Chapter Twenty-Three
It took another half hour for me to reach the end of my list of conditions, which included full transparency regarding everything Zettine knew about my father’s peccadilloes and also—because he hadn’t become the Lord Chancellor by being easy to out-negotiate—an agreement on my side to buy twenty cases of a light dessert wine from his daughter-in-law to be served at palace functions.
I’d opened my mouth to add one more, a demand for his word that he’d never call another council meeting again, when a hubbub broke out in the antechamber. Zettine’s secretary’s voice contributed a high note of violent protests, and—yes, the bass line was Benedict.
The door burst open an instant later.
Benedict hadn’t quite gone so far as to draw his sword, thank the gods, but he had his hand on the hilt and his magic swirled around him, spreading through the air and raising all the hair on the back of my neck.
He stopped, looking around the room and taking in the total lack of danger.
His hand fell away from his sword.
“Excuse me,” he said stiffly, and bowed to me. “I didn’t—I apologize for the interruption.”
I stifled a sigh. Benedict chose the oddest times to stand on court formality, as if his birth and breeding seeped through the cracks in his ruffianly facade whenever he felt truly at a loss.
“Shut the door,” I said to the secretary, and he huffed and slammed out of the room. “Come in, Benedict. I’m guessing you had enough time to think this morning that you reached the same conclusion I did, that our esteemed Lord Chancellor murdered Fabian and knew about Tavius all along. Don’t worry, he’s not going to try to kill me. He’s had time to reach a conclusion too, that it wouldn’t be in his best interests.”
Benedict stared, raised his eyebrows so sharply they nearly disappeared into his hairline, and started to laugh.
“I wouldn’t try to kill you in any case, and it ought to go without saying. Your flippancy does you no credit, Your Grace,” Zettine snapped. “And as for you, Lord Benedict, I find your hilarity most unbecoming in the soon-to-be Lord Consort of Calatria.”
Benedict’s laugh cut off in a choke and a fit of coughing that resolved in a wheeze and a raspy, “I beg your pardon?”
Oh, bloody gods. I’d kill Zettine after all. A spike had his name on it, damn it. I’d do it, no matter what Benedict thought me capable of. Right after I sank through the floor and died of confusion.
“As you ought. And please do forgive me, Your Grace,” Zettine purred, eyes glittering. “I’d assumed you’d informed Lord Benedict of your intentions before discussing it with me.”
“Of course he did,” Benedict lied, more loyally than convincingly. “I merely—damn it,” he muttered under his breath. “Lucian, do you want me to arrest Lord Zettine and put him in a cell next to Clothurn’s, or don’t you?”
I eyed Zettine, baring my teeth. “Do I?”
“No,” he said, and cleared his throat, shooting a wary glance at Benedict. “I would offer you my study to talk to one another in private, Your Grace, but unfortunately I have an appointment for which I am now rather late. Perhaps you’ll do me the honor of sending for me when you wish to speak further.”
Tempted as I was to force Zettine to leave after all, and to have Benedict fuck me over his desk simply out of spite…no. And while it rankled to be dismissed so summarily, I did need to talk to Benedict. Urgently, thanks to Zettine’s malicious meddling.
“Attend me tomorrow morning at nine,” I said, and rose. “Expect to answer a great many more questions. And we’ll have a council meeting in the afternoon at two. Summon everyone, if you please, and make it clear that the summons comes from me, through you.”
“As Your Grace wishes,” Zettine said, rising with me, all smiles now that he knew he’d wrongfooted me. Bastard. Maybe he’d only live a few more years, and I’d be rid of him via natural causes before I reached middle age. I could cling to that happy thought. “I’ll also speak to the ambassador today, with your permission. And inform him of the changes to the trade agreement.”
“Only if you make it very clear those changes are by my order and not yours,” I said.
Zettine stared me down. I held his gaze, vividly picturing his head on a spike.
Perhaps he’d been imagining the same thing, because he blinked first. “Very well. Until the morning, Your Grace. Lord Benedict.”
“My guards are out here,” I said to Bendict, and led the way out to the courtyard.
“I’m glad to hear it, for their sakes,” Benedict grumbled, low enough that only I could hear him. “When I didn’t see them in the anteroom I thought you might have come here unattended. As well as unwisely. I think that goes without saying.”
A guard shut the door behind us. The little courtyard held a row of cypress trees against the wall, two small lemon trees in pots, and a tiled area with a fountain. I walked away from Zettine’s study door and around to the other side of the fountain, where its splashing would prevent the guards from hearing our conversation. A light drizzle misted down, but it wasn’t really raining, more trying to make up its mind.
