Page 17 of A King’s Trust (Heart-Mage Trilogy #1)

17

QUITE REAL

B eau woke to a faint sound and blinked blearily. The bed was empty beside him, though still warm where Penamour had fallen asleep curled in the curve of his body. He rubbed at his eyes and stretched, enjoying the delicious soreness of back-to-back nights of increasingly athletic sex.

He assumed Penny had decided to sleep in her own room, or wanted a drink, or any of a million things. Beau could hear a handful of celebrants still in the common room singing; maybe she was dancing. But then he heard Elias’s voice outside, raised and irritated.

Beau inhaled sharply. Tell me she didn’t go looking for Elias to ask about last night.

His thoughts went straight to the drawer where the Perception Stone sat innocently. He shouldn’t eavesdrop on Elias. That would be extremely rude, an invasion of privacy.

But then…El always had it on him, and presumably had for a long time. Beau had no secrets from him; was it truly fair for Elias to have so many from him?

Beau’s fingers were feeling around in the drawer for the cool, smooth stone before he’d consciously decided to reach for it. As soon as he touched it, Penny’s voice whispered directly into his ear.

“—can pretend, just for the course of this conversation, that I’m not an idiot, Elias.”

“It’s not my place to comment on the intelligence of a duchess, Your Grace.”

“Gods, you are in a mood, aren’t you? Stop trying to run away. You’re not going to avoid this conversation. What, you think you’re going to stand ten feet from me for the rest of our lives and we’re never going to discuss this?”

“A man can hope.”

“ Elias . Why did you tell him you didn’t want more than one night? You’ve confused him to hell. He’s been trying to convince himself all day that he’s the asshole for giving in to you.”

El sighed, and Beau sat up as quietly as he could. “This has nothing to do with you.”

Penny’s noise of incredulity was so descriptive Beau could picture the face that went with it. “You don’t think I might have some interest in how deeply in love my husband is with his guard ? And don’t lie, it’s obvious you’re in love. You’ve been each other’s everything for years. You trust each other implicitly. And you finally gave in—so why are you being so cruel to him?”

“Cruel?” El chk ed annoyance in the back of his throat. “I’m trying to put him on his throne with a wife he loves, as he deserves, and not get in the fucking way! How is that cruel?”

“So you are trying to get out of my way? That’s what this is about?” She exhaled sharply. “Did you think I didn’t know about the two of you when he proposed?” After a pause, “Then why assume you were in the way? The road to Beau’s heart isn’t so narrow that only one person can walk on it. I didn’t agree to this marriage to carve you out of his life. I thought it was understood that anyone marrying him would be joining a relationship that already exists?”

Beau’s heart jumped, racing at the thought of what she proposed. Was that possible? A relationship with both of them?

“There is no relationship. It was one night, and it’s over. He and I already agreed.” At the finality in Elias’s voice, Beau’s heart thumped harder, aching.

“And you’re both so happy with that arrangement, clearly,” she said dryly.

“It’s not my job to be happy. It’s my job to protect him.”

“And his happiness?”

“ You’re responsible for his happiness now.” Elias’s tone was viciously acidic. “You’re his wife. You’ll be his queen, the rightful owner of the seat next to his. I’m his guard . One fight, one bad day, and all he has to do is fire me. Hell, not even that. All he has to do is put me outside, like he did with Jude and Oria.”

“Beau would never do that to you.”

No, I wouldn’t , Beau silently agreed.

“Maybe not before. But now? You poisoned an entire court against him without breaking a sweat. It’d be nothing for you to poison him against me.”

“So it’s me you don’t trust. Even though I’m the one asking you what it would take to make this work. Do you think I’m designing some elaborate trick to hurt you both?”

“It’s not—” Elias went silent, and the sounds of Ma in the kitchen, deep in her cups and laughing uproariously at a joke from Viv filled Beau’s ears. “I actually do trust you. I like you. I believe you’re good for him and for Granvallée, and I even believe you mean it when you say you want me to be part of Beau’s life—”

“—and mine.”

“And yours. But I also know what it’s like to love him. It’s all-consuming, Duchess. You’ll want more of him. You’ll want everything, every second, every day. You’ll start coming up with more things he could need you for so he’ll want you around more often. You’ll learn new skills just so you can teach him when he asks. You will beg for new ways to be useful in his life. And—why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t decide if that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard or the most demented.”

The most romantic , Beau thought. Gods, if Elias had said that on the roof, I’d have given up the throne no matter what else he said .

“You need him that much? Need to be needed that much?” A pause. “Then why fight having him? You’re putting yourself outside. I’m saying you don’t have to give him up. You’re putting yourself on the path to lose him completely.”

“I expected that! I prepared for that. I knew it was coming; I braced for it. What I can’t do is hope . If I believe for even a second that I can have him and then I lose him anyway—”

“It’ll kill you?”

