Dark Intent

"Cortez, king or not, I'm going to strangle you!" I shoved my way into the throne room, where guards milled around looking tense. Cortez, his parents, several of his advisors, and, I was furious to see, Isabella were gathered in a tight huddle on the dais, murmuring anxiously. Their conversation broke off as I stomped up the to the throne.

"Do you really think it wise to threaten the king, given the circumstances?" Isabella said, her lips lifting in a sneer.

"Do you think it wise that you should be talking at all?" I snapped at her. I was pleased to see her disdainful look slip. She shut up. I faced Cortez and put my hands on my hips.

"Why did you have my sister locked in her room?" I demanded.

"She needs to learn her station," Cortez said.

"Her station?" I repeated. "Her station? You almost got her killed, you stupid man! If she had been left in that room another two minutes at most she would be dead right now. And your precious heir would be dead too."

That at least made him shift uncomfortably. I continued to glare at him.

"Cortez, have you lost all control of your faculties?" I snarled when no one replied. "She is your wife, not some concubine brought here to serve your every whim and pop out your babies. I don't know what crawled up your ass and blocked everything up so the shit had backed up into your puny brain, but you better remove it. This is insanity. If she had been with me and Kai like she was supposed to be, this wouldn't have happened."

"Derek and Smith were outside her door the entire time," Cortez said, as if that were some sort of justification.

"Well then clearly, you need to fire them," I said. "Because they suck at their jobs."

The guards in question were standing nearby, and shot me icy glowers.

"No one snuck into that room," Smith snapped at me.

"Well obviously someone did, you monkey's ass, because my sister is currently lying in a hospital bed having the last remnants of a lethal poison drained from her system because someone inserted a tiny dart into her wrist." The doctor had found the tiny barb under Judith's skin. Someone had jammed it into her vein, and the poison was released into her bloodstream. The doctor said it was a complete miracle that she wasn't already dead when she was found. He said it appeared as though something had already drained much of the poison from her body, and just in time. But I decided I'd mull over that mysterious revelation later.

First I needed to slap some sense into my idiotic brother-in-law.

"Cortez, you should be less worried about Judith 'learning her station' and more worried about the fact that someone is trying to murder her."

"Don't you think I'm worried?" he said irritably.

"No," I said flatly. "I don't think you are."

A heavy silence met this declaration. Cortez's dark eyes burned into me, but I stared back at him coolly; unflinching.

"I will not lose my queen or my heir," he said finally.

"You will lose both of them if you keep behaving this way. This is the second time you've almost lost them. Judith won't take to being caged and locked away like a criminal."

"She practically committed treason!" Isabella cut in. "She should be grateful that Cortez even took her back!"

"It's pretty unfortunate for you though, isn't it, Isabella?" I faced her and arched an eyebrow, letting the implication sink in.

"You think I tried to kill the queen?" Isabella scoffed. I shook my head.

"No, of course not. You would never do that. You would hire someone do to your dirty work for you," I sneered. "And don't try to act all innocent and shocked, Lady Fontaine. You have plenty of reason to want Judith out of the picture."

"I don't need to murder my competition," Isabella said, lifting her chin. "I still feel that Cortez would have been better off marrying me, but I assure you, I did not make an attempt on your precious sister's life."

"Forgive me if I don't consider your word to be worth very much."

Isabella's eyes darkened and narrowed. "Well perhaps your little soldier had something to do with it," she said. "He was the one who found her, after all, and he is in possession of an invisibility cloak if memory serves."

Something dark and cold roiled in my heart, and I stepped forward, forcing Isabella back until her knees caught on the edge of the throne and she had to sit down. Then I could tower over her, and I stood staring down at her with dark fire flashing in my eyes.

"Watch that pretty mouth of yours, Isabella," I said slowly, enunciating every word. "Or I'll watch it for you."

"She's threatening me!" Isabella said shrilly, looking to Cortez. I felt a mean, smug satisfaction when I saw that she looked afraid.

"Captain Embry," Nikolai said, a faint warning in his voice. Cortez's guards shifted restlessly.

"Sam is the reason Judith is alive right now," I said, my voice loud enough to address everyone in the room, but my gaze remained trained on the woman cowering on the throne. "And he has no reason to want his sister-in-law or her unborn child dead. You would do well to remember whom you are talking to, and about, Lady Fontaine."

Isabella turned her eyes away, and I turned to face the others in the throne room. "Judith should not remain locked away in her room. She should be with me or one of the other Riders at all times. I'm not going to rest until whoever is behind these attacks is caught. They clearly have extensive knowledge about the castle, the guards, the routines, and the queen herself to have planted the bomb in her parking bay, and to have slipped unnoticed into her room or been close enough to her at some point to poison her."

"What exactly are you saying?" Margaretta demanded.

"I'm saying, this is an inside job. Whoever the attempted murderer is, they're someone who lives in the castle." I looked Margaretta, Nikolai, and Cortez in the eye. "I'm saying, Your Highnesses, that there is a traitor among us."