The Broken World by Lindsey Klingele

Author:Lindsey Klingele
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-07-13T04:00:00+00:00

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

King Cedric III had an itch he just could not scratch.

Literally—he had an itch above his knee that would be near impossible to reach through his layers of pants and robes. And even if he could reach it, it would be considered rude to interrupt his audience session to do so.

So he bit his lip, trying to take his attention away from his knee and focus on what the man in front of him was saying. It was difficult to do, especially as the air in the audience chamber was so stifling hot that more than a few guards around the edges of the room were on the verge of nodding off. Plus, the man speaking to Cedric had his head down and directed his words at the ground rather than looking his king in the eye.

His king.

It still felt unreal to Cedric, though his coronation ceremony had taken place almost immediately after they’d put his father in the ground, nearly two months past. But it was a lot to get used to all at once—the sheer number of men and women, from the guards to the cooks, who looked to him for direction every single day; the way servants no longer joked with him playfully, but instead averted their eyes when he spoke; the way the crown on his head pulled tight at the skin and gave him a constant headache—

Stop complaining, Cedric. Pay attention.

“—almost gone, Majesty. Not all of it, but almost all, and we don’t know what to do . . .”

The man standing before the high-backed throne looked just a few years older than Cedric. He had wheat-colored hair covering the top of his head, though it was hard to make out his features as he stared intently at the stone floor. Cedric’s mind wandered as he imagined what the man was staring at down there, until he eventually realized the man had stopped talking.

And he hadn’t heard the last part of what he’d said. Or the first part. Or most of the middle, really.

Cedric looked up for help, and the first face he saw was Kat’s. She stood about ten feet away from him in a long green gown. She looked regal and calm, the picture of a soon-to-be queen—that is, a soon-to-be queen with two swords tucked into her belted sash and a look of pure annoyance on her face. She widened her eyes at Cedric.

The room was silent. Everyone expected him to speak now.

“Um,” Cedric said, borrowing an expression from Liv without even realizing it.

The wispy-haired man continued to stare at the ground, while Kat continued to shoot disapproval across the room using just the power of her eyes. Cedric shifted in his seat.

“It’s almost all gone, you say?” Cedric finally asked, grasping onto the one part of the appeal he remembered hearing.

“Yes, sir,” the man said, his eyes still on the ground. “Not cut off or anything like that, just dying away, like’s been poisoned almost. But who would poison trees?”

Cedric opened his mouth, but was at a loss to find words.

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