I turned to Benedict, mustering every bit of bravado I had left after dealing with Lord Zettine. He had his hands on his hips and his lips pressed together, an ominous gleam in his eyes.
I swallowed hard. “It was perfectly wise,” I said, “because I held all the cards this time. Zettine wants to live and he wants to remain Lord Chancellor, and if I generously refrain from executing him for murder and treason, he’s going to be perfectly reasonable. Mostly. Anyway, I didn’t need your permission. Besides, why should it need to go without saying, when I know you’ll bloody well say it?”
Benedict took another step forward, crowding me into the nearest cypress. Its wet needles poked me in the back of the neck, and icy drops trickled under my collar.
“Anything more to add?” he asked. “Or are you going to keep babbling and hope I forget you apparently told Lord Zettine we’re getting married? And for the record, you ought to have waited for me. That man’s a rabid wolf in silken sheep’s clothing.”
“A wolf with no viable candidate to replace me on the throne, and so he’s stuck with me. He admitted as much. And as for getting married, no, I didn’t—you misunderstood!”
“Soon-to-be Lord Consort,” Benedict quoted. Another step brought us toe to toe, and I had to tip my head back into the cypress. Now I had wet needles in my hair. I should’ve been cold, but I felt hot all over, restless, almost frantic. “I didn’t misunderstand. As I recall, you accused me of making a deal with Zettine behind your back to legalize it so that I could rule through you after all. Do you remember that? Hmm?”
“But I—I don’t need to rule through you,” I stammered. Damn it, I should’ve talked to Benedict first, but Zettine wouldn’t be in this conciliatory mood forever. He’d probably be permanently more loyal out of self-interest, but that wouldn’t make him yielding, either. If I wanted to have the option of marrying Benedict someday, I had to strike while the iron was hot! “And anyway, you said it was impossible. I know you don’t want to marry me, Benedict. You don’t want to be anywhere near the throne. You convinced me of that. I just wanted to see if Zettine would, ah, cooperate, if I suggested that he might sponsor an amendment to the marriage laws.”
Benedict leaned in, eyes flashing. “Yes, I said it was impossible,” he growled, “right after you said it sounded like a horrid thought. I love you! And you think I’m the one who doesn’t want to marry you? But finding you talking it over with him, when I’d already panicked wondering where the fuck you’d gone, until Mattia admitted it—don’t fuck with me, Lucian. I know you’ve had a hell of a time. But so have I. There’s a limit to how much I can take.”
Now I’d gone cold all over, and it had nothing to do with that blasted tree, or the rain, which had started to come down again in tiny stinging drops.
“You mean you’ll leave me,” I said, barely able to get the words out—and only realizing once I had that he couldn’t. No matter how much he eventually wanted to. And that was even worse.
Benedict’s expression softened. “No. Not even if I could. But you have to be honest with me. And yes, I know that’s a bit ironic, coming from me. You haven’t forgiven me, and maybe you never will, but Lucian. You said you held all the cards with Zettine? How many of them do you think you have with me? Have a little mercy.”
The staccato patter of raindrops striking tile picked up its pace, and frigid water flecked my face and scalp. Benedict leaned forward, curling around me, sheltering me with his body. For a moment I was standing on that balcony again where I’d watched him with Clothurn the day Fabian died. I’d been alone, and wanting, and bitterly jealous.
Now I had him right here, warm and solid and strong and mine , gazing down at me and asking me for mercy, of all things, when he’d probably never begged before in his life.
Mercy. From me. When I’d have been grateful for a scrap of his attention, little though I’d have admitted it, only a month ago.
Oh, buggering hell, I couldn’t lie to myself. I was grateful for it now.
And I simply didn’t have the strength to try to do the moral thing, or the correct thing, rather than what I longed for more than anything in the world. Even staying in bed until late morning I still hadn’t slept nearly enough. I’d skipped breakfast in favor of coffee, and I’d skipped lunch in favor of confronting Zettine. Come to think of it, I’d skipped supper the night before. Perhaps someone with a stiffer backbone might not love the man who’d killed his father. And perhaps someone with a stronger sense of right wouldn’t blackmail his council into legalizing his marriage to his own stepbrother.
Those very respectable and moral people could bloody well go be self-righteous, and lonely and miserable, without me.
