Glass of Revenge

~8~

Dorian Haviliard, King of Adarlan, paced his tower room angrily. The letter seemed to stare at him accusingly from his desk.

He was more than angry, he was furious, livid. How could they think so ... so little of him? How could they accuse him of not caring, of not paying attention to his post war alliances. Didn't the years of friendship mean anything to them?

How dare they, he fumed. How could they blame him for not caring, for not paying attention to the world around him? Dorian glanced at the letter on his desk from the Terrasen royals again and scowled.

Yes, he had heard of the threats that were being made against Rowan and Aelin but he had assumed that it would have been taken care of by now. The people who served Aelin in her court were good at their jobs, after all. The spies employed by Aedion and Ren were rumoured to be the best on the continent. Dorian could only wish that the spies under his employ were half as good as their jobs.

At that moment, the door to Dorian's tower room screeched open and Dorian whirled around, reaching for the sword strapped at his waist. Upon seeing who was at the door, he relaxed, sighing. His bad day had just gotten a hell of a lot better.

He smiled brightly at Manon, but then scowled at his favoured spy, who had walked in with his fiancée.

"It appears, Athril, that you aren't doing your job as well as you should," Dorian grumbled at the man, his annoyance plain. "Why haven't you been keeping me informed of what's going on?"

"What are you talking about?" Athril replied tiredly. He'd had a long day so far and wasn't in the mood to be reprimanded for doing his job where the king wasn't.

"You know bloody well what I'm talking about!" Dorian hissed angrily. "And I wish to know why I wasn't kept informed!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Athril growled. "So either just tell me or shut up. I've had a long day and I can't deal with this now."

"Liar," Dorian hissed. "You lie. You know exactly what I'm talking about, so you had better hurry up and tell me."

Manon looked carefully back and forth between the two men. Truth be told, she thought she had a fairly good grasp of what was happening. Of why Dorian was in such a foul mood. Over the last several months she had paid much more attention to state affairs and alliances than Dorian had. Truth be told, she believed that laziness was the root of Dorian's practices – he'd rather have his nose in a book for an hour than pay attention to the politics of his kingdom for a single day. And Manon knew she wasn't the only one to have noticed it. She knew Athril and several other courtiers were aware of just how bad things were getting, for they had broached the subject with her. And now, it appeared, the other kingdoms on the continent were starting to notice.

And that was literally the worst thing that could happen at the moment. For there were far too many people spread across the various kingdoms who were still furious at the way their nations had been invaded by Adarlan. Too many rulers who were bitter about the way Adarlan had treated their people. Bitter at the way they had been forced to bow the knee to a man who was little more than a demonic tyrant. Bitter at the way their people had been sold into slavery and murdered – just for standing up for their rights.

Deep in her old, wicked bones, Manon knew that there were plenty of people out for revenge, who would just love to give Adarlan and its people a taste of their own medicine. Who wanted Adarlan and its nobility to know precisely what horrors that they had endured for the last decade. The terror and the despair. There many out there who wanted to carve up Adarlan's territory and divide it between the other kingdoms on the continent so thoroughly that Adarlan ceased to exist. And while Manon loved Adarlan's king, she found that she couldn't blame their enemies from being angry. That she understood them.