Chapter Seventeen
It’d been more than a decade since I used the passage from my dressing room, and on that occasion I’d been escaping my rhetoric tutor in order to ride to the lake and go for a swim. At the time I’d been so angry, chafing at the restrictions placed on the life of a duke’s heir.
If I’d only known the life of a duke would be infinitely worse—or that an alternate heir had been waiting in the wings to kidnap me—I might have passed the lake and kept on riding.
Tavius chivvied me along the narrow, claustrophobic tunnel under the palace, the webs and corpses of ancient spiders feathering over my face and getting caught in my eyebrows. He’d brought a pocket alchemical lantern with him, an expensive little contraption that cast just enough illumination to send my shadow wavering out in front of me, watery and eerie, but not really enough to see what might lie ahead.
Of course, it didn’t matter much. I had the worst thing in this tunnel at my back.
“Where are we going?” I asked, unable to bear my own panting and Tavius’s huffing and puffing echoing around the tunnel. “And how did you learn about this entrance to my rooms?”
Another step, two, three, my elbow knocking into the wall, and finally Tavius said, “They ought to have been my rooms.”
I flinched at his tone, glad he couldn’t see my face. If he had, he’d have realized that I knew: his mask had slipped too far for recovery. There was no going back for us. That degree of venomous bitterness would have only one possible outlet.
But I had my own mask, the face and voice of the Crown Duke of Calatria. A duke didn’t show worry, and he didn’t show weakness, and he certainly didn’t allow himself to be intimidated by the brutal by-blow of a ruthless father who’d never loved me any more than Tavius did.
“If we had known the truth sooner, things might have been different,” I said, because it was, for one thing, patently obvious, and for another it might mollify him to think that only my ignorance of his claim had stood in the way of my ratifying it.
He grunted something that could’ve been agreement, and I slowly, silently blew out a long breath of relief. Another few steps took us to a turn in the passage, a tight corner that probably followed the juncture of two rooms in the wine cellar, if my sense of direction could be depended on in the slightest.
I squeezed around it carefully, before venturing, “Instead, I was saddled with Benedict. Our father did favor him more than I could ever understand.”
What I really wanted was to spin around and seize him by the collar, shake him, shout in his face, demand to know what the fuck he thought he was doing, how he could do it to me . But I couldn’t. Not if I wanted any chance of surviving—or getting to Benedict in time for him to survive.
This tunnel let out in the stables, and there would be people there, grooms and cavalrymen, stableboys going about their business. How did Tavius think he’d get us through there without attracting attention? If he’d only tell me where we were going, I’d be able to call for help once we were out in the public eye, overpower him, and hopefully reach Benedict before the potion killed him.
“Perhaps it was because father was a soldier too,” I went on, as if simply musing aloud, but my heart pattered against my ribs and my palms had gone slick with sweat. We were getting near the stable exit. I didn’t have much time left. “Benedict impressed him with his swordsmanship, I suppose. He’s formidable.” I put as much admiration and wonder into my tone as I could and asked, “How did you manage to capture him? And where have you put him?”
Tavius chuckled. Oh, thank the gods, I’d gotten to him. He’d always been most susceptible via his vanity, and he’d never been able to resist the opportunity to brag. I’d used to find it endearing, the way he’d puff up and tell me about the stag he’d brought down that no one else could hit with an arrow at that distance, or the beautiful women who’d been unable to resist his charms.
“Formidable, hah,” Tavius scoffed. “Didn’t seem that formidable after he’d gotten that potion into his veins. And all it took was a pretty face to get him off his guard and down at the end of the grounds where there wasn’t anyone around to—here we are. Stop here.”
I stopped, my blood turning icy. The end of the grounds, he’d given me enough to go on, if we could only get out of this tunnel and into the stables! Was he going to kill me and leave me here in the passage after all?
“We’re not at the end of the tunnel yet,” I said. “Only a little further to go, though, I think.”
“We’re not going out that way.” Tavius elbowed me aside and lifted his lantern, shining it on a patch of unremarkable mortared stone wall.
Apparently unremarkable, anyway, because he wrapped his fingers around a slightly protruding corner of one block and tugged—and with a grinding grumble, a section rotated inward to reveal another branch of the passage retreating into darkness.
