Page 29

Yves knew exactly why King Adrien was coming, of course.

The coast near Red Harbor had been burning for days—riots had broken out when the first of Marteau’s private brothels were raided.

Someone had grabbed the guestbook, which featured several judges who’d been ferrying prisoners to the brothels.

The king’s soldiers had knocked one too many heads in the ensuing fight, and now the navy was stranded as rioters took over the harbor.

Everyone was saying that Yves had been the one to discover Lord Marteau’s plot, so the king was treating him like a personal friend in the hopes of preventing Duciel’s citizens from following suit.

King Adrien may have been the most agreeable king in recent history, but he couldn’t risk a riot in the capital.

So now here Yves was, letting the king’s steward plan a wedding while Sabre conscripted Laurent into some clandestine business for the crown. Here he was, trying not to scream in the middle of an empty ballroom.

“Maybe we should go outside for a minute,” Raul said, and Yves looked up at him in alarm, blinking fast.

“Sorry. I was a little overwhelmed.”

Raul nodded. “I understand that. We’ll have a smaller ceremony in Kallistos when I introduce you to the family.” He nodded to the doors, and Yves gratefully took the chance to escape.

Over the past few days, Raul had become almost talkative.

Yves could tell it was to make up for his own unnatural silence, but he couldn’t seem to muster up the energy.

He’d moved out of the House of Onyx and into Raul’s townhouse.

He’d packed most of his things for the trip to Kallistos, and he was dithering on renting a house in Duciel to live in while Raul made glass halfway across the continent.

He’d even invited his family, despite the fact that they’d left for the country after that disastrous afternoon in the garden.

His mother would probably never speak to him again.

He took a slow, steadying breath.

“Well, I think it’s nice, even if you’re bored by it,” Percy said.

Yves blinked. Three days had passed—days of ribbons, flower arrangements, invitations, and dance troupes filing into the city. The coast was still burning. Yves stood in the palace tailor’s personal home office and stared at himself in the mirror.

“What?” Yves looked at the suit. It sparkled with gold and white, with diamonds on the lapels and boots with gold plating on the heels. “Oh. Yes. It’s nice.”

“Show a little enthusiasm, honey,” Percy whispered.

The tailor, a small, excitable man named Silver, frowned from Yves’ feet. He finished pinning the hem of Yves’ trousers and stood, but he was examining Yves like an unfinished cake sagging on the counter.

“No,” Silver said. “I don’t think I can do anything about that.”

“About what?” Yves asked, twisting to check his suit for tears.

“Your energy,” Silver said.

Percy groaned softly. “For fuck’s sake.”

If Silver heard, he didn’t react. He just sighed, the image of an artist with a flawed canvas. “I’m sorry. I can try, but my clothes are supposed to match you, and…” He shrugged a shoulder. “If you need to return it, I understand.”

“Why on earth would he return it?” Percy asked. “He’s marrying the richest man on Iperios!”

Yves squinted his eyes shut. Days passed in a haze. He moved through them as though in a dream, and when he found himself hiring a carriage to his parents’ farm, he barely thought to wonder why.

The Cooper farm wasn’t the same as it had been when Yves left.

They’d moved to what used to be the Chastain lands, taking up the fertile land there for wheat, barley, and too many root vegetables to count.

They fed half of Duciel, and they could afford a bigger house at the edge of the farm, one with large bay windows and a painted roof for good luck.

Yves stepped out of his hired carriage and watched Pearl open the front door with a look of shock on her small, round face.

“This was a mistake,” Yves whispered. He hadn’t meant to do it.

Sabre had come back from whatever task the king needed him for, but Laurent was still gone, and Yves couldn’t mope around Raul’s house without feeling acutely guilty.

So he’d paid for a carriage and directed them out of Duciel, and now he was…

here, feeling lost and young, back to the boy he’d been when he’d left home in a huff.

“I’ll get Dad,” Pearl called, and disappeared into the house.

“No,” Yves said, but his voice was too soft to carry. He stood frozen on the grass while the driver tended to the horses, and when the door opened again, he half wanted to get back in and flee for Duciel.

His father had aged since Yves had seen him last, and his sun-bleached hair lay thin under his cap, but he’d always walked with a limp.

He leaned heavily on a cane as he approached, and Yves forced himself forward.

Don’t make your father walk to you, a familiar voice said in his mind.

It was the same voice that had enforced all the rules Yves’ had followed to keep his siblings from going feral all over the countryside, and he listened to it automatically, intercepting his father before he reached the horses.

“Darling.” His father nodded and took Yves’ arm. “I hear you’re getting married. Card arrived in the mail. Don’t reckon I have the clothes for it, but the card looked nice.”

“Well, I’m marrying a submissive,” Yves said, “so it doesn’t really matter.”

His father gave him a hard look, but his expression shifted, his brows coming together. “Hm. Doesn’t matter? No marriage doesn’t matter, Yves, unless it ain’t a marriage.”