“You really want me to be honest with you?” I asked him. He nodded, brow furrowing, and stood up a bit straighter, as if he meant to take what I had to say like a man. “I’m not sure I have forgiven you, and perhaps you’re right that I can’t and won’t. For the way you lied to me, anyway. But I don’t care. I’m too tired. I have to be the Crown Duke with everyone else. Please just put me back in bed, and feed me a roast beef sandwich, and tell me that you love me. And then kill anyone who tries to wake me until tomorrow morning when I need to meet with Zettine again.”
Benedict slipped an arm around my waist and drew me close, using his other hand to pull me into a fold of his cloak. His low laughter warmed me even more than his embrace.
“Your rose petal lips look so beautiful all dewed with raindrops,” he said, his tone suspiciously sincere, “and even lovelier wrapped around my cock. Maybe I should write a poem about your perfect mouth wrapped around a roast bee—”
Even in the cold, the tips of my ears burned like fire. “Shut up, Benedict! I’m hungry! And I—” I had tears in my eyes, actually, accounting for at least half the water on my eyelashes. My knees shook. Gods, I’d fall down in a faint right here from sheer starvation. An hour of fencing with Zettine had taken the very last of my strength. “I love you,” I said, and my voice came out so weak the words were almost lost to the rain.
But not quite.
Benedict went utterly still, staring at me with his mouth open, rain washing his long hair down against the sides of his face in damp tendrils, eyes so wide I could see the whites all around them.
“You what?” he said blankly, and blinked. His arms around me had gone rigid. “You—I beg your pardon, you what?”
“I love you!” It seemed easier to say the second time, perhaps because I hadn’t known how true it was until I said it once.
But of course I loved him. I needed him like air, and I’d never really thought about anyone else since the first moment he looked into my eyes. Besides, no one else had ever loved me like he did, and that counted for more than I’d realized it could. Even if I hadn’t fallen in love with him spontaneously, I probably would’ve just for the way he’d protected and cared for me.
And killed my father. Dromos help me, perhaps I’d inherited something of my family’s ruthless insanity after all.
“I love you,” I repeated, and the third time, it simply flowed off my tongue like warm honey. “Once I’ve forced it down the council’s throats, will you marry me? You don’t have to,” I hastened to add, lest he think I meant it as a ducal command—not that he gave a fuck about those, anyway. “But you had to bond your magic to me. You’re tied to me through no choice of your own. I want you to choose me. Do you understand? Marry me because you want to. I’ll make sure there’s a codicil in the contract. That you can’t inherit the throne if something happens to me.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Benedict said, and he sounded a little dazed. “I learned a bit about these bonds when I visited Ixyon. If you die, I die.”
“What? You—what?” I tried to pull away from him, the shock of that giving me more energy than I’d had all day, but he was like a brick wall. “How could you not have told me this? I thought you weren’t going to lie to me anymore!”
“It just hadn’t come up yet, Lucian, I wasn’t lying—”
“It hasn’t come up yet,” I forced out through my gritted teeth, “because we haven’t died. At which point you wouldn’t have to tell me anything.”
“It’s not as if it goes both directions,” he said, sounding like a person who thought he was being eminently reasonable. “If I die, you’ll be completely unaffected.”
“Completely unaffected,” I repeated, unable to believe my ears. Had I thought I was in love with this infuriating idiot? Clearly, I’d inherited far more than my share of my family’s propensity for insanity. “Completely un—I love you. And I’m beginning to regret it. Would it affect you if I died?”
“Well, since I’d also be—”
“Benedict!”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and almost sounded like he meant it. “Yes. Even if it didn’t kill me, I’d kill myself. You’ve made your point. But even if you love me,” and the way his lips twitched up, as if even saying it made him happy, forced a smile out of me in helpless response, “you don’t love me as much as I love you.”
“You can’t possibly know that, and I can’t believe how arrogant and presumptuous you are! Don’t try to tell me how I—”
He cut me off with a hard, searing kiss, bruising my lips and bending me back over his arm, squeezing the breath out of me.
Benedict lifted his head an inch, barely enough to look into my eyes. “I do know, because no one’s ever loved anyone as much as I love you. So however much you love me, it’s less.”
I still couldn’t quite seem to fill my lungs, as if my heart had expanded too much to give them room.
“Oh,” I gasped, like a fool. “Really?”
Benedict’s smile grew, creasing his cheek, bringing out the dimple that only made an appearance once in a blue moon—when he was truly happy. His eyes sparkled with his magic, and with joy, and with more love than I’d known could exist, at least for me.
“Really,” he said, with his usual unshakeable confidence. And he kissed me again.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and stopped arguing.