No. Fuck, no, I didn’t know about this route, and Tavius had said “the end of the grounds where there wasn’t anyone around.” No one would be there to help me. And my plan, such as it was, had crumbled.
I stared open-mouthed, too astonished and terrified to hide my reaction. “How the hell did you know about this?” I demanded.
“Fabian told me,” Tavius said brusquely. “He told me a lot of things after he told me the truth. Now move. Clock’s ticking.”
Fabian. Fucking Fabian. My better nature, such as it was, had been shocked by his murder and horrified by the painfulness and grotesquerie of his end.
But my better nature couldn’t overcome the burst of rage that swept over me. I’d guessed Fabian must have been the one to tell Tavius about his parentage, sometime after my father died, but this confirmation infuriated me far more than I’d expected.
Of course. Of course it had been Fabian. He’d hated me, but he’d never supported Benedict either because he wasn’t my father’s blood. But Tavius would have been a viable alternative, in Fabian’s mind…
Which meant this was Fabian’s fault. All of it. If he’d still been alive I’d have murdered him myself—after torturing the truth out of him. The whole truth, including who else he’d told, because Tavius had to be right: Fabian must have told someone else, and that confession had gotten him killed.
Tavius shut the section of wall behind us with a terribly final-sounding clunk. My heart fluttered and sank. Gods, somewhere up there someone would notice I’d gone, wouldn’t they? First they’d look for Benedict. When they discovered he’d also gone missing, they’d either waste precious time searching all the city’s brothels for him, or they’d report to the next available authority, Lord Zettine or one of the other councilors. Would they find us in time?
Fuck. If I’d reached the point of pinning my hopes on my ducal council caring enough to rescue me from Tavius, I might as well give up and slit my own throat.
My mind spun in helpless circles as we walked along the new tunnel, this one simply bored through the earth and shored up with timbers rather than built from stone. The damp seemed to seep into my bones, and I wished I’d thought to take a cloak. A pretty face? What fucking pretty face? If Benedict had gotten us into this situation by chasing a whore right into Tavius’s trap, I’d slit his throat too.
But I had no trouble at all believing that he had.
He hadn’t murdered Fabian. I clung to that conviction with every fiber of my being, partly out of the same horror at the idea that I’d felt earlier and partly because if he’d had any idea that Tavius was my older, illegitimate brother, he’d have killed him, too. Benedict had always been the pragmatic sort.
And as for Tavius’s other accusations—well, Benedict certainly hadn’t killed my father, that was simply absurd.
No, he probably wasn’t a murderer. But a philanderer? Yes. It seemed all too likely that he’d risked both of our lives by looking for a quick fuck while he was supposed to be investigating Tavius’s possible treachery—now thoroughly confirmed, with no thanks whatsoever to Benedict and his wandering cock.
A few hours ago, he’d held me in his arms and kissed me. He’d known that my life depended on his help. How could he? A pretty face. The searing pain of it nearly knocked me breathless.
But I forced one foot in front of the other, and at last the tunnel came to an end, this time at a rough-hewn wooden door with a simple iron latch.
“Go on, then,” Tavius said, and I opened it and slipped through.
As the tunnel had slanted slightly upward, I’d expected the outdoors, but instead there was a rickety set of stairs leading further up to a wooden trap door.
“I’ll go first,” he said, and shoved past me to climb the stairs, knocking on the trap door in a pattern before he pushed it up. “Is the fucker alive?” he called out.
“Yes, my lord,” said a male voice. “Not happy, though.”
Tavius responded to him, and someone else was speaking too, but it faded into a meaningless hum as I closed my eyes against a wave of lightheadedness. My knees nearly gave out, and I sagged against the wall, catching myself with a hand.
Benedict was alive.
It shouldn’t matter so much to me, should it? We weren’t really family. I’d never liked him. In fact, I’d hated and resented him. Circumstances had forced me to yield to him, to accept his kisses and his manhandling and his humiliating, degrading use of me. If Tavius had killed him, it would’ve been no more than one traitorous rival for my throne eliminating another.
And yet I knew, leaning there in the dark and shuddering with relief, that I wouldn’t have felt that way at all.
