Page 16

The afternoon dragged endlessly as I signed documents and dictated letters, keeping up the appearance of focusing on my work while thinking of nothing but Tavius. Who had written to him? And why? Had Tavius been spying on me all this time, or only recently?

His pale, haggard face and Fabian’s grotesque corpse reoccurred to me again and again, along with increasingly bizarre imagined scenarios: Tavius storming into my study and attacking me, Benedict and Tavius dueling and killing each other, Lord Zettine tossing their bodies into the harbor and rallying the army behind him in preparation for a violent coup. Mattia, Gerfred, and even Captain Venet all assured me that the palace was quiet, but it didn’t help—and if stoic, unconcerned Venet had made the effort to try to soothe my nerves, I probably hadn’t been doing such a good job of keeping up appearances.

Tavius. What could he possibly have to gain from any dealings with Fabian, and why would he hide what he knew about his death?

And more than that, more than any practical considerations of politics or money or aristocratic maneuvering, it gave me a sharp, breathless pain somewhere under my ribs to think about Tavius wanting to hurt me—or not caring if he did.

I’d never have hurt him. I loved him.

And he didn’t love me.

Perhaps I ought to have been used to it after my mother’s abandonment and my father’s lack of affection. But it only hurt all the more, one wound on top of another.

At last the clock ticked over to six. I stood and stretched my back and blinked my burning eyes. Benedict ought to have been here by now with a report, but he’d said he’d join me in my rooms, and if I waited for him there, at least I could take off my boots and warm my feet by the fire after hours of sitting still in a chilly room. Miserable, grief-stricken betrayal and seething anger might be slightly more bearable once I could feel my toes.

My guards fell in behind me as I left my study with Gerfred and a page as my vanguard. The palace had broad corridors, gracious architecture, hundreds of years’ worth of paintings in carved and gilt-painted frames, mosaiced arches, ceilings frescoed in rich blues and burgundies and ochres, polished tile floors. Even with night pressing in against the windows it should’ve been bright and beautiful.

But it seemed to close in on me as I made my way to my rooms, every shadow and whisper enough to make me clench my teeth and try not to jump.

Even the usual array of minor courtiers who haunted the halls to bow and scrape and attempt to attract my favorable notice were absent, and only a few servants scurried by. Logically I knew they were probably dressing for their dinners, but it felt ominous, as if the hush meant that the palace itself held its breath in anticipation of trouble.

Even the rain had stopped, at least for now.

My rooms lay in the same oppressive silence, with only the faint crackle of the fire to relieve it. Servants had come in as usual and lit candles and tidied, but there was no other sign of life. At least Fabian had been another person in the space with me in the evenings, his sullenly hostile commentary something to distract me from my other cares, and since his death I’d grown used to having Benedict to contend with. When this was over, I wouldn’t have him around, either.

That thought left me bereft and cold in ways I didn’t want to acknowledge and that no armchair, fire, and glass of brandy could possibly alleviate.

Just in case, I went down the corridor and opened the door to Benedict’s rooms, but they were utterly dark and chilly and abandoned.

That didn’t mean more than the obvious, that he hadn’t returned. He didn’t have servants come in his rooms much; a mage could light his own candles without any fuss.

But he hadn’t returned.

I shuddered, shut the door quickly like a child afraid of monsters, and breathed a sigh of relief as I shut my own door behind me a moment later.

At least I could blame my unmanly shivers on the draft. The candle flames dipped and stretched as another breezy gust swept through the room, odd since I’d already closed the door. Someone must have left a window open while cleaning up earlier.

Except…I went still like a rabbit scenting a predator, all the hair rising on the back of my neck as a tingle swept over my scalp. What had set off my instincts? There. The dressing room door stood open, nothing unusual there. But the edge of my bed canopy closest to the dressing room fluttered again as I stood with my eyes wide open, alert for any oddity.

The dressing room had a window, but it stuck and was rarely opened even in good weather. Had one of the footmen forced it open and then been unable to close it?

