Page 33

“Because I don’t particularly like you.” Olly walked into the room and plucked at Yves’ golden collar.

“You’re frivolous and rich, and you aren’t even that interesting, but everyone trips over themselves to accommodate you.

And you don’t even have the sense to act like it.

All this time, I’ve had to deal with you and Charon taking care of my cat, and saving me from that cellar, and being…

you. You started calling me Olly, and now everyone does, and the other day?

I caught myself thinking it. Olly isn’t a name that belongs to a courtesan, it’s a name that belongs to a street urchin.

And I can feel it taking hold of me, making me… quaint, and provincial.”

“Do you like being quaint and provincial?” Yves asked, more than a little bewildered.

“No!” Olly cried. “Yes! Don’t ask me that! The point is, you make everything change to bend around you like some sort of curse, and I don’t like owing you. So I’m doing this one good thing, and now the scales are balanced. You and Charon can be insufferably lucky elsewhere.”

“You think this is a good thing?” Yves asked. He was still stunned by Olly’s confession. How were he and Charon lucky? “Interrupting my wedding?”

“Yes.” Olly prodded Yves in the chest. “So we’re done. I hope I never see either of you again.”

“You’re actually rather nice, aren’t you?” Harriet said, grinning as she leaned on Yves’ abandoned chair. Percy covered his mouth with a hand.

“No, I’m not, ” Olly said. “That’s something Olly would be. Now, are you going to go be disgustingly in love with Charon, or are you going to be miserable with Raul just so I can keep owing you?”

“Are you really miserable?” Yves went cold as he heard Raul’s voice over Olly’s shoulder.

Raul was standing just behind them, dressed in a fine, dark green suit with a Kallistoi sash over his chest. Yves winced at the hurt in his eyes, but the look of realization on his face was somehow worse.

“Were you in love with Charon this whole time?”

“I’m not doing this,” Olly muttered. They pushed past Yves, plonked themselves down in Yves’ chair, and started angrily drinking his champagne.

Yves moved into the doorway. “I didn’t think he wanted me,” he said. “You know we aren’t… We did this as an arrangement…”

“I know.” Raul stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets, looking like an awkward hunting dog left out in the rain. “But that explains a few things. He was protective of you when we spoke, and he knew so much about you. Is this why you’ve been so quiet lately?”

“Raul,” Yves said, “I can still do this. You need someone to marry you for the guild. I agreed to do it. There’s a contract.”

“You haven’t signed it yet.” Raul closed his eyes for a few seconds and took a long breath. “And I can find another. You want to be with him?”

“I’m sorry,” Yves said. “Raul, I would have been happy with you. You’re a good person. You deserve?—”

“Please.” Raul took a measured step back, “don’t. If you want him…then this won’t make it better. You should go.”

Yves approached Raul and tentatively reached for him. “One kiss farewell?”

“For you,” Raul said, and leaned in to brush his lips against Yves’ cheek. “Good luck, Yves.”

“Good luck, Raul.”

Yves exchanged one last look with Harriet, who winked and made the same gesture she used to shoo goats from the house. He adjusted his diadem and fled.

He caught a glimpse of a footman reaching for him as he took off down the corridor, away from the ballroom where the wealthiest members of Starian society were waiting for him.

If he truly wanted Charon to work for it, he would have waited until he reached the altar.

He would have made him lay it all out before the king, or perhaps he would have rejected him outright and stormed off to cries of dismay.

Maybe Charon deserved it, a little, for leaving Yves in the House of Onyx that night, but Yves couldn’t muster the necessary outrage.

He’d already wasted too much time, and of all people, Olly was right.

They were lucky. Yves would have killed for someone like Charon when he was young, and Charon was damned lucky to have Yves.

Yves burst out of the palace doors and hesitated when he saw the heavy sheets of rain falling over the city. His suit was dangerously delicate, thin waves of silk held up by strings of gold and diamond pins, and it would fall apart under such an oppressive downpour.

“You’d better make this worth it,” Yves said to the hazy city, and he ran into the plaza.