“Yes, Duchess. It will kill me. Call me demented for that if you like.”

“You’re not demented. But you can starve to death on a lack of hope and die just the same. At least the hope route, you get joy in the middle. I do think you’re being overdramatic.”

“No. I don’t think I am. He’s magic . There’s something…I think I might actually die. Have you seen his eyes do the thing, when he’s particularly happy?”

My eyes? Beau’s heart picked up again, knuckles aching as he clenched the stone tightly.

“The gold light? You’re saying that’s real magic? Maurilel magic? I was just telling him earlier, I think he has more Maurilel blood than the average person.”

“He does. I don’t know if he just has more-magical-than-average blood or what, but it’s changed me. Genuine change. I don’t think I can survive without him now.”

“Then it’s decided,” Penny said firmly. “You need him. Beau needs you and me. We mean different things to him. I know we’re all at different places with each other, but we can work it out, the three of us. Don’t be distant to make space for me. Stay with Beau. Be who you are to him.”

“And you think that would work?”

She sounded hesitant. “If you and I make an effort to trust each other, yes. We’ll need to need each other, too, not only Beau.”

After a long pause, Elias said, “Does he even want this?”

“Yes, obviously. Desperately. Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not being stupid. I’m asking him. Beau’s a light sleeper. I assume you’re listening, Highness? Since you have my stone.”

Heart pounding, Beau leapt out of bed, dropped the Perception Stone on the bedside table, and eschewed his dressing gown to open the door stark naked. “Get in here. Both of you.”

Penny and El stared with almost identical open-mouthed gawking. Beau glanced past them at the figures chatting and laughing in the common room, but no one was paying attention to the prince’s door. A steady, pulsing spice built through the ring. Elias moved first, shouldering his way inside with one hand on Penny’s wrist to draw her with him. He slammed into Beau hard enough to stagger him, kissing him like they’d been separated for months.

The duchess muttered, “Oh my gods,” under her breath, and Beau and Elias laughed against each other’s lips.

“Let’s continue,” Beau said between kisses, “the conversation from the hallway.”

“If you wanted to keep discussing it you should’ve put your clothes on. I’ve done enough talking,” El said, all but lifting Beau off his feet as he hauled them one-armed toward the bed.

The ring burned with spice and syrup, but a wash of uncertainty overrode it as Penny stood at the door, watching. “Hold on, hold on,” Beau said, laughing and fighting to hold his ground. He felt Penny brace and gather herself to pretend she wasn’t hesitant. Beau spoke first. “No one’s getting laid right now. We need to talk .”

With a silent sigh, Elias stopped half-carrying him, but he did claim another searing kiss. The prince held his hand out toward Penny. “Come here. Why are you shy all of the sudden?”

“You were having a moment.” Penny lay her fingers in his palm and let him draw her up against his side. “And having seen the man break his own hand to get loose of a rope, the last thing I want is to be standing between Elias and what he wants.” Nervous, heated, her eyes watched Elias for any twitch of movement.

She’s afraid of him . The thought made Beau queasy, but he understood. She didn’t have years of trust built up with Elias, and Elias was dangerous . He was a liar, and she knew that.

“Sit down,” Beau said, pointing imperiously at the bed. After a moment, Elias obeyed, somewhat sulkily. Beau pulled on his dressing gown, to the low grumbles of both companions. “I’m very fond of any idea that lets me be in love with both of you. But it doesn’t work unless you trust each other. And Penny doesn’t trust you, El.”

“I don’t think that’s—” she began, frowning, but Beau shook his head.

“You don’t trust him. You proposed this for my sake, but you’re terrified; I can taste it.” To El, “It’s one thing to let you have your secrets and lies when it’s just me. But that time is over. I can’t trust a man I don’t know with my wife, my family. It’s time.”

Elias shook his head, and when Beau stared him down insistently, he shook it harder. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking who you are.”

“Don’t do this. Please.” Elias looked from the prince to the duchess and back, and despair cracked over his face, dripping like egg. “Fuck. I don’t want to lie to you. Please drop it.”

“Then don’t lie,” Beau said. “I thought you’d do anything for me? You were willing to die, and you won’t even talk ?”

Elias growled. “Knowing the answers to your questions is a death sentence.”

With an unconcerned grin, Beau said, “You’ll protect me. I trust you.”

This seemed to be the most disarming, devastating thing he could’ve said. Elias folded in half with a sound like a sob. When he sat upright again, a miserable laugh shook out of his throat. “How long did I have hope of having you? Two minutes? Maybe less?”

He got up as if to leave, but Beau planted himself solidly in the guard’s way.

“Do I have to hunt down Gerard and ask him what you are?”

