Songs of the Hunted (Realms of Glass and Blood Book 1) by K. Fournier & Bethany-Kris

Author:K. Fournier & Bethany-Kris [Fournier, K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

Mattue

The sight of his brother drunken and slovenly, puking over the side of his bed into a piss pot below was a poor one. Misael’s next retch came with far less fluid to spill over onto the floor, thankfully, but it did nothing for the dankness of the bedchamber.

“Get out,” Mattue snapped at the slave clutching the bedspread to her naked chest.

She didn’t need to be told again.

Thankfully.

The king, on the other hand, was clearly thankful for nothing.

“Misael—”

“I’m dying,” his brother croaked.

Mattue inhaled a breath meant to settle himself for another round of reminding Misael where his priorities needed to be. In the midterm, his gaze caught another item on the bedside table. The pipe and small iron canister where his brother kept the opiate salts from the Red Seas explained why it was nearly noon, and Misael had yet to answer the many knocks at his door.

Moving across the room, Mattue pulled open as much drapery on the windows as he could, and even opened a few to let the stink blow out. All the while, Misael groaned in a mixture of pain and disgust, finding his way to his back on the bed and rubbing fisted hands into his eye sockets.

“My head is splitting … What … what was last—Anthia.”

The name came out of the king in a heavy rush.

Mattue only sighed where he remained standing near the window. It was easier to breathe the air in the room when it didn’t also taste of his brother’s vomit, semen, and many other things that he wished he couldn’t discern. An unfortunate part of being a halfling.

He’d become good at ignoring it over the years.

Much like Misael, and his own sins.

“Yes, your favorite one died, my lord,” Mattue said, needing Misael to get on with the day so that the two of them could see Eryx off into his banishment appropriately. Instead, the prince had already taken off, here the king still laid, clearly unwell, and Mattue needed his brother to get a handle on things.

One of them was a king, after all.

There were duties.

“Were you smoking the salts again?” Mattue asked.

“I’ll cut your tongue out, brother.”

“My lord, you forget days.”

“I want to forget everything!” Misael roared.

Pity.

A heartbroken king.

Mattue truly wished he could pull some sympathy for Misael over his state and guilt about Anthia’s passing, but alas, he did not. No matter how long this grief of his took to get past, Misael would never get over how he blamed himself for all of it. He didn’t need to speak those words to Mattue for his brother to know it was true.

“The boys did drag the orchard canals this morning,” Mattue murmured.

That news perked Misael up immensely.

“Did they?”

Too bad.

Mattue crushed his hope again. “And found nothing, unfortunately.”

The king fell back into the bed. “Fuck.”

“It wouldn’t matter. Even if they had found her, you would have had to bury her privately, without even a marker, Misael.”

“Better than nothing. Better than—”

“You wouldn’t even let her own son avenge her, but

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