jewelry to me. Did either the king or his general have any idea of the history this ring held? It’s been in my family for generations. Once it’s put on, it never comes off. I spun it on my thumb.

“Are you all right?” The king stared at me, waiting for my answer. “I’ll keep it.”

He sat opposite from me and explained that almost two months ago, Hell’s Mouth had come under siege by miscreants who raided businesses, burned homes, and preyed on its citizens. He was in Parsuss, and by the time news reached him, the lawlessness was out of control. A league run by a fellow named Rybart was conducting an all-out war, trying to gain control of Hell’s Mouth and the arena. Citizens were panicked. Some were dying. Worse, the Ballengers were doing nothing to help them, instead demanding more protection money first.

Impossible. Jase would never do such a thing—but would Gunner? I already knew he was impulsive and short-tempered. Trying to blackmail me to send a letter to the queen had been his idea. And I would never forget how low he had stooped when he held Zane out to me as a bribe. But would he break the Ballenger vow to protect the town and hold the citizens hostage for more money? Surely the rest of the family wouldn’t allow him to do that.

“It seems they had to find some way to finance their latest illegal endeavors,” the king went on. “As you are aware, they’d been harboring fugitives for some time, but it was for a very specific purpose. They conspired together to build weapons. They had stockpiled quite an arsenal.”

“But that’s not possible. There were no weapons. Beaufort said—” “They were there, all right. Luckily one of General Banques’s advance

squads of soldiers found the stockpile in a Ballenger warehouse and confiscated them. There was some damage done to the town in the battle for retrieval, but we used the weapons to eliminate Rybart and his ruffians. That’s what the army’s using now to protect the town.”

My mind reeled with a different truth. I knew what I had heard. Kardos had complained that Jase had taken their only working weapon, and we had arrested them before their arsenal could become a reality. There were no weapons, except for the one prototype that Sarva had fashioned—one weapon—and Jase had taken and hidden it. Who had made additional weapons? Had it been Rybart’s league all along, working with Beaufort to terrorize the town and turn them against the Ballengers? And now a whole army was—

That was another thing that made no sense. “But you don’t have an army,” I said. “How can—”

“I do now. I needed one quickly and had to hire private militia. My advisors recommended it and—”

“Mercenaries? You have hired mercenaries roaming the streets of Hell’s Mouth?”

“I’ve been assured they are professional qualified militia, and really, I had no choice. You have to understand, there was a war going on here. As I mentioned, property was being destroyed. Citizens were dying. I had to do something. It’s costing me a fortune, but Paxton assures me that profits from the arena will help me recoup some of the expense. If not, I will have no fields to plant next season.”

Everything had spun out of control. “You’ve taken control of the arena too?”

“Someone had to. Too many citizens rely on it for their income. If the arena fails, so does the town.”

“And the Ballengers? Where are they?” I asked. “Are they the prisoners you spoke of?”

He shook his head. “As soon as they knew their scheme had been uncovered, the whole clan managed to retreat into that vault of theirs in the mountain to avoid arrest. They won’t come out, and there’s no reaching them without blasting our way in, and that might bring the whole mountain down on them. We don’t know exactly who all is in there, and I really don’t want innocents to die.”

“You can’t blast through a mountain of solid rock.”

“The weapons we confiscated are frighteningly powerful. Some are handheld, but a few are similar to ballistae. They’re not like anything we’ve ever seen. We don’t know what the Ballengers planned to do with them. My one fear is that some papers have gone missing. I’m afraid the Ballengers may still have the plans in their possession in order to build more. We need to find those papers.”

“I burned the plans.”

He set his fork down and his chin lifted slightly. “So it was you who did that? I saw the burned-out workshop.”

“How did you know it was a workshop? Did Oleez tell you that too?” “No, it was another servant. Several of the staff were left behind when

the Ballengers fled. We’ve taken them in and given them work to help make their lives normal again. That’s what we’re trying to do with the whole town. We mostly have it back under control now.” He sighed and took a long drink of the wine he had poured. He added more to my untouched glass, filling it to the brim. “The problem is, the Ballengers have a few loyalists,” he explained, “and those few keep stirring up more trouble, making it harder to calm nerves. Commerce is suffering. Livelihoods diminished. Some citizens are afraid to go about their business as usual. I can’t blame them. The few violent loyalists are keeping the whole town hostage. I understand their loyalty. It’s all they’ve ever known, but the Ballengers have sealed their own fate. Their reign is over, and my loyalty is to Hell’s Mouth, to get it back on its feet again. What the townspeople need is some sort of conclusion. A finality to this horrible mess, so they can move on.”

He looked down and scooted a potato across his plate, examining it like it held the answer to his problems. “I may as well say it right now. I need your help. I’m ashamed I didn’t tell you up front.” His gaze rose to meet mine, the candlelight flickering in his pupils. There was a weight in them, something that made him look younger, a boy king who was overwhelmed. “This is all new to me,” he finally admitted. “I’m trying to step up and do what I should have done all along. Be the leader my subjects have always needed me to be, even the ones in the far reaches like Hell’s Mouth. Maybe if I had done it sooner, none of this would have happened.”

His dark eyes never left mine, searching my face like I held some coveted key that would fix everything.

“What do you want from me?”

He was direct. “Tell the town that the last Patrei is dead. But say that Jase Ballenger was found guilty of crimes against the Alliance of Kingdoms and executed in Venda by order of the queen. That justice has been served.”