The only other explanation was impossible, because if my father’s ghost haunted the palace, surely he’d find something better to do than muck about with secret passages in dressing rooms, and no one but my father and I had known about that door.

Impossible.

But all too probable.

I spun, wrenched at the door, opened my mouth to shout for the guards—and quick, heavy footsteps gave me one second’s warning before a burly arm wrapped around my middle and a hand slapped down over the lower half of my face.

“It’s only me, Lucian, leave off!” Tavius, and I redoubled my struggles, kicking out at the door and thrashing my head back in an attempt to break his nose. But he was too tall, and he cursed as I smacked my skull against his clavicle, but he didn’t let go. “I’m not going to hurt you! That bastard Rathenas is the one who’s betrayed you, and those are his men out there, so you can’t summon them. You know I’d never hurt you, so leave off!”

I could hardly see, blinded by rage and fear and the sudden overwhelming shock that had gone through all my nerves, and I shouted behind his hand but it came out a muffled grunt.

My foot connected at last, with a crack and a rattle of the door in its frame, and Tavius dragged me back, stumbling sideways into the wall with a thump.

“If I’m not back soon to instruct my men on what to do, your precious fucking Benedict’s a dead man,” Tavius snarled, raw and furious, in a tone I’d never heard from him. “And if you don’t stop fighting, or you call out for your guards, I’ll fucking hurt you after all.”

Benedict. He had Benedict.

And I went still except for my heaving chest.

“Quiet, or else,” Tavius warned me again, and then he took his hand away from my mouth and pushed me out of his hold.

I turned and found him glowering at me, nothing but malice in those blue eyes I’d always known as open and friendly and full of humor.

He could have been my father’s furious, paranoid, hostile ghost after all.

I staggered back a step.

Tavius. Not my father.

But the bizarre resemblance that had struck me earlier was back so forcefully that I couldn’t clear the vision.

“Don’t look at me like you’ve seen a ghost,” Tavius said, and I let out a crack of laughter that probably made me sound like a madman. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

That only made me laugh all the more, but I sucked in air and forced myself to stop, fists clenched. I couldn’t fight Tavius. He might not be Benedict’s match—few men were—but he had several inches and forty pounds on me, much of it muscle, though his life of drinking and carousing had begun to show in his belly and chest.

Anyway, he could snap me like a twig before the guards came even if I shouted my head off.

And he claimed to have Benedict. I didn’t believe him. How in the world could he have taken Benedict captive, for the gods’ sakes? With his skill with a sword, his strength, his powerful magic?

But Benedict wasn’t here, where he’d promised me he’d be.

No message, via magic or a page sent with a note, no word at all.

Tavius could be telling the truth. Benedict could be unconscious, bleeding, beaten, broken.

Or Tavius could be lying to me, only not the way I’d thought at first. My stomach coiled into a sick, horrid knot.

Benedict could be dead already.

“What the hell do you think is wrong with me, Tavius? You broke into my room and assaulted me, you claim to have Benedict hostage, and you’re threatening more violence if I resist you! How did you get in? And I want proof that you have him and that he’s alive. Or I swear to you, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Tavius demanded, practically bristling. “Have me arrested? Sent to the torturer and the headsman, eh?”

Flying spittle flecked my face, and his had gone red and mottled, his eyes wild.

A frigid, paralyzing shiver trickled down my spine, leaving me stiff and wary, shaken out of my anxiety and fear by sudden, undeniable certainty: Tavius might have loved me, and somewhere in him he might still love me.

But he hated me at least as much.

And he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me.

“I’m not going to do anything,” I said, lowering my voice, hoping a calm, even demeanor would calm him too, like a feral animal. “You’re my cousin, Tavius. I’d never arrest you. But you have to explain this to me. What are you doing? Why—if something’s wrong, if you have some quarrel with Benedict, you only needed to—”

Tavius burst out laughing, rubbing his hands over his face, turning away and then back again as if he could hardly contain himself.

