"A dance!" the Queen of Yarzat cried out, her eyes glittering with the wild giddiness Alpheo had learned to love.
She looked precisely as radiant as the morning sixteen winters ago when two sodden burlap sacks had been tossed at her dainty feet, one holding the butchered corpse of his usurping uncle, the other , much smaller, her eldest cousin, snuffing out the last bloodline that could have contested the throne beneath her skirts.
Their union had been baptized in the slaughter of her own kin, and even now, it staggered Alpheo how smoothly the butchery had settled. In any other place and family, a conqueror would have spent the last decade and a half waking in cold sweats, waiting for his highborn bride to slip three inches of steel into his ribs or to wake up with a river's of blood between his thigh.
Instead, here was his queen, flushed with spiced wine and yanking on his sleeve like an eager tavern girl, looking over for a small tip for a night of leasure.
