She raged inwardly at him, nevertheless. How dared he lay violent hands on a Companion? How dared he think that such a despicable act would actually gain him the Crown? If he had come to her at that moment, she might have snatched up some old sword hanging on the wall and beaten him with the flat of it.

But as a little time passed, she regained control over her temper. Though she was still going to give him a lashing, it would be with her tongue and not a whip or a sword blade. And she had the first phrase ready on the tip of her tongue when he finally appeared.

She had thought that after such a monumental act of stupidity, Karath would have come to her contrite and looking for forgiveness. In fact, she could not imagine any other scenario.

Instead, he burst in through the door, slammed it behind him, and proceeded to shout at her, quite as if she were somehow to blame for all this, and as if this business of not being made King was somehow her fault, something she had concocted to keep him from his rightful place, and as if the debacle with Caryo had been something that she had planned to humiliate him.

And that made her furious all over again.

His ranting was like a spark in dry grass; she pounced on the first available pause for breath, and then she made her riposte.

“If you think I’m going to take your side in this, you are very much mistaken, Karath. I told you—and if I told you once about how things are here, I told you a dozen times!” Selenay shouted at the angry face of her husband. “The Council told you! Your own Ambassador told you! For the gods’ sake, Karath, it was in the marriage contract that you signed! In both languages! Just how stupid are you to have missed it that many times?”

She knew the moment that the words left her mouth that they were the wrong thing to say, but she couldn’t help it. Just how stupid was he? Or did he live in some fantasy world where because he wanted something, it would simply be given to him?

Well, maybe that was the way things had been back in Rethwellan, but that wasn’t the way it was in Valdemar.