ROME
Rome stepped out of the library with a frown dancing on his lips. He couldn’t believe he had the heart to smile especially since he had previously been worried about the meeting he had to attend with Erika and Chester.
It had felt wonderful to help someone in need and he genuinely hoped Elora and her siblings enjoyed their stay at the palace perhaps even coming to see it as a haven from whatever they were running from.
Perhaps that could explain what had caused him to act the way he did earlier.
He blinked, in hopes of forcing the pretty image of her flushed skin out of his head but was only successful in reminding himself of the lush press of her body against his when he had caught her. He shook his head and walked on, all the while scolding himself. He had more important things to think about than how prettily a damsel in distress blushed.
He stood for a second outside the courtroom, steadying his breathing as the anxiety that had lain dormant returned in waves that threatened to overwhelm him. Rome ran a hand through his hair and placed a hand on the chilly doorknob, clutching the book in his hand close to his chest. He then flipped through the pages looking for anything that would present a solution to the dilemma in front of him.
“Your Majesty?” A guard asked concerned.
He raised a palm, signaling him to wait as he flipped through the pages. The king needed to be armed and ready for the members of the court and the royal family of commotion and chaos.
He had seen the book years ago, during one of his late-night studies as he prepared to be King. That came from the motivation to be different from his father, Nathan, who never read much. He didn’t know the majority of the laws of the kingdom and delegated all he could to Kain Kurt. Kain Kurt, who had been the King’s Hand at the time was ruling the kingdom.
Kain had put his tentacles into every single economic loophole he could exploit and shifted laws in his favor at will. That had been the beginning of Nathan’s problems, which in turn had been the beginning of their problems. Kain had offered him his sister, Monica, to be his mistress and the whore had borne him three children. Kain offered him more and more things to distract him from his affairs of the kingdom and with that Kain was almost ruler of Hanaerum.
In his defense, Nathan had never wanted to be king.
The old king had taken over quite early as his father had died from battle wounds that had never healed. Some of the royal physicians had said the Elf invaders had poisoned him with their magic, as they couldn’t treat the injury well enough for it to heal.
Nathan’s father had been a good man, so the people said. The entire continent of Bale had prospered under his leadership. He’d repelled the Elf invaders from the east and had helped unite all the wolf packs. The southern slaves had seen a fairer hand under his rule. He hadn’t abolished slavery but he had asked that each master give the servants fair treatment and a wage to help them fend. They had called him ‘Ockred’ in the old tongue. It meant ‘deliverer.’
After his death, when Nathan became king and ruled with much brutality as Kain Kurt encouraged him to- the kingdom was no longer the same. The eastern invaders began to penetrate in little bits as no one watched the boundaries anymore. The slaves in Hanaerum and Alkarod had revolted, calling on any slave who would heed their call. Together, they had run off to the south and started a camp that grew to become an actual city of runaway slaves. We called them Blackfoots. And all the days of father’s reign as King of Hanaerum, we were constantly at loggerheads with them. Kain had made sure of this.
They had sought to free more slaves, and Kain had inspired Father to crush the will and spirits of the slaves, so they wouldn’t dream of running.
Rome looked down at the flipped pages of the book and found what he had been seeking. There it was under statutes for marriages, the same place he had seen it those years ago. And it read:
“If a Queen is deposed for any of the above reasons and the king decides to choose a mistress or wife by himself, he may decide freely any of the following;
The King may decide to take a certain amount of weeks to choose a maid of his choice. In those weeks the court will not force him…”