“Der’mo.” Theo muttered the word under his breath.
I didn’t need to speak Socairan to gather the general meaning.
Taking a breath, he straightened his shoulders and put on his usual stoic expression. He led me to one side of the semi-circle shaped table, gesturing for me to sit at an empty chair facing the clan leaders and the few lords who sat behind them. Their heirs, I assumed, from the way Theo joined them.
A chill ran through me as soon as he left my side.
Forcing my features into a calm neutrality, I did my best to present the portrait of Socairan contrition, even though I felt like the complete opposite.
The clan lords narrowed their eyes, first at me and then Iiro in suspicion, but the duke didn’t seem to mind the scrutiny at all. His posture was relaxed, his expression confident, and when he spoke, his voice commanded the attention of the room.
He addressed the leaders in the common tongue, a dry recounting of sending his brother out on patrols only to wind up with a most unusual prisoner.
Several sets of wary eyes snapped to me.
“You may remove your hat now,” Iiro ordered.
“Gird your loins, gentlemen,” I mumbled under my breath, struggling with the well-placed pins that Inessa had used to keep my curls at bay.
Judging by the way Iiro stared daggers at me and Theo just shook his head, I hadn’t been as quiet as I meant to be. Fortunately, my hair took the scrutiny off my words.
I had barely slid the hat from my head when gasps sounded throughout the room, one of the dukes going so far as to physically recoil from my hair. I bit back a sigh.
His loins had not, in fact, been girded.
The other faces were a mix of shock, disgust and disbelief. Everyone’s but Lord Evander’s, that is. He stared at me through narrowed eyes and a carefully guarded expression that gave no hint to his feelings.
“This proves nothing,” the man next to Iiro declared loudly.
His words were heavily accented, but in a different way than I’d heard before, almost as if he were trying to swallow his vowels. “There are many fire-heads in the Loch Lands.”
He pounded his fist on the table, and someone further down chimed in to agree.
“What are you getting at, Iiro? As Bison said, she could be anyone,” questioned a man with a long gray beard in a red tunic.
A few others went back and forth in a blend of Socairan and the common tongue, making me dizzy with all of the noise.
Iiro held up a hand to quiet the room, and the arguments died down, some far more reluctantly than others.
“Your ring, please.” He held out an imperious hand.
My hand immediately shot to the chain around my neck that I never took off. Untucking it from the front of my dress, I pulled the chain around my hair and stood to hand it to Iiro.
Obviously, this was important for my case, but that ring was one of the only pieces of home I had with me.
At least I still had my dagger.
He passed my signet ring around the table, allowing the men to see the sword and shield of Lochlann, a symbol they knew, and then pointed to my tree in the middle.
“As you can see. It is a rowan tree, for their Rowan child.”
I choked on a laugh. Who knew Iiro had such a flair for theatrics?
“Named after her grandfather, King Rowan of Luan,” he continued on.
Ah yes, my namesake. The revered king, the strong and steady leader.
If only he could see me now.
The poor man probably rolled over in his grave when I was the one named after him instead of my sister.
Someone to my left cleared his throat, drawing the room’s attention.
Lord Evander.
The arrogant man sat back in his chair, the very picture of confidence and control as he spoke.
“And how do we know that this ring isn’t a farce? You could have had it made. Why do you expect us to believe you?”
Iiro looked down his nose at the much younger lord, hesitating before he replied.
“Because I give you my word, Lord Evander.” The duke seethed. “If you have proof to the contrary, then by all means, present it.”
Evander’s face remained impassive as he studied Iiro for several stilted moments. The tension in the air was suffocating, expanding with every second they stayed in their silent showdown.
Two of the older men in the center whispered back and forth until the one in the red tunic spoke up again.
“We have a way to discover the truth,” he declared, calling for one of the guards near the exit. “Fetch Juho.”
The clan leaders shuffled in their seats, looking to the man for an explanation until he relented, but not before casting a disdainful glance at me.
I held out my hand, and Iiro absentmindedly dropped my ring into it while he listened to whatever the other duke was saying.
Instead of using the common tongue like before, he spoke in his dialect. Whatever he said had the leaders completely enraptured. Of course, I couldn’t understand any of it, so I was completely unprepared when the man they called Juho walked in.
And even more so when the eyes that met mine from the doorway were strikingly familiar.
Der’mo, indeed.
Juho stepped closer with a wicked gleam in his eye, only that’s not the name I knew him by.
He had gone by Donal when he worked in our stables back in Lochlann last summer. Though it had been a year, I recognized him immediately. I rarely forgot a face, and certainly not when it was a face that had been firmly planted against mine for the better part of an hour.
The man stepped forward, dipping his head in a small bow toward the duke in red. They went back and forth in their dialect before Donal walked closer to me with a smarmy, knowing expression.
I glared at him. He was a spy. He had infiltrated our home so thoroughly, and I…I had bought every second of the act.
“Princess,” he greeted as he neared.
“Traitor,” I returned.
Donal, or Juho, rather, laughed before facing the council again.
“Yes, I am very familiar with this princess.” There was no mistaking his meaning. “She is who he claims she is.”
My jaw dropped, my face going as red as my curls. He was making that sound much worse than it was. The arse clown wasn’t half as familiar with me as he tried to be.
“Very familiar? I—” I started to snap back at him, but Iiro shot a glare at Theo, who then looked at me with a mixture of warning and pleading in his eyes.
Very well, then.
I shook my head and firmly closed my mouth. Perhaps I should have been relieved that he positively identified me for the council, but knowing the last boy I kissed before Theo was a traitorous spy didn’t feel like much of a consolation.
The room erupted into chaos as the dukes began speaking over one another in a combination of the common tongue and their own dialects, all except Evander.
He studied me silently, his calculating gaze the exact shade of the sky just before a storm hits.
A shiver ran through me, and I looked away, unable to bear the weight of his stare. Worse than the noise, though, was when a hush descended, ominous and heavy.
Theo had said the Summit would take days, but maybe this was it. Maybe they were going to order my death here and now.
My heart was pounding in my throat, the anticipation threatening to weaken my knees. But when Iiro spoke, it was four simple, anticlimactic words.
“We will reconvene tomorrow.”