“Dad.”

“Just saying. Just saying. Hm. Hm.” His cane slipped on a clod of earth, and Yves grabbed his arm tight to keep him steady. “Harriet says you had a friend. Big man. Not from here.”

Yves silently cursed Harriet and her loose tongue. “Not that kind of friend, Dad. And he’d been in Staria for a while. It doesn’t matter where he came from before.”

“Hm. Hm. Doesn’t matter. Don’t wear that face, Sybil, our son’s come to visit.”

Yves sighed when he saw his mother’s silhouette in the dark behind the front door. She emerged into the sunlight, dressed in worn working clothes with her hair pinned back with a scarf.

“Hey, Ma.”

She didn’t answer.

Yves helped his father in the front door in time to spot Pearl, Sunny, Tony, and Peter staring at him at the end of the hallway.

They didn’t bother hiding themselves as Yves was ushered into the kitchen, where his mother sat him down at a new oak table and poured him a glass of water infused with cucumber and lime slices.

“Something tells me you aren’t here to apologize,” his mother said.

Yves closed his eyes.

His mother tapped his knuckles.

“I know that look,” she said. She glanced at her husband, who sighed and picked up his cane.

“Check on the dairy,” Yves’ father said. “Not sure what matters, but the dairy does. Some things do. Don’t leave before I’m done, Darling, hm, hm.”

Yves’ mother didn’t speak until the thump of his father’s cane had faded.

“Your father used to do that,” she said.

“Go away behind the eyes. It was worse after he came back from the navy, you know. He lost days like that, weeks. He’d drift, and me with a little boy I didn’t know how to be a mother to, running around, asking questions, wanting to know why his dad wasn’t talking. ”

Yves sank back in his seat. His mother had never spoken of his father’s time with the navy, or the strange, tense years that had followed his return. It was another one of the rules that drove Yves out of the country, strange and seemingly arbitrary.

Yves’ mother sat down next to him. “I know what happened to send Sage away, Darling. Now I want to know what’s sending you away.”

“So you’re being a mother now,” Yves said, but the old resentment didn’t have the bite it used to. “I could have used one before, instead of—of someone who just threw everything on me and blamed me when I wanted to leave.”

He could have handled it if his mother had snapped back. What he couldn’t prepare for was her silence. She stared into his eyes, holding him there, her blond hair falling in front of her sun-weathered face.

“I know I wasn’t kind to you,” she said. “I didn’t know how to be a mother.”

“You could have practiced,” Yves said, “instead of turning me into one.”

“All right, Darling,” his mother said. “Yves. Let’s practice. What are you doing here? You didn’t come to fight.”

Yves looked away. “Maybe I need a mother right now.”

His mother covered his hands with her own. “For what, Yves? Is it this man you’re marrying? Has he hurt you?”

“No. No, he hasn’t.” Yves tried to banish the heat of tears building in his eyes. “He’s nice. So nice. He won’t touch me.”

“Then who was it?” His mother squeezed his hands. “Who hurt my baby?”

Yves closed his eyes, but his mother held him there, quietly, waiting.

He thought of how she must have felt when her husband came back from the navy.

How hard it must have been for a young woman who didn’t know how to manage her husband’s fits of terror and silence around the needs of a farm and children, how agreeable Yves had been, how easy it had probably been to give him one little task here and there.

Not too many at first, but he’d been so eager to please, hadn’t he?

He hadn’t learned to complain until it was too late for both of them.

It didn’t make it hurt less, but it helped, and he took another breath and opened his eyes.

“I love someone else,” Yves said. “But he’s gone. He didn’t love me enough, or he thought—he thought that something in his past was too much for me to handle.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know.” Yves tried to bring himself back to that room.

The sound of Charon gouging out Lord Marteau’s eyes, the blood on his hands, the strange, dark emptiness of his expression.

“I don’t think I’m the only one who can stop him from going…

back there. But I think I can understand it, if he lets me. ”

His mother was quiet for a minute. Outside, Yves could see someone go by leading a roan horse toward a field, and a bird fluttered about on the windowsill.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” his mother said. Yves snorted. “Oh, don’t you start. But if you want him so badly, and this man you’re marrying is so nice, how nice are you to disappear because you can’t stop thinking about this other fellow?”

“I know it isn’t fair, Ma. I’m trying.”

His mother pursed her lips. “This wedding of yours. The king will be there?”

“I’m trying not to think about that,” Yves said.

“Time was, you’d be over the moon for something like that to happen.

” His mother released his hands. “If you think you can learn to love him, tell me and I’ll come to the wedding.

But if you change your mind, I’ll be here, and I won’t turn you away.

For all the mistakes I’ve made, you’re still my son.

You’ll make the right decision in the end. ”

“There’s no chance you can tell me?” Yves asked.

“You truly must be hard-pressed to ask me to give you an order,” she said, and patted his hands. “You’ll figure it out, love. Just give yourself time.”