“A quarrel with Rathenas? You could say that. The same as I have with you. Except that I hate him for his own sake, and I like you fine except for who you are.” He gestured wildly up and down. “Treviso’s legitimate fucking heir,” he spat, and his face twisted with rage. “And now you’re fucking that—son of a bitch, that’s what he is. He had him wrapped around his finger. Would’ve taken the throne if Treviso had lived long enough to give it to him. And now he’s got you fooled, too. How could you, Lucian?”

For a moment, confusion almost edged out the terror blooming in me as Tavius grew wilder and wilder.

How could he possibly be angry with me for being my own father’s legitimate heir?

The same as I have with you .

Both of us possible heirs to my father’s title, at least in some people’s view.

Could Tavius possibly think he had some claim that Benedict and I were both in the way of? He couldn’t, that’d be absurd. He was my maternal cousin, with no relation at all to my father’s side.

Except that he resembled my father far more than he resembled me, really. I’d seen it before. But I’d always dismissed it as a fluke of nature and of his late father’s passing similarity to mine.

“I don’t understand. You can’t—you couldn’t,” I stammered. But the idea had taken hold, gaining shape and weight, corroborating details slotting into place in my mind in inexorable sequence.

My mother’s quarrel with my aunt, the one that left them completely estranged and after which she ended her marriage to my father. Tavius’s horror at Fabian’s death—Fabian, who’d been my father’s confidential servant long before I was born, certainly during the time I’d been conceived.

And when Tavius had been conceived. Only three months before me, and both my mother and Tavius’s had been residing at court at the time. My parents had wed during my gestation, and I’d heard my aunt had missed it, going home to the country estate for some urgent matter or other.

That urgent matter could have been the need to fuck her husband in order to cover up the fact that she’d already become pregnant with the duke’s bastard.

Tavius took a step closer to me, baring his teeth in something horribly unlike a smile, eyes glittering. “I think you do understand. I think you’re beginning to, eh? Always said you loved me like a brother, Lucian. Now’s your chance to prove it.”

“Prove it,” I repeated, mouth so dry I could hardly force the words out.

“I can see by the look on your face that you know it’s true. Our father knocked up two sisters, the randy fucker. My mother and yours, and in that order, you see? Only my mother was married. Couldn’t claim me then, could he? But he regretted it. I know he did. Fabian told me so!”

Tavius took another step, too close to me, and the faint scent of him, wine and horses and some pomade he used on his hair, wafted across. My stomach churned. Home, safety—not anymore.

“Fucking Rathenas found out Fabian knew the truth,” he snarled. “He must have. And that’s why he killed him. To hide it. To clear the way for him to bend you over and violate you and cloud your mind, take the throne with you still on it. And for all I know, Rathenas killed our father, too, for the same reason. Suspected he was going to push him out and legitimize me instead.”

“No,” I whispered, and I fell back a step, praying he wouldn’t follow.

No, I didn’t and couldn’t believe it. Benedict wouldn’t have looked me in the eyes when I ran to him, shocked and terrified, and lied to me about Fabian’s death. And then discussed it with me since, puzzling over it. Or today, when we’d tried to work out what Tavius’s involvement might have been. He simply wouldn’t have. As for killing my father… murdering him, and then watching as the council and the court accused me of patricide in not-so-quiet whispers. Bringing me the rumors the morning after, sneering at me and threatening me and knowing, all along, that he’d cold-bloodedly poisoned his own stepfather.

No.

“Yes,” Tavius almost shouted, and then looked around quickly and lowered his voice to a hiss. “Of course fucking yes! Damn you, Lucian, you bloody well know what he is. What he’s capable of. You have to break this hold he has on you. It’s his sorcery, that’s what it is. It is poison, but it’s the kind that works on the mind, not the body. And I have the answer to that, the answer to all of it. You’ll have him under your thumb, doing exactly what you want. What we want. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Tavius smiled, the kind of smile you’d give a recalcitrant child who wasn’t sure he wanted the treat you were offering him, but his eyes were as hard and cold as granite. Nothing like mine at all, now, but they could’ve been my father’s— our father’s, gods—any one of the times he’d gazed down on some terrified wretch from his throne and sentenced him to death.

