Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Deyvid
In the wake of his return, Deyvid could tell that Petur was leaning hard into his love for his sister’s children.
The next few months at court were positively transformational, with Prince Petur methodically seeking out every opportunity possible to do two things: first, to show off his individual prowess when it came to shifting, which was immense, and two, to make it very clear to everyone present that Delainie was well loved and even more well protected.
There were a few rumbles about girls being tattletales that died quickly after Givencie herself, in kitten form naturally, slashed hems, clawed faces, and generally made such an incredible nuisance of herself that people avoided her out of sheer self-interest. They couldn’t avoid the heir apparent the same way, but when Givencie couldn’t be there, Petur was.
These interventions, plus Deyvid spending a solid month on his niece’s swordsmanship skills, led to a distinct improvement in her status at court.
Whether or not her parents saw it, Deyvid couldn’t say.
He had assumed they would care, but to be honest, he hadn’t seen a lot of caring out of Tania or Jemal lately.
They were consumed with preparing for the convocation, a bi-annual meeting of the rulers of the Seven Nations of the Southlands, where they hacked and hewed at territory disputes, tax disagreements, and proposals for alliances until everyone was, if not perfectly satisfied, at least not about to declare war.
Preparations for the convocation naturally meant that Petur’s time was dearer than ever.
In addition to ensuring that his nieces could walk through their own court without being snickered at, and protecting Deyvid from direct confrontations with Tania, he was reviewing security protocols seemingly night and day, both for what would be maintained in their absence and what they would enact on the road.
This year’s convocation was to be held in Deloth, just to the south of Mersaighe.
It was a long and dangerous road to travel under the best of circumstances, which these certainly weren’t.
Deyvid wanted to be able to tell Petur to slow down, to take it easy. He wanted to be able to tell Petur that he didn’t have to work so hard. Now that Deyvid was back, he could take more of the burden of protecting the family on.
“You can’t, though,” Petur said bluntly to him one night a few days after his return. “I know you want to, and believe me, I appreciate that, but there’s no way I’m going to put you in Tania’s line of sight right now.”
“This is the sort of work I’m good at,” Deyvid insisted. “This is what I trained for years to do.”
“Exactly,” Petur replied. “All the more reason for you not to remind her of the fact that you used to be a very successful assassin, don’t you think?”
Deyvid hated that he could see Petur’s point. “At least leave me the freedom to work with the members of the Shifter Corps who will make up our escort,” he said. “Let me design practice scenarios for them, ways to ensure our safety on the road. Allow me to handle that much.”
Petur grinned a little crookedly at him. “You’re very determined to keep us all alive.”
“Obviously,” Deyvid said with a bit of exasperation, “but more than that, I’m determined to keep you from working yourself into an early grave.”
“Says the man who spent months skulking through forests and dodging squads of killers in his quest for intelligence.”
“Exactly,” Deyvid agreed. “That’s how you know I know what I’m talking about.”
“So smug,” Petur said, clasping his hands around Deyvid’s head and drawing him in close until he was just a breath away from a kiss. “Lucky for you, I like smug.”
“Lucky for you,” Deyvid scoffed.
Whatever he would have said next was cut off by the press of Petur’s mouth against his.
Deyvid relaxed into the kiss, looping his arms around Petur’s neck and drawing him in closer, tighter.
Gods, it felt like they could never hold on tight enough these days.
Their reunion had been tender and satisfying, but the time allotted for it was gone all too soon.
They didn’t even have a full day in each other’s company before the necessities of their positions had them haring off in opposite directions once more.
Actually, being able to spend a night together now was almost as hard as it had been when Deyvid was five hundred miles north. Petur kissed him one more time, gently, then stepped back. “I need to go see to the girls’ coverage,” he said.
Deyvid licked across his swollen lips. “I should, ah, I should go put together recommendations for whom we should take with us as protection on the road.”
“I agree,” Petur said immediately. “Nice choices, well done. Couldn’t have done it better, now just don’t fuck it up.”
Deyvid rolled his eyes. “Why do I even bother thinking for myself when you’re right here having all the thoughts I need for me?”
“I’m glad you acknowledged my intellectual superiority, darling. It’s very big of you.” Petur patted him on the chest. “Understanding is the first step in accepting.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
Petur left with a laugh, and Deyvid congratulated himself on being able to do something to make his lover smile after what seemed like an eternity of frowns.
In the month of time that remained between Deyvid’s return and the royal family leaving for the convocation, there were three more assassination attempts.
It was a staggeringly large number so close together—a ridiculous amount, to be honest—and two of them were so juvenile and crude that they couldn’t be taken seriously.
The most harrowing thing about them, Deyvid decided, was the fact that they were now targeting Petur.
Not the queen, not her consort, not her children.
Her brother. It was clear that whoever was behind this and however many of them there were, they had honed in on the stumbling block when it came to accomplishing the rest of their goal: Petur.
He was keeping his family alive through dint of sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness and skill.
If they managed to take him out, the rest of the family would be easy pickings.
Deyvid hadn’t been certain after the first attempt whether the assassin was targeting Petur or not.
After all, it was a poisoning, and those tended to get messy.
