Page 25 of King Foretold (Realm of Four Kingdoms #2)

The King of Mountains flipped over the table laden with food and threw a porcelain bowl across the room.

It shattered against the wall, and the jagged pieces rained down over the three cowering court ladies.

But none of them moved, other than to tremble in fear, as they knelt with their foreheads pressed to the floor.

“You bitches expect me to eat this trash you served me?” he snarled. “You dare insult your king?”

“N ... never, Your Majesty. We w ... would never,” the oldest of the gungnyeos stuttered without raising her head.

The king gripped her low bun and jerked her head up. “Now you contradict me?”

“Please, Your M ... Majesty.” She sobbed. “I beg your forgiveness.”

The sheer terror in her eyes appeased the king for the briefest second, but his lust for suffering roared back to life when a younger court lady whimpered from the floor.

He shoved away the old gungnyeo, who cried out as she fell atop the shattered porcelain bowl.

The king salivated at the sight of her blood and picked up a sharp, pointed piece as he turned to the other gungnyeo.

He held her chin in a punishing grip and forced her to look at him. He saw her fear in the whites around her pupils and calmly pressed the tip of the broken porcelain into her exposed throat. When her eyes nearly rolled back, he laughed.

“It would be an honor for you to die at the hands of your king, would it not?” The king licked his lips as a crimson drop of blood rolled down the court lady’s pale neck. “Would you like for me to take your pathetic, worthless life?”

He forgot that even animals fought for their lives when they were cornered.

So when the young gungnyeo thrashed against him and the sharp porcelain slipped in his hand, he instinctively tightened his grip on his crude weapon.

The king hissed, wincing in pain. Annoyed at the interruption to his playtime, he glanced down at his hand.

“No.” With a beastly scream, he brought down the broken porcelain on the gungnyeo’s throat and threw her twitching body aside. “Out. Get out of my sight. Now.”

The two remaining court ladies each grabbed an arm of the dying female and scrambled out of the room, dragging her behind them.

He was too distraught to take pleasure in the streak of blood left on the floor.

His hand stayed clenched at his side for a long while.

He had to be mistaken. It had to be that lowly gungnyeo’s blood on him.

Even so, he shook with dread as he opened his hand and stared down at his palm.

The King of Mountains wanted to unsee the sign—the sign that the Kingdom of Mountains had accepted his son as its true king—but the blood continued to well from a gash that should never have been.