El’s eyes went large, fear spasming over his face. “Don’t—” He grabbed Beau’s arm, hauled him to the Perception Stone, and slammed his palm atop it. Then he pulled Penny over and arranged their hands so all three could touch it. When he spoke, it was so quietly the sound didn’t seem to leave his throat. “Don’t even fucking joke about it. He’d slice you to pieces.”

“Why?” Beau mimicked El’s barely-more-than-air speech.

Elias’s eyes went wild, and then resignation crept into them. He opened his mouth, hesitated, and at last said, “Because that’s what Watchers do when their secrets are threatened.”

Understanding skipped, stuttered, swayed to evade Beau’s grasp. Watchers? Like Char’s imaginary Watchers, from when we were kids? “Watchers are made up. They’re not real.”

“Are we not?” Something changed in Elias’s face, some muscle tightening, some twitch of connective tissue reshaping his expression, and El could’ve been a stranger. “I feel quite real.”

“What are Watchers?” Penny asked. She’d seen the shift, too. Her shoulder pressed against Beau’s, opening up a few inches of space between herself and Elias. El glanced down at it, and his face was briefly pained before he hammered it flat again.

“A very secret, very old organization. Dates back…” He breathed in slowly, let it out sharply. “To the Maurilel. The end of the Maurilel, to be exact. Because we ended them.”

Penny’s eyes flicked to Beau, who could taste the acid of her sudden alarm but felt none of his own. “You don’t, by chance, hunt down people with more-than-average Maurilel blood?” he said, amusement in his voice because what else could something this unreal be but funny?

Elias’s face softened into its familiar shape again. “No, Beau. The Watcher council monitors magic relics and sends agents to keep them from being misused or disappearing from our control. We pull a lot of political strings, especially when it comes to…rulers with access to large stores of magic.”

Reality seemed to click into place all at once, and Beau felt the alarm that had been threatening, just out of reach. “Oh fuck. I’m in a lot of trouble, aren’t I?”

“No.” Elias shook his head, and his eyes had gone glassy. It was the closest Beau had ever seen the man to tears, and it shook him to his core. Even with the Perception Stone, El was barely audible as he said, “Because I didn’t tell them the vault is empty.”

“The vault is empty ?” Penny’s voice felt too loud, though it was barely a whisper.

Beau ignored the question, eyes on his guard. “Why would you have told anyone anything? You’re not one of them anymore. Right? You left. You became my guard. Right ?” Glassiness became brimming lids and beaded lashes on hazel eyes that refused to meet Beau’s. “Because you were lap candy before. And you were never that for me. So you’re not—you’re—”

“I was never that for you.” Elias nodded, not looking at him. “Because that wasn’t what you wanted. You wanted a guard, so I was a guard. That’s what we do.”

Beau tried to step back, but El scooped the Perception Stone up in his palm and followed, grabbing Beau’s wrist so the stone still touched both of them, Penny’s fingers sandwiched between. “You wanted to know, Beau, so you’re going to know. Watchers do a lot of things, but mostly we get close to targets and gather information. Which means being a lot of different things to a lot of different people—for that, there’s the chameleons, the liars, called Faces. When we need someone dead, we send the Fighters: assassins, quick, deadly. The rest have skills for particular jobs: lockbreakers or accountants or forgers. They’re the Fixers.”

“And you’re a Fighter?” Beau guessed.

Elias laughed, a miserable bray of a thing. “I’m a Face.”

Beau couldn’t sort through his own emotions, but they must’ve been tumultuous because Penny pressed a hand to her belly and groaned, “Oh, Beau , it’s all right, it’s—”

She exhaled sharply and said, “You needed to get close to Beau because of the vault?”

“Among other things, yes.”

“What other things?” Beau demanded.

At last, Elias met his eyes, and it was devastating. El looked like he was watching the world cave in before him. “Can’t have someone so close to the throne without a Watcher in arm’s reach. You ran from the palace and left your staff behind. So they sent another to the isles; he died on the Siren’s Lament . So they sent me.”

“Why you?”

Elias’s mouth tightened like he’d eaten something sour as he shrugged. “Because you were lonely and nobles had a habit of wanting to fuck me.” Beau would’ve choked on the bile in his throat if he were breathing. El saw his expression and tightened his grip, pulling Beau a half step closer. “That’s why they sent me. That’s not what happened .”

It was Beau’s turn to rasp out a miserable laugh. “Isn’t it? I wanted you at first sight.”

“You were attracted to me. Everyone’s attracted to me.” He glanced at Penny, who nodded. “But you were decent enough not to fuck me, or I’d have fucked you. And I’d have hated you. And eventually, once I’d extracted all your value, I’d have killed you, like I did the others.”

Penny inhaled sharply, but Beau’s eyes stayed fixed on Elias. “You killed—”

“Every noble or rich bastard who ever touched me.” Elias’s face was flat, expressionless in that way that said he was hiding a storm. “Partially a practical consideration: Granvallée’s circles of wealth and nobility are relatively small. Hard to change your name and become something new when you might run into the last mark. But mostly because they deserved to die.”