“Lucian, get up here!” I pushed off the wall at Tavius’s peremptory command, starting up the stairs. “There you are. Bloody well move it. Lord Benedict doesn’t have a lot of time for you to fuck about.”
His sardonic, mocking tone set my teeth on edge, and my heart pounded with sick suspense.
I climbed the stairs and emerged into—I knew this place. Of course. An old gatehouse at the edge of the palace grounds, disused since I was a child. My father had thought this section of wall had too many entrances—or at least so he’d said, although now I wondered if he’d actually thought my dressing room had too many entrances—and he’d blocked off this gate and the small building attached to it. I’d explored it as a boy, and I recognized it now by its odd interior angles where it’d been built to accommodate a turn in the wall.
The four men-at-arms standing in a semicircle in the middle of the rough plank floor were a new feature, though. They had their swords out, and their harsh faces wore nervous, wary expressions.
As I came out of the trap door and stood next to Tavius, I saw what they were guarding.
Benedict—but not only Benedict.
He lay face down beside a wooden pillar, one hand stretched out with his fingers clawing into the floor, legs sprawled and hair all fanned out and tangled, his torso heaving with rough, panting breaths that echoed through the room. He was in the act of pushing up onto his hands, lifting his head to look for—me. Gray eyes glazed with anguish and blazing with fury met mine. His lips moved, I thought in the shape of my name. As I watched in horror, he writhed, groaning, rolling onto his back with his head thumping to the floor.
And Lord Clothurn, kneeling near Benedict’s head, reached out and patted his shoulder as if to comfort him. I wanted to rip it off his wrist and stuff it up his ass.
Clothurn. Here. With Benedict. All it took was a pretty face to get him off his guard .
Tavius had used Clothurn to lure Benedict here, then. And even though I hadn’t expected any better from Benedict, it still cut like a knife that it had worked.
Even worse, I didn’t think Tavius had used Clothurn at all—it appeared to have been more of a collaboration. Clothurn’s richly embroidered mauve silk suit, probably donned for a party before Tavius had come along to upset Clothurn’s plans, bore a few streaks of dirt, and the trousers would be utterly ruined by the splintery floor. But he didn’t have any bruises on him, and he seemed perfectly calm.
No. He hadn’t been taken prisoner. He’d come here willingly, as Tavius’s ally.
Gods, I’d been so incredibly stupid. I’d disliked Clothurn for his insolence, and his foppishness, and…oh, I couldn’t lie to myself. For being Benedict’s lover. But I’d never taken him seriously. How the fuck had he known to write to Tavius, specifically, to vent his spleen about my replacing him in Benedict’s bed? That nagged at me, but the answer couldn’t help me now, no matter how curious I might be. However he knew, it must have been him, and now he was obviously ready, more than ready, to force Benedict to belong to him.
Nausea welled up in me, my fist clenching as I fought the urge to throw myself on him, rip him away from Benedict, and beat him to a pulp. It was vile, unimaginably vile, and if I survived this he’d be the first I strung up by his toes. I’d build a new, special dungeon, with extra rats and slime, just for him.
Benedict tried again to sit up, and this time he managed to get himself propped on one elbow, his back to the pillar. The grooves around his mouth and between his brows gave me a preview of what he might look like in forty years, and the damp pallor of his skin could’ve belonged to a corpse.
“Lucian,” he said, his harsh rasp barely audible this time. He hadn’t looked away from me. Every line of his body showed his terrible, desperate tension, as if he strained toward me with all his strength.
That broke my determination to remain still, and I surged toward him, seeing nothing but him, my skin prickling with the need to touch him and feel his arms around me and his lips on mine…
Tavius caught me by the arm and yanked me back, and I stumbled into him, wincing as his fingers dug in with punishing strength. I forced myself to stop struggling before he injured me, but not going to Benedict hurt more than Tavius’s grip, a deep, burning ache under my ribs, a frantic buzzing in my blood and nerves.
“Let me go to him, damn it,” I cried. “Let me go. You want me to—so let me go to him!”
