Chapter 1

ONE

Tempest

The king's royal banquet had barely been going on for an hour, and Tempest was about to lose her mind. She did not know how she was managing to sit, quiet and obedient, surrounded by people who were conspiring to frame Talaga for everything that was going wrong. It did not help her nerves that she was serving as a double agent.

She ground her teeth together. Winter's bite, she hated how that sounded. She eyed the gilded merriment around her. If anyone knew that she'd aligned herself with the Jester… Tempest blew out a soft breath. Anyone associated with the renowned Dark Court was quickly executed without hesitation. If she wasn't careful, she'd find herself hung from the nearest pole.

"They should be exterminated," a weasel-like man with thick, caterpillar brows muttered to his group of companions.

Tempest hid her scowl and kept her expression blank, taking a slow sip of her cider. It would be so easy to take out the blathering aristocrat. Her fingers twitched with the need to hold a blade.

Calm yourself. Killing everyone will solve nothing. Stop thinking like a Hound and think like a spy. Think like the Jester. What would he do?

Tempest bit back a laugh. She was reasonably certain that Pyre would waste no time in dismantling the king's court from within. He certainly had the skills and manipulation. But murdering Heimserya's war council and its royal family—particularly the king himself—would not help the Talagan cause. No, it would only make things worse. Talaga did not have the numbers to survive an all-out war against Heimserya, which was why Pyre and his band of shifters needed Tempest.

A double agent.

She set her goblet down and smoothed her hands over her silky dress, all the while studying the highborn murderers around her. She still could not believe she allowed herself to be caught in the Jester's intricate web.

One week had passed since she'd seen him.

A beautiful woman glanced in Tempest's direction and whispered to her companion. How long could Tempest keep her secrets? She wasn't overly worried about the gossips in court, but one of her uncles was bound to figure something out—Aleks, Maxim, or Dima . Tempest caught the eye of her fourth and final uncle across the table.

Madrid. Calling him her uncle was a bit of a stretch. He'd had a hand in training her, but he'd left the rest up to the other men. Not that she minded terribly. She was woman enough to admit that the head of the King's Hounds scared her. His gaze slid over the crowd, pausing briefly on her .

Tempest feigned calmness, even as her pulse sped up. The slight tension in her shoulders disappeared when Madrid's attention moved on. She needed to be wary of him. Temp had no doubt Madrid suspected, at the very least, that she was keeping something from him. But she hoped her obvious discomfort around King Destin was enough to distract him from the truth.

She examined the king's empty dais. It was a relief he wasn't in attendance tonight. It was difficult to hide her loathing for the man. Guilt pricked her. Partly, it was due to the king's betrayal of his people and his intent to frame the Talagans for the drug currently sweeping its way through village after village, killing almost everyone who consumed it. His alarming confidence, lusty appetites, and ruthless desire to gain whatever he wanted was problematic. Especially since he was determined to have her.

On the positive side, he hadn't sent for her all week. His chambers were not somewhere she wanted to be. Ever. Sharing the king's bed, or becoming his consort, was undoubtedly his intention. Her face twitched, and she clamped down on the urge to sneer at the thought. It seemed impossible to keep up the ruse that she was interested in him. And dangerous. He wasn't one to be trifled with. For a moment, Tempest worried over the reason why the king hadn't sent for her. Maybe he was capable of occasionally being too busy to deal with his hedonistic impulses. If only wishes came true.

Ladies simpered, and young men strutted about trying to catch the females' attention. It made her sick. A war was brewing, people were dying, and yet these people were drinking and eating like nothing was wrong.

"You do not seem to be eating much, Tempest," Madrid murmured. He spoke so quietly that nobody took notice of their conversation. Even though he stood on the opposite side of the table, she heard his words.

She blinked. The man moved too silently for his own good. "It is difficult to eat when talk of war is filling the air," she replied.

"Never took you for someone with a weak stomach," a highborn man joked.

Tempest arched a haughty brow at him. "We could take this outside and I could show you how weak I'm not." That shut the pompous peacock up.

Madrid eyed her and turned back to the conversation at hand. Her other uncles pushed forward to listen in.