Because Beau was spiraling beyond being able to speak, Penny took over. “And Gerard?”

“Fighter. A threat. Highness was supposed to stay at the palace, get married, and ascend to the throne. Instead, he ran for the isles and pissed off a duchess. Gerard came to move things along.”

“To take me back?” Beau felt numb, like he was floating adrift.

El shook his head. “To kill you.”

An absurd laugh bubbled out of the prince. “One Watcher assigned to protect me and another to kill me? Not very efficient.”

“I wasn’t assigned to protect you; I was assigned to get close. I decided to protect you. You have no idea how much I’m protecting you.” He looked momentarily queasy, face paling.

“That’s why he warned you to get clear,” Penny said. “He went to report back, and now they’re coming for Beau.”

“They… shouldn’t . I wrote when you came to the isles for him. And now that you’re married and Highness is headed back to the capital…” He nodded like he was convincing himself. “They like order, like to proceed as expected. They shouldn’t come after him now.”

“Why.” Beau struggled to find the intonation that would make that a question. When Elias and Penny looked at him, waiting for him to clarify, Beau dredged up more words. “Why fight your own ally to protect me? Why protect me at all? Why fuck me if it was just going to make you hate me? Why say all that shit in the hall about dying without me? Why ?”

He was shutting down one organ at a time. Nothing made sense. Everything he thought he’d known and trusted was a lie. A Face. Beau buzzed, chaos, a maelstrom in his body.

El had let go of his wrist. Beau sat. Voices whispered. Talked. Talked loudly . When a warm, callused hand brushed along his cheek, Beau finally looked up into anxious hazel eyes. “Beau,” El said, clearly repeating himself, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Beau, please, listen.”

He could’ve pulled away, could’ve put distance between himself and the apparent stranger who’d been living with him and joking with him and protecting him for seven years. But he didn’t want to. He leaned into Elias’s hand and looked up at him and listened.

“I love you. And I have for a long time. For about two weeks, I sent faithful reports back to my superiors about you. Then I started leaving little things out because I liked you, and it didn’t seem fair to you. And then a few weeks later I was leaving much bigger things out. By the time I’d known you two months, I was lying to protect your secrets, your privacy. I used to be good at this job, Beau.”

He exhaled a humorless almost-laugh. “But you didn’t want a Watcher to be your pretend friend and shit-ass guard, you wanted the best guard who ever lived , someone you could trust. So I became that instead of what I was supposed to be.”

He swallowed, pausing as if waiting for Beau to speak, but Beau simply blinked up at him and drew the same comfort from El’s warm hand that he always had.

Elias continued, “I protect you because I love you and I want you alive and thriving and wielding the power you were born to. I fucked you because it was never going to make me hate you. Because I wanted to. I wanted you. And I said I’d die without you because somewhere along the way, when I was deciding to let what you wanted change what I was, I changed . Magically.”

“How did your superiors feel about that ?” Beau croaked.

El laughed that same breathy, mirthless laugh. “I’ve kept that to myself. Gerard was very surprised by my fighting in the forest. They made me a Face, not a Fighter, for a reason.”

“Your job is to win trust,” Penny said quietly. “So where does that leave us? Trusting?”

Elias raised his broken hand in a helpless gesture. “Being in love isn’t provable. Wanting someone genuinely isn’t provable. Magical change isn’t provable, unless you knew me before, but you didn’t. You trust me or you don’t.”

He released Beau to push his hair back out of his face nervously, angrily. “I’ll leave if you want. Send me away or kill me, but they’ll send someone else to replace me, and the replacement won’t lie for you. They won’t protect you.”

“Is that a threat?” Penny asked.

“No,” Beau said before Elias could speak. “He’s explaining the risks.” He gently pushed El back a step so he could stand and look the Watcher eye to eye.

Taking a long breath in, Beau held it and studied Elias’s earnest face, his shoulders, his forearms, his hands, every part of him that had ever made Beau feel safe. Beau leaned forward until his forehead clunked against Elias’s, and the Watcher went still.

“I believe you,” Beau whispered. “I trust you.”

El staggered like Beau had kicked his knees out from under him. He kissed the prince hungrily, gratefully, desperately, breaking away every few breaths to whisper, “Thank you.” It took several long minutes to sate them both, to feel like they were still…themselves.

Eventually, Elias stepped back again and turned to Penny. “We started this line of questioning because you didn’t trust me.”

Penny frowned. She studied Beau’s face with nearly as much scrutiny as Beau had studied Elias’s, and whatever she saw there, she slowly nodded to herself.

“Strange as it is,” she said, “I trust Elias the Watcher more than I ever trusted Elias the guard. I told you to be what you are to him. Don’t disappoint me.”