In this case, it could have been fatal for an entire company of the Corps, with two fronds’ worth of spotted glineas slipped into the communal pot in the barracks kitchen while Petur and Deyvid were spending the night there.
Spotted glineas was pungent and bitter, but if the scent could be masked enough, it only took a single bite to kill an adult.
Fortunately for them, one of the Corps members was the son of an herbalist, who had learned at a young age to identify tainted food when his absent-minded father didn’t wash his hands well enough before heading into the kitchen and trying to feed the rest of them.
The poisoned food was identified and thrown out, but the poisoner remained at large.
The next attempt was another uncomfortably widespread attack, this time in a training ground ten miles out of the city, in a town that had been abandoned after a particularly harsh hurricane ten years previously.
It was an ideal place for the shifters to practice urban warfare, but many of the timbers of the bedraggled buildings were old and rotting.
The house that Petur had chosen to run the exercises from was, on their very first night there, set on fire in the early hours of the morning.
Petur smelled the smoke instantly and was able to get himself, Deyvid, and every other inhabitant out well before the home went up in flames, but the perpetrator, once again, wasn’t found even though Petur was able to find evidence that the fire had been set by an arrow, not as a result of a spell.
“Ludicrous,” Petur snapped and snarled as he strode across the ground in the center of the little town. Everyone had been moved out of the buildings to shelter in tents. “Absolutely fucking ludicrous. What did they think they were going to accomplish by setting a random fire, hmm?”
“The destabilization of an entire force of highly trained shifters, most likely,” Deyvid suggested dryly. “After all, your presence makes the act far from random. Now settle down before you wear a hole in the ground, hmm?”
“Don’t tell me to settle down,” Petur snapped. “You have no idea the pressure I’m under. Can you imagine what my sister’s reaction would be if someone started firing flaming arrows at us on the road? She’d have my head. She’d have your head. She’d have all our heads.”
“That would be counterproductive.”
“Don’t be smart with me right now.”
“Then don’t be mad at me,” Deyvid replied with a bit of heat in his own voice. “You think I like this? I don’t. I especially don’t when everything that happens, time and again, makes it seem as though my own people are responsible.”
“They’re not your people anymore,” Petur insisted.
“I know,” Deyvid agreed, “but I’m trying to look at this from your sister’s perspective. And you know what she would say.”
“And we can’t stop her,” Petur said morosely.
“All we can do,” Deyvid agreed, “is our best. Everything else, our fears, our worries, it’s going to have to wait.”
Petur slumped back onto his cot. “I hate waiting.”
Deyvid kissed him just above the eyebrow. “I know,” he said, “but you’ll do it anyway.”
“Obviously.”
The third assassination attempt was the most concerning. Not necessarily because of the sly way in which it was delivered, and it was quite sly, but because it coincided with reports of an attempt on the life of Melisse, the queen of Bekkon.
Bekkon was a tiny nation, the smallest of the seven Southlands but deceptively powerful thanks to its monarch’s abilities with magic.
Receiving a notification from Melisse that she and her consort had weathered an ambush during a ride together was testament to the determination of whoever was behind it because she had a plethora of magical protections, and yet the arrow which struck at her had to be stopped by none other than her consort himself.
Her magical protections had failed. Whoever had released that arrow was a High Harrier. That knowledge, plus the next attack on Petur, were enough to leave Tania both furious and worried.
The next attack on Petur was unsubtle but devious in its ferocity. It happened on the grounds just in front of the palace, Petur out glad-handing the locals while his sister held court inside. Deyvid was keeping watch from afar, looking out for, he had thought, everything.
Except, it seemed, for the thing that he hadn’t counted as a potential danger at all.
It was a dog, whimpering and whining, pawing at its face now and then as it stumbled down a side street.
Only once it entered the main square, its behavior changed entirely.
Its head rose, eyes narrowing and mouth opening as its nostrils flared.
Less than a second later, it took off at a mad dash.
No barking, no howling, just jaws agape as it lunged straight for Petur.
Deyvid was too far away to do anything but shout. His daggers, his bow, none of them could be used with so many people between them who were taller than the dog. Fool, fool! Despite it all, Deyvid began to run.
A few of the townspeople screamed, and several fell back in the wake of the huge, snarling dog as it barreled through them, eyes set on the prince in their midst. It leapt through the air, fangs bared—and was caught by the head, by Petur, in his warrior form.
One sharp ripple from shoulder to hand, and the dog went limp.
“Is it diseased?” one person called out.
“Must be,” another said. “Look at that foam round the mouth. Greenish like that, that’s drowning disease.”
“It was fine just a moment ago,” someone else said. “Or at least, it didn’t seem aggressive, did it?”
Deyvid’s heart sank as he made eye contact with Petur across the square.
When Petur raised one eyebrow, Deyvid nodded grimly.
Yes, this was an assassination attempt. Yes, he’d seen it used before successfully by his own people.
It was simply a matter of time and timing: train a dog to attack a particular scent and then ensure before you released it that it carried a disease that would transfer through its bite.
And here they were, ready to leave for the convocation in two days.
“Shit,” Deyvid muttered. This was going to be a rough trip.