Stolen by the Rebel King
Chapter 67: Listening to Advice

Chapter 67: Listening to Advice

Daphne rose to her feet, determined to leave. She all but flung the napkin back on the table with a huff, twisting her wrist so that she could tug her hand away from Atticus’s grip.

Atticus refused to let go.

"I... I don’t understand," he blinked rapidly, feeling both confused and upset. This evening had not gone according to plan, and it seemed that Daphne was getting more pissed with every word that he spoke.

"I won’t be asking you if I knew what to do!"Atticus exclaimed, accidentally squeezing Daphne’s wrist hard enough that she winced in pain.

"Let. Go. Of. Me." Daphne hissed each word out, pure venom in her gaze.

"I’m sorry for hurting your wrist, are you alright?" Atticus asked worriedly, immediately letting go of her wrist.

Before he could take a closer look and determine if Daphne needed medical attention, she had pulled away and walked towards the door.

"Daphne! Your wrist!" Atticus tried to follow her, but she held out a hand to stop him.

"Let me make this clear to you, Atticus. I don’t want to see you right now. I don’t like you." Her eyes were cold, frosty, and deadly serious, and this was a lethal combination that caused pain to amplify in Atticus’s chest a thousandfold.

"And until you can at least figure out ’what to do to make it up to me’, I suggest you keep your distance. I might be, in your words, ’less than a novice’ with my ’lack of control’, but I’m sure I can still set your face on fire if I put my mind to it. Who knows? It might not even be an accident."

With that final parting shot, Daphne stormed off to her quarters. All she wanted was one peaceful dinner alone, but Atticus had to ruin it too.

Terrible man. She no longer had any hopes for him in her future.

***

"You’re actually hopeless," Jonah said with a shake of his head.

"Tell me about it," Sirona added. She ate another mouthful of the leftover pasta Daphne had cooked, her eyes squeezing shut as she sighed in bliss. "How is it still so good when it has already gone cold?"

"Because I have an amazing wife," Atticus said proudly.

"Not for much longer," Sirona added heartlessly.

"You have no right to brag when you nearly drove her away," Jonah pointed out as he tried to sneak a mouthful from Sirona’s plate, only to be heartlessly whacked on the hand. "Sirona!"

"You are really quite possibly the dullest man I have ever met. And I’ve met a lot of men that have minds thicker than rocks," Sirona said, ignoring a sulking Jonah.

Atticus groaned at her insult, but let it pass. After that disastrous dinner, he had left for his office, immediately summoning Jonah and Sirona’s presence to make sense of Daphne’s words.

Sirona had snuck into the kitchen shortly before they had ended dinner and was guzzling down the leftovers when she had been, once again, robbed of her free time. Thus, she felt no remorse when she showed up in Atticus’s office, a plate of gnocchi in hand and a bit of tomato sauce staining the corner of her lips.

With his friends present, Atticus had proceeded to fill them in, particularly of Daphne’s parting words to him before she had stormed back into her room and locked the doors shut from the inside.

"You’ve made your own bed," Sirona said, calmly licking the remaining sauce off the spoon. "Now lie in it."

"Isn’t it obvious enough?" Jonah asked, rolling his eyes. "She obviously wants to be able to roam the castle again without having guards follow behind her all day and night."

"You should know what the guards are actually for," Atticus said with a frown. "Right on our wedding night there were assassins that had broken into the castle past your defenses. I’m starting to wonder if you’re really deserving of your role as the head of the royal cavalry!"

Jonah merely rolled his eyes in response. Oh look, it was just like what Daphne said earlier! Truly, she knew her husband pretty well.

But instead he simply said, "From what we’ve found out from that piece of sodalite, the assassins from the first night and the mercenaries that had kidnapped the queen might have been hired by the same person."

"We know now that they’re obviously after Daphne. Dead or alive. But the question is who?"

"The sodalite is a dead end." Jonah shrugged. "We’ve managed to unearth some other important debris from the wreck."

"And we know that one of the mercenaries that had orchestrated the kidnapping is still alive somewhere," Sirona added. "Only two skulls were found. And judging by what Daphne had shared, it didn’t seem like the third man was with the other two at the time of impact."

"Maybe he just ran like a coward," Jonah suggested.

"Or he could also be burned down to nothing but ash," Sirona reminded.

"Whatever it is, not letting her roam about freely is for her own safety." Atticus sighed.

"Tell her. It’s much better than saying that my men are there to watch her just because you’re jealous of a mere lord."

"Eugene Attonson is definitely no ordinary ’mere lord’." Atticus scowled. "I don’t know how he had fooled her into thinking as such, but he had caused more than enough trouble for the court when he first rose to power."

"I’m just saying," Jonah raised his hands defensively, "it might be better to allow her to visit him. The more you prevent her from doing something, the more she would want to defy you. It’s human nature."

"I’ve allowed her freedom once," Atticus said. "All it resulted in was her getting smuggled out of the palace before promptly getting kidnapped. How is that still a good idea?"

"From what I hear, she agreed to leave without telling you because you angered her," Sirona said.

"And what happened to it being fine as long as you’re there to take care of her?" Jonah asked with a quirk of his brow. "Surely you don’t expect her to be cooped up in her room until we solve this. How can she not think she’s a prisoner?"

Atticus scowled.