“We’ll settle this between brothers, eh? You’ll have charge of Rathenas, and he’ll give us the army. And I’ll guide you in what to do with him. I’m the elder. It’s a simple enough matter. You have to see that, Lucian.”

See it. Yes, I saw it—some of it, anyway, and too clearly. My illegitimate brother thought he’d been unjustly deprived of his throne, and he expected me to meekly hand it to him. Do his bidding. Control Benedict and force him to Tavius’s will, because the council and the army and probably the rest of Calatria would never accept Tavius as their ruler unless he had our full endorsement and support.

I’d have laughed, except it’d have come out a sob.

“I don’t see that it’s simple,” I managed. “Control Benedict? You don’t know him at all if you think I could do that. Or that anyone could do that. He doesn’t care what you do to me. And he won’t respond well to threats to either of us on principle.”

Tavius laughed, a nervous, unpleasant sound. “Threats? I’m not threatening you, Lucian. I’m sorry I frightened you earlier, eh?” He smiled again, but still with that opacity to his eyes that I knew so well from seeing my father’s in moments of cruelty. “But I had to get your attention. Make sure you’d listen to me and not call out for those men Rathenas set on you. I have another way of controlling him and his foul magic. A potion they use in Ixyon to keep their blasted twilight mages in line, tying them to a bondmate they can’t sate their curses without. I was getting another one—but I’m surrounded by fucking incompetent fools. Anyway, I’ve already given the potion to Rathenas, and this’ll work as well. He’s helpless. And he’ll stay that way. You just need to do your part. Because if you refuse, I have someone else who will.”

A bondmate. Can’t sate their curses without …gods, that couldn’t be possible, a potion that would force a twilight mage to have only one lover or die. Could it? The large, powerful island kingdom of Ixyon had a sinister enough reputation for such a thing, but it lay far to the southeast, distant enough that Calatria didn’t even have a diplomatic relationship with them.

There was some trade, though. They had a formidable navy and extensive merchant fleet, and the latter’s ships called at our port from time to time. If such a horrid, poisonous potion existed, Tavius could have heard of it and gotten hold of some, certainly. It sounded like he’d tried to use it on some other victim already. If he’d dosed Benedict with it, and wanted me to “do my part,” then—gods, he must mean me to be the bondmate.

Or he had someone else who would. The mysterious correspondent? It looked like I’d be unlucky enough to find out.

Fuck, it was too much to take in, and I needed at least a moment. To draw breath, to be weak, to be knocked over by the betrayals and the fear and the bewilderment and the grief. Most of all, to wrap my mind around all of this and make a plan of my own to counter Tavius’s.

Even without the opportunity to think, though, I did know I wouldn’t be helping Tavius force Benedict into some kind of magical slavery, and I wouldn’t be abdicating in Tavius’s favor. It was possible that I’d have considered giving him the title, or sharing its responsibilities, if he’d come to me with proof of his paternity, with a measured, affectionate appeal for justice and for me to support him and bolster his reign and use my own talents to help him do what was best for Calatria.

But he’d lied to me. Threatened my life and assaulted me. Kidnapped Benedict and forced some hideous concoction on him.

And no matter how much I wanted to believe that he wanted me by his side in the future, a loved and trusted brother, I simply wasn’t that stupid. He’d use me and Benedict until he didn’t need us anymore, and then he’d get rid of us. He might even feel some regret over killing me—or convince himself he did, because no one wanted to be the villain in the privacy of their own minds. But it would need to be done if he were ever to have any security in his title and position. And he wouldn’t hesitate.

I’d let him take me to Benedict, and I’d pretend I did believe him. And I’d pray to any gods who might be listening to help me seize my moment when it came.