Blood Royals Book #4: Long Live The King!

Chapter One: Scandalous Monarchs!

Lokefar
King Relian's POV
"I said I'm calm!" I pushed Cormac away.

"You are not calm." He is serving as a barricade between me and Adair. I badly want to wring the life out of him. I want to finish what I started in the meeting room.

"Hey! Hey! No cameras!" I heard Stephen getting in the face of a few reporters who have broken the line they are supposed to stay behind. "Get back now!"

The press will have a field day with this.

My eyes are fixed on Adair. He is coming out of the meeting room looking like the victim. He and Nilsa are completely on the same wavelength. They are the supposed victims and I'm the bully.

"Are you calm?" Cormac asked me again.

"I'm calm." I sighed. "I swear I'm calm."

He still stood in front of me until Adair and his group were escorted out. It's only when he was gone that Cormac moved. "You screwed up big time!" Penni went off on me. "Your majesty."

The way she throws in my title after she goes off on me is funny but not at this moment.

"What happened in there?" Adan asked me.

Penni was right when she said vested parties would back Adair's democratic plea that Daa Haan breaks away from Chea Niva. Daa Haan is a port duchy and having a port is big business. I want Daa Haan back for three reasons. Economic advantage, political reasons and to free the people from a tyrant posing as a democratic leader.

Chea Niva will still be economically stable even if we lose Daa Haan but why should I lose the duchy? My ancestors are turning in their graves at my inability to get it back this far because of these diplomats who keep getting in my way!

Politically, if I let Daa Haan go, I'm setting a dangerous precedent for the remaining duchies. In essence I'm telling them that if they break away, I will do nothing.

For the people. Adair is acting like an angel right now. But when everyone stops watching he will turn into the monster I know he is. With Nilsa whispering in his ear and playing fugitive to a 'tyrannical king' as she puts it, I can't entertain it anymore.

"Stephen, some space please."

Stephen instructed everyone to leave and stood guard at the door leaving me with Cormac, Beatrice and Peni. "When he leaned over, he said something that made me snap."

"What did he say your majesty?" Beatrice asked me.

"I can't repeat what he said but I can tell you that he was once came really close to sexually assaulting my wife. He was reminding me of it. I lost my cool. I apologize." I made eye contact with all three of them. "I know we worked hard to make this meeting a success. It was not supposed to go like this."

"There's no need to apologize your majesty." Beatrice addressed me. "I can clearly see that Stoll Adair isn't looking for peace. What he wants is to make you look bad."

Nilsa wrote a book.

Yes, my damn sister wrote a book exposing my father's affair with General Taof. Thank goodness she didn't know about Delaney! She exposed my mother's affair with the Duke of Saine Neane and my days of debauchery in my teenage years and early twenties. She didn't leave out my abdication plans, Renée's bad hacking habits and a lot of other scandalous things. Only my grandmother has come out of this unscathed because she and scandal do not exist in the same sentence.

"More than Nilsa already has? This can't get worse." I walked away.

Cormac kept close. "I'm sorry about what he almost did to Renée. I would have reacted the same way if I was in your place."