Rain battered the flowers in his hair, and petals started falling into his face and shoulders.

His useless boots slid on the slick cobbles, and Yves made it three paces before he groaned in frustration, stopped, and wrenched them off.

He left them lying on the stones and sloshed barefoot over ribbons and banners that had been thrown down by the wind.

His suit clung to his skin like a sodden blanket.

Lightning tore across the sky, and thunder echoed around him as though he were caught in the hollow of an enormous bell.

He’d just reached the edge of the plaza when he saw a shadow moving in the rain.

It was massive, like fog creeping over the countryside in autumn, and Yves slowed as he started to make out the dim shapes of people.

There had to be at least a hundred, possibly more, with covered carts and horses and one woman trying to cover a violin with her coat, and they were all marching on the palace like an invading army.

At their head was Charon. His shirt was nearly invisible in the rain, sticking to his thick chest and powerful arms. His hair was unbound and lying over his face, his boots and trousers were mud-stained, and he walked as though he’d been carrying the entire city on his back for days.

He stopped for a breath when he saw Yves, and Yves felt that familiar ache in his chest again, followed by a rush of affection that almost startled him.

All he wanted to do was get to his knees there in the middle of the street, and it took all his strength to remain upright.

Charon opened his mouth, and even though Yves couldn’t hear anything over the crack of thunder and roar of the rain, he knew Charon had said his name.

Yves wasn’t certain who moved first, but he felt as though he were being propelled by a force outside of himself, striding through puddles and shedding flower petals onto the street.

Charon closed the distance, and Yves swayed to a halt as Charon finally stood before him, tall and beautiful and staring down at him with a familiar fierce intensity that Yves finally knew was love.

Then, in a slow, deliberate movement, Charon fell to his knees.

Yves’ breath caught in his throat. Dominants didn’t kneel for their submissives.

It simply wasn’t done. Dominants didn’t even kneel for King Adrien, the first submissive king in centuries, but there Charon was, on his knees in the rain.

Yves suspected that the only thing keeping him upright as well was Charon’s eyes on his, and he could feel the gaze of the shocked crowd as they closed in around them.

“Yves,” Charon said. “I was a fool.” Yves opened his mouth to say something— yes, you were, no, you weren’t, no, I don’t care anymore— but Charon continued, his voice strong and sure.

“I thought that I left because you deserved better than the man I was, but I was just a coward. I was afraid that I’d hurt you. ”

“You hurt me anyway,” Yves said.

“I know.” Charon said, and he took Yves’ hands in his.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you the truth, Yves.

I’ve been a soldier, a torturer, a traitor, an exile, a courtesan.

But more than that, more than all the things I’ve been and what I could become, I am a man who loves you.

If you still love me…” Charon squeezed Yves’ hands so tight that Yves gasped.

“…then let me love you again tomorrow, and the day after, and when your vision fades and your bones ache, and when I am no longer strong enough to do anything more than say that I love you still.”

Yves got to his knees, never minding that the rainwater pooling in the street was staining his wedding suit. “You’ll never leave me like that again,” he said.

“No.”

“And you know I have a reputation. A professional brat can’t give in right away.”

A smile started to tease the corner of Charon’s mouth. “I know.”

“That means I’ll need to leave town to save my reputation after this,” Yves said. “So you might as well come with me. We’ll see Gerakia, and Thalassa, and maybe even Lukos, if you’re a very good dominant and I’m feeling charitable.”

“Yes,” Charon said, smiling truly now. “Of course.”

“Good.” Yves grabbed Charon’s face in both hands. “Then I love you, Charon. And you never have to ask me if I still love you, because I’ll never stop, and you’ll never be rid of me.” He climbed into Charon’s lap to kiss him, and Charon wrapped his arms around Yves’ waist and kissed him back.

Between the heady rush of his own heart racing and the sight of Charon smiling at him as though he were a shaft of sunlight piercing through the clouds, Yves barely noticed that the crowd surrounding them had burst into delighted applause.