"Another village was hit yesterday," one of the members of the war council said. He was an aging man, with a lined face and graying hair. She didn't know for sure, but his nasally voice was too unique to forget. If she wasn't wrong, Temp believed him to be the man she'd overheard conspiring with the king to frame Talaga for everything going wrong in the kingdom. He was an ordinary looking sort of man. Unremarkable. It was hard to believe that such depravity lurked beneath the surface. What sort of man would kill women and children? She hated him.

"It was closer to the capital this time. Barely in the forest at all," Madrid commented.

The relief that washed over her was quickly followed by shame. People had died, and yet she was thankful it wasn't the village her mum grew up in. It was a wicked, selfish thought, but it was there nonetheless.

"This is concerning."

Tempest stiffened at the king's voice behind her .

The snake had slithered from his lair.

In a wave, the men bowed. Temp bit the inside of her cheek when the king's hand rested on her left shoulder, his thumb brushing her collarbone. He didn't look at her as he moved closer to the group.

"Before we know it, the shifters will be upon us in Dotae," he said. "It's only a matter of time before they prey on some of the more isolated villages."

The isolated villages… It was as if he knew what she was thinking.

She did not manage to suppress the shudder that ran through her at the thought. She glanced around. Thankfully, nobody was paying enough attention to her.

"There have been captures of the drug responsible for the deaths in several of the affected villages," Madrid said. The lead Hound was an observant man and only spoke when he had something of value to say. "Its roots definitely derived from the South Isles."

"Has Aleks had any further luck determining what exactly the drug comes from?" the king asked.

"Very little. The drug has been expertly purified. We have only been able to link it to the South Isles because of a few spies in the forest watching the trade routes," Madrid answered.

"It is only a matter of time before full-on war breaks out across the nation," the king replied, convincingly upset.

What rubbish.

"Obviously, we do not wish this to happen," he went on. "To go to war against the South Isles would ruin our relationship with them forever."

It was uncanny how easily King Destin could lie. He was the one who was orchestrating the entire disgusting plan, though hearing Madrid talk of spies in the forest made her stomach lurch uncomfortably. Did he know what his king was doing? He must. He was the lead Hound. As much as she didn't want to believe any of the Hounds had anything to do with the king's treachery, she couldn't let her affection for them cloud her judgement. It was almost her downfall before.

Framing the Talagans for poisoning villages in the forest was just the beginning of King Destin's plan. Never mind the fact that most people killed by the drug were shifters . Looking back on it now, she could not believe she had been so na?ve as to believe the Talagans were responsible for destroying their own people. It had taken Pyre—the Jester—showing her what the villages along the border really, truly looked like for Tempest's eyes to open to the truth.

No, it took so much more than that.

Shame welled in her belly that she had not believed what she'd seen when she had seen it. It had been obvious the villagers were not fighters. She thought of Rina and little Aspen running their bakery without a care in the world. Except they did have a care in the world; all around them, their people were dying, the men going out to defend them and never returning. When all this was over—if there were any Talagans left at all—the number of women compared to men of marriageable age would be terribly out of proportion. It would be difficult to repopulate the Talagan people.

Perhaps their low female population had doomed the shifter race in the long term without any need for a war at all. A dark thought indeed. She glanced at the king from the corner of her eye. The fact that he planned to bring the South Isles into the mix was worrisome. She'd swallow her hat if he didn't have some scheme to invade the South Isles, too. Temp rolled her neck. That was the last thing the kingdom needed.

"You would think the shifters would know that attacking in this way will only lead to their demise," the king's youngest son drawled from his father's left-hand side. "I guess they are too stupid and lazy to come up with a smarter plan of attack."

"Lazy and stupid," the crown prince replied, then sloppily drank from a goblet of wine. "They are beasts. Monsters. Of course they are lazy and stupid!"

Tempest barely kept from rolling her eyes. The king's stupid sons were spouting unintelligent rubbish again. How surprising.

"That's right," the younger son replied. The two princes continued along their increasingly insulting topic of conversation, which had absolutely nothing to do with the politics spoken about by the adults around them and everything to do with flaunting the ignorant views that their pampered upbringing and privileged lifestyle afforded them. Tempest wanted nothing more than to bite out a retort, but she didn't.

Silence sometimes was an ally.

Tempest held her tongue even though it pained her. She struggled to believe that the younger prince was just one year her junior; she felt decades older than him. Tired, too. Had she always felt this way? Or just since she'd met the Jester? Even though she loathed the kitsune, at least she wasn't as na?ve as before.