Tavius examined me, pale eyes flashing with malice. “You’re too attached to him,” he said, almost as if thinking out loud, and a nasty shiver went down the back of my neck at his tone of regret. There was only one reason he’d sound like that—only one action he could take, as committed to his course as he was, that would cause him any sorrow. “You don’t see him for what he is. It’ll have to be Lord Clothurn. You’re willing enough to do it, eh?”
“Of course, my lord,” Clothurn said, sounding more than willing. Eager, as if the thought of enslaving Benedict to his will had him panting to spread his legs. “I only want to serve my rightful duke. And—and help Lord Benedict.”
The way his sharp, avid gaze rested on Benedict made my flesh crawl. I’d already assessed Clothurn as someone who’d betray his own grandmother if it meant more wealth, prestige, or the envy of his peers, and controlling Benedict, and his magic, would give him all of those.
But he wasn’t simply eager for power. This aroused him, excited him.
No. I couldn’t allow this to happen. The thought of “playing my part” in Tavius’s plan revolted me down to my bones, but I’d rather die than leave Benedict at Clothurn and Tavius’s mercy.
“I’ll do it, Tavius. You don’t need him.” My voice came out hoarse and thin, my heart beating so fast I could hardly force words out at all. “Tell me what you need me to do, and I will.”
“You’re not going to do anything,” Tavius snapped, and he wrenched at my arm, making me flinch and cry out. That hadn’t been an accident. He wanted to hurt me. And when he leaned down and looked into my eyes, I saw my death there. “Soon he’ll be begging for relief, and Lord Clothurn will be the one to give it to him, because I trust him to do it right. Keep him under control. Formidable!” He shook me, his voice rising to a shout. “Hardly! Groveling on the floor, worthless without his army or his magic. That’s the man our father thought to put on my throne. The man you were willing to submit to! Look at him!”
Tavius grabbed me by the nape and wrenched my head around, nearly snapping my neck. Benedict had gotten halfway up again, braced against the pillar, his body visibly shaking and sweat dripping from his forehead. He half fell against the pillar, curling in on himself, his low, guttural groan fading to a wheeze.
But he didn’t fall.
Benedict was fighting to the last, even as the potion Tavius had poisoned him with stole away his magic and his self-control and racked him with pain and fever.
Because I understood at last the full scope of what Tavius had done. The potion hadn’t just altered Benedict’s magic to be tied to another man, it’d accelerated his dusk mage’s curse, bringing on the crisis of his symptoms immediately. If he didn’t sate himself in another man’s body soon, very soon, he’d die: an apoplexy, or the vessels in his heart bursting from the pressure, or convulsions.
But the human body’s instinct to survive would override Benedict’s rational mind. Before he reached that point, he wouldn’t be able to resist the urge anymore, and he’d take the nearest man who offered himself. He’d bind himself to Clothurn. They wouldn’t have to do anything but wait.
“He is formidable,” I said, and I wasn’t speaking to Tavius, but to Benedict. He deserved to know that I did see him for who he was. Too late, but at least I’d seen him. “More now than ever.”
“He’s a filthy bastard,” Tavius spat, and shook me again, hard enough that my teeth rattled and my vision blurred. “And you’re his willing slut, his thing. You make me sick. You thought you could trick me, eh? But you couldn’t hide the way you feel about him. You’ve chosen him over your own brother. And now you’ll have to face the consequences. I’m disappointed in you, Lucian.”
Face the consequences.
That could only mean one thing. And I wasn’t surprised, I’d been expecting this, but my sudden terror and desperation shocked me, the visceral difference between knowing he meant to kill me and knowing .
I started to fight in earnest, struggling in Tavius’s hold, reaching back to claw at his face, kicking, until his arm locked around my throat—and then he was dragging me away, away from Benedict. I’d never see Benedict again, and everything had gone all hot and spinny as panic overtook me at last. The gatehouse whirled around me. Bile rose up, burning my esophagus, and my legs were numb.
“You don’t need to do more than get his trousers off,” Tavius called out, and I realized with sick horror he was talking to Clothurn. “He’ll beg for it when he’s desperate enough, or he’ll run out of strength to stop you, and that’ll be that. Two men’ll stay right inside the door to make sure you’re safe enough. And get a bit of a show.”
A show. Clothurn forcing himself on Benedict and binding him into slavery in the process, a show for the guards, and meanwhile my cousin Tavius, my brother, would be murdering me and discarding my body in the mud.
