Chapter Five

KEYARA

She waited at the cabin for at least an hour.

It felt like an hour.

All right, maybe it wasn’t quite an hour. But she felt a strong pull to go back that was impossible to ignore, and before she knew it, her feet were carrying her back to the castle.

As she approached the kitchen door, she heard the excited chatter of her friends on the other side, and then a booming male laugh.

~Who could that be?~ she thought. She didn’t think guests of such importance would bother visiting the kitchen.

She carefully opened the door and peeked inside. On the table in the middle of the room sat two rabbits that must have come from the snares, but they were completely dwarfed by a massive skinned deer.

Anne and a man who was clearly one of the visitors from Kodia were carefully butchering it.

The other girls were standing off to the side, admiring the sight of the fresh meat, as well as stealing frequent glances at the man who was handling it.

Anne was chattering away and clearly charming him as only she could as they worked side by side, ignoring their audience. He laughed again at something she said.

Venison! Key couldn’t even remember the last time they’d had it. The hunters occasionally managed to bring one in, but the servants never got a taste of it if they did. It all went to Pershing and the guards.

She wondered if they would be able to have some tonight after the guests were finished with dinner. Surely there would be enough left, judging from the size of it.

She suddenly noticed another absurdly tall man standing off in the corner, almost hidden from view, watching and eating an apple.

~We don’t have apples~, thought Key. They must have brought some with them.

As she stood in the doorway, she listened to Marjorie whispering animatedly to Bess a couple of feet away. Something about her brother seeing a massive wolf in the woods while he had checked the snares.

Key smiled to herself. Marj leaned toward the dramatic.

Jenna spotted Key hovering in the doorway and quickly motioned her over, hissing her name.

Key shut the door quietly and tried to be unobtrusive as she wove through the kitchen, but the man with the apple had glanced up the moment she entered.

His gaze clearly followed her moving across the room, the apple frozen at his lips. Suddenly his eyes seemed to go blank. Then he turned without a word and walked out of the kitchen.

The other man murmured something to Anne as he wiped his hands on a rag quickly and followed the first man out.

She grabbed Jenna’s hand as she reached her side. “Deer?” she whispered. “Where did that come from?”

“Isn’t it great?” Jenna whispered back. “King Ash and his men brought it. Along with apples and bread and cheese. Enough food to make a fine dinner!”

“Get to work, girls!” snapped Anne. “This dinner isn’t going to prepare itself!”

Everyone rushed back to work. Keyara grabbed her apron, tying it around her waist as she went to Anne’s side to take over butchering the deer.

“No, no, dear, Mateo and I have this almost finished,” said Anne quietly. Mateo must have been the man Anne had so skillfully charmed.

“Go down to the courtyard and grab some eggs from the henhouse. We will need them for the pastry. Stay out of the castle as much as possible.”

Key sighed but nodded. It seemed Anne’s overprotectiveness was still in full effect.

She made her way down the hallway toward the courtyard. She heard a door creak open to her left. It was the two men from the kitchen joining the others in the meeting. The courtyard was to her right.

Keyara hesitated, but then rushed down the hall toward the meeting room instead. It wouldn’t hurt to listen for a moment.

The door had been left slightly ajar, and Keyara stood with her back toward the door, her ear turned toward the opening to catch the conversation taking place inside the room.

She heard Pershing droning on about trade routes and fair compensation. Suddenly he stopped talking, midsentence. The room was completely silent.

Curiosity overcame Key at the sudden change, and she slipped to the side of the door, her back pressed against the stone wall and peeked through the open crack to see what had caused it.

She was looking directly at King Ash, framed perfectly in the crack she was spying through. He was exactly as Jenna had described him. His frame seemed to barely fit in the chair he occupied.

He was muscular but sleek at the same time, the proportions of his body perfectly matched. His white-blond hair was tied into a knot at the top of his head, while the sides of his head were shaved to almost nothing.

He was dressed simply, for a king, but the leather garments he wore were clearly of the finest quality.

His hand was raised in the air, effectively silencing Pershing. His head was slightly cocked toward the door Keyara listened from, but his eyes were still focused on Pershing standing before him.

“Yes, the trade route is crucial for us. I will give you an additional thousand marks a year for access.”

Keyara gasped softly. She knew he was offering an absurdly excessive amount for their measly road.

There were at least two other roads King Ash could use to bypass their kingdom while still gaining access to the other areas of the realm, and she knew they did very little trading themselves with the mountain kingdom.

King Ash’s gaze flashed to the door at her quiet gasp, locking eyes with her.

She seemed frozen in place by his gaze, her mind growing cloudy. His eyes were a vivid emerald green, and she felt herself wanting to go to him, though she knew she couldn’t enter the room and give herself away.

His intense green eyes seemed to darken as he stared at her, what looked like mist swirling in the whites of his eyes.

That tingle she had felt before returned. It seeped slowly through her body and made her feel weak with pleasure as it enveloped her.

Pershing was stumbling over a reply, but it was clear Ash was not listening. His focus was totally on her.

She suddenly seemed to come to, feeling like she was breaking out of a trance.~ I can’t be here!~ she thought.

As difficult as it was, she tore her gaze from his and rushed down the hall toward the courtyard.