She blankly gazed at the two princes. Thank the stars she was never as stupid as those two. The crown prince certainly lacked the handsome, striking features of his father, and was dull to a fault. He was rarely seen without a glass of wine in his hand and was prone to weasel himself out of any and all responsibilities that might otherwise have been put on his shoulders.

Tempest watched as King Destin's nose wrinkled when the crown prince gurgled down the remains of his goblet and let out a resounding burp. The king made no attempt at hiding his disgust of his eldest son.

Her attention moved to the younger prince. She liked him even less, but for different reasons than his elder brother. He seemed altogether more calculating, cunning, and sadistic. She recalled him tormenting animals as they grew up. And not even two days prior, Temp had caught him harassing a pretty servant girl in the corridor, threatening to have her dismissed if she did not come up to his room after the banquet. She hid her smile at the memory of how she herself then threatened the prince in a shadowy alcove after the servant girl had fled.

The younger prince caught her eye and lifted his goblet to her. Tempest didn't return his salute. She knew what it really meant. She'd caught him unawares and was now within his sights. Temp wasn't afraid of him, but she knew better than to underestimate him. Both of King Destin's sons were unsuitable for the throne, that was to be sure.

The king's boisterous voice pulled her attention back to him. She eyed his wide shoulders and his handsome form dispassionately. He was a man in his prime. Since he'd taken no liking to either of his sons, she wouldn't be surprised if he attempted to sire another male heir.

He glanced over his shoulder at Tempest, a charming smile lighting his face. It did not mask the greedy, predatory glint in his eye as he cast his gaze down her figure. Tempest immediately looked down at her plate of untouched food, wishing for nothing more than to flee from the banquet table .

Stupid. Stupid . Her attention on him would surely have him seeking her after the meal. So much for avoiding him.

After what felt like an appropriate amount of time staring at her hands, Tempest dared to look back up and was relieved to see King Destin engaged in conversation elsewhere. But the crown prince was now looking at her, and, when he caught her eye, he winked. Winked. Winter's bite. Could she not escape vile men? Tempest ignored him and shoveled food into her mouth in the hope that she could end the dastardly meal. That was if she could keep it down. The food was lavish and luxurious—full of butter, cream, and herbs—but it tasted like ash in her mouth. All Tempest wanted was a loaf of bread shaped like a tulip from Rina's bakery and a bowl of heartwarming rabbit stew . A stew Pyre had made for her.

Stop thinking of him.

She scowled and swallowed an altogether too-large mouthful of food. The Jester. A despicable knave. And yet, she preferred his company to the fiends surrounding her now. Tempest did not want to think of Pyre, with his quickly swinging moods, wickedly seductive smile, and confusing intentions. If she dwelt on him for too long, her heart did strange things to her. Things that were not acceptable at all.

She dropped the pretense of eating and scanned the table. Her lips thinned when she spotted the younger prince looking at her. He licked his lips in a very deliberate fashion that made her want to stab him. A dagger found its way into her hand, and Temp leaned her elbow onto the table, deftly twirling the weapon through her fingers, causing the blade to dance and spin at an alarming speed. He didn't flinch. The prince watched her every move. She stopped spinning the dagger and used it to pick at non-existent food between her teeth like a barbarian. Let him think she had no manners.

The smallest movement from Madrid caught her attention. He shot her a disapproving look that screamed: Act like a Hound, like a lady . The two statements were not mutually exclusive; however, Tempest had witnessed many of her Hound uncles using blades to clean their teeth. Though I venture they never did so at the king's table. With a grimace, she slid the dagger back into its sheath at her hip. She was drawing more attention to herself than she wanted.

A feminine snigger—an unexpected noise considering there were but three women at the table—reached her ears. Tempest did not imagine the snigger belonged to the single other woman on the war council, and so could only conclude that its source belonged to none other than the king's one and only daughter Princess Ansette.

Interesting.

Tempest bent forward slightly to look down the right-hand side of the table and caught the princess's eye. The teenage girl was smiling at her. It was not mocking, nor disgusted, nor forced.

It was genuine.

Perhaps not everyone in the royal family is so bad, Tempest thought, risking a smile in return. Perhaps there is hope for one of them yet.