We were almost out the door, and I did my best to drag my feet, to throw my arms to the sides and catch at the walls, because I knew I’d be dead as soon as he had me outside. My forearm knocked painfully into the doorframe with a sickening crack, and I felt the chill of the night on my face, a glimpse of moonlight through a crack in the clouds, but I’d never see the sun again—
Someone screamed. Clothurn? And then a shout and a thud and a ringing of metal on metal, and Tavius cursing as he flung me away from him, back into the gatehouse. I flailed through the air, limbs windmilling, and crashed to the floor in a dizzy heap, gasping for air through my bruised throat.
I pushed up on my hands. I had rough wood under my palms, a splinter digging into my thumb. The sting of it grounded me. I rolled up to my knees.
The shouts and thuds and scuffling came from a struggling mass of men, at least two of Tavius’s men-at-arms and—Benedict, who roared in fury, grasping them by their hair and slamming their heads together, tossing them aside like matchsticks.
One of the others was already on the ground, blood pooling around his head. Benedict had broken his skull. Clothurn was scrabbling backward on the floor away from the body, mouth hanging open in shock, face streaked with crimson.
Benedict stepped over the dead one and picked something up: his sword, the one they must have taken from him when they ambushed him. He tossed the scabbard aside and straightened up, gasping, face as white as milk but eyes sharp and focused, dark and burning with fury and purpose. The blade glowed reddish in the torchlight, eerie and grim.
Tavius had drawn his own sword, and he stood waiting. His last man-at-arms took up a position beside him. Two to one. They ought to have been confident, but the corpse and the two groaning, half-unconscious casualties of Benedict’s rage that lay on the floor seemed to be giving them pause. They didn’t charge him, and the tip of Tavius’s sword shook slightly.
“I don’t have—my army,” Benedict said, chest hitching, his voice ragged and raw. “Or my magic at the moment. But I have my, fuck, my sword. And that’s more than enough to deal with the likes of you.”
“Fuck you,” Tavius snarled, and attacked at last.
I shoved up to my feet and stumbled toward the other fallen men. There. A sword, and I snatched it up, spinning around and lunging at the man-at-arms, distracting him and drawing him away from Benedict. He struck at me, and I parried with a horrible scrape of metal on metal and fell back.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Clothurn dash out the door, heels flying, the cowardly little fucking son of a bitch. It distracted me enough that my assailant almost had me, and I leapt back, the point of his sword whistling past my nose. The hilt of my sword slipped in my sweaty hand, and I batted his next attack away, barely—and his foot caught on an uneven board, sending him cursing and staggering to the side, off balance for a crucial second.
My military training had only consisted of the usual fencing practice of any young nobleman, but it was more than enough for me to know how to press an advantage. I jumped forward and ran him through his right arm, wrenching my sword back out with a horrible scrape of bone and pull of tendon, and he screamed and dropped his weapon, stumbling back and clutching at the ruined mess of his arm with his face gone horribly pale.
For a moment I stared down at the blood-slicked blade in my hand. I’d never actually hurt someone with a sword before, and it gave me a strange shuddery feeling in my stomach.
Another metallic clash pulled me out of my shock and I turned in time to see Benedict parrying Tavius’s thrust, and then Tavius lunging at him again, mouth open in a snarl. For a moment I stopped breathing: Benedict listed to the side as if he might fall—and then he brought his sword up in a motion so quick and smooth and almost casual that I thought it was an accident. The sword disappeared.
And Tavius froze, his sword slipping to thunk point-first into the ground. He lifted his head, staring at Benedict, eyes wide. And then he choked, gurgled, and slumped forward, blood dripping from the corner of his open mouth as Benedict lowered him down, the sword still buried in him.
Benedict collapsed too, landing on his knees with a grunt. Their bowed heads almost touched, and I swallowed hard against a violent convulsion of my stomach.
I dropped my sword with a clatter that rang loudly in the sudden silence. The fight was over. Tavius was dead, and Benedict had saved my life and my throne.
And I realized, with horrible, belated certainty, that I didn’t care about my throne or even about whether I lived or died if I couldn’t save him too.