Chapter Fourteen
“G ood afternoon.”
Cador whirled to find Jem’s eldest sibling stepping from the shadow of a massive ornate sculpture that seemed to serve no purpose except to fill a space carved into the stone wall.
Cador said nothing, waiting. He tugged at the tightly buttoned cuffs of the ridiculous silk shirt.
He’d been about to knock on Jem’s chamber door.
Pasco leaned against the wall casually. “You clean up nicely. Jem could almost believe he was wed to a mainland noble.” His smile was sharp and swift. “Almost.”
Cador wanted to tear off the fancy clothes, but forced a bland smile as he hummed vaguely in response.
“Sleep well? I trust the accommodations are to your standard.”
“Yes.” The less he said to Pasco, the better. He kept walking, though he had no idea where he was going.
“Oh, about Jem’s books…”
Clenching his jaw, Cador turned to face him, forcing a neutral expression. Or what he hoped passed for one when he already wanted to tell Pasco to go fuck a goat. Which really was unfair to innocent goats. He raised an eyebrow, waiting for Pasco to spit it out.
“It’s the strangest thing.” Pasco tilted his head, the picture of innocence. “When I found Jem’s books abandoned in the dirt, a servant happened to mention that they saw you dumping them out of the trunk.”
Fuck. Shit. Piss. He could feel his cheeks reddening and tried to ignore the shame. The last thing he should do was let Pasco know how much he regretted it. Allowing Pasco to know anything he thought or felt would be a mistake.
He latched onto his resentment for this man’s treatment of Jem. He recalled very well Jem’s stories of how Pasco teased and tormented him. Yes, siblings were known to torment each other, but he’d been cruel to Jem for years.
What was he playing at now? Was he planning some grand humiliation for Cador as a way to needle Jem? He refused to be party to it. Fuck this smug little peacock of a man.
He shrugged. “We had to travel light. Jem understood.”
Pasco stiffened. “Bullshit. I know my brother, you—”
“There you are!” The queen’s footsteps rang out on the stone, the heels of her slippers oddly loud. She marched toward them with a few people trailing in her wake.
She wore a long, bright gown of gold that swirled and shimmered, her arms bare, but so many green-jeweled bracelets on her wrists that they almost reached her elbows. Her hair was piled and knotted atop her head, woven around her golden crown.
“Mother. I was just complimenting Cador on what a fine Neuvellan gentleman he appears to be.”
“I’m sure you were. Why don’t you join Jem and our guests on the terrace?”
So Jem had gone down to the feast without him? Fine. Cador didn’t need an escort. Pasco said, “Of course, Mother,” and slithered off like a sarf. The queen dismissed the people who’d been following her—some kind of servants, Cador assumed—with a flick of her hand.
“Have you seen the portrait gallery?” she asked.
“Uh, no.” Cador realized he was still fidgeting with his cuffs when she glanced down with a frown. He dropped his hands to his sides, then clasped them behind his back, digging his blunt nails into his knuckles.
She began walking, and after a moment of uncertainty, Cador assumed he was meant to follow. He overtook her with two strides and almost tripped over his own feet, the thin-soled boots skidding on the tiles as he tried to match her snail’s pace.
She seemed completely content to amble while Cador felt like he dragged his feet through thawing mud. If he had somewhere to go, he preferred to just get there and do his business. It didn’t help that the borrowed boots crushed his toes.
“I hope Pasco wasn’t being rude, though I imagine he was.”
He wasn’t sure what the right thing to say was, so Cador shrugged. On Ergh, he would have agreed that Pasco was a prick.
“How does your brother Bryok fare?”
Cador’s breath seized, and he realized he hadn’t thought about it for some hours. Somehow, he’d forgotten Bryok was dead. “Why?” he asked too sharply, heart thudding.
Jem had said he’d filled in the queen on Treeve’s claims about the threat from King Perran, but there hadn’t been time to discuss Tas and the plot and Bryok’s treachery. Cador’s treachery. The lies of them all.
Should he confess the truth to her now that she was asking of Bryok? He could blurt it all out—the disease, the sevels, the fear of losing everything to the mainland if they didn’t scheme for control.
She frowned at him. “I was just thinking of how siblings can tease and bicker. Pasco has always needled Jem, but of course he loves his brother.”
“Of course.” His voice was too raw, and he coughed to cover it, trying to banish the memories of Bryok charging forward with sword raised, determined to take Jem’s head.
He said nothing else, for Jem had been clear he wished to tell her himself.
The last thing Cador wanted to do was go behind his back.
He’d give anything to earn back Jem’s trust, so he’d bite his tongue no matter how fucking bizarre it felt to be strolling in fancy clothes making small talk like nothing was wrong.
As they climbed another twisting staircase, the queen told him about the women who’d weaved the massive tapestry hugging the curved stone wall. She lifted the hem of her dress with one jeweled hand, her voice lilting and calm as she detailed the invention of some special kind of yarn or something.
How would she have reacted to receiving Jem’s head? Cador remembered her commanding presence in the dungeon and had no doubt steel lurked beneath her gracious, patient smile. Bryok’s murderous cry echoed, and Cador slammed the lid on those memories.
He hesitated by a wide doorway, reaching out to touch the deep red stone. It felt like any other.
“Each brick was soaked for days in vermilion and dried for weeks before construction,” the queen said, answering his unspoken question.
“How frivolous.” He couldn’t imagine such a waste of time on Ergh. He realized too late his rudeness. “Uh, it is striking though.”
She smiled as though he’d said nothing wrong. “Isn’t it?”
They entered a round room, sunlight streaming through a windowed ceiling high above. They couldn’t be atop the castle, so it must have been one of the cylinders that clung to the castle’s side. Jem’s mother motioned up.
“With light coming through the turret’s roof, the paintings are protected from direct sun that would fade the canvases.”
Indeed, the pieces hung under a thick ledge. He’d never seen such detailed drawings of people. The paintings seemed so lifelike and colorful that he could believe blood had been used to depict the royal ancestors. Until he spotted the painting of what had to be Jem’s family.
“Is that supposed to be Jem on the left?” He pointed.
“Yes.”
Cador snorted. “Ridiculous. He looks like a solider.”
“My son is as strong as any solider.” She clenched her jaw.
“Of course! But he’s nowhere near that tall.”
The queen’s lips quirked into a rueful smile. “No, but my husband insisted the artist…embellish. It’s always bothered him that Jem is so small.”
Cador hadn’t given Jem’s father much thought one way or the other since Jem didn’t seem to.
He decided the man was a dunderhead. “His size has nothing to do with his strength. He is braver than a hundred soldiers.” Not that Cador himself hadn’t judged Jem harshly when they met.
If he could go back and do it all differently…
He examined the false Jem in the portrait, standing stiffly, almost the same height as his siblings. No smile lifted his pretty mouth, and his honey eyes were dull. “There’s no spark in his gaze. And is that a sword on his belt? There should be a bird on his shoulder and a book in his hand.”
Silence stretched out, and he turned his head to find the queen watching him intently. He shifted uncomfortably, tugging at the collar of his borrowed shirt.
Finally, he gave in and demanded, “What?” before remembering he needed to keep her on Ergh’s side. “I mean…” What was the polite mainland way to ask, Why the fuck are you looking at me like that? He imagined she was peering straight into his soul.
Finally, she tilted her head, dangling jeweled earrings tinkling. “It seems you have gotten to know my son during these months.”
“Well… He is my husband.”
“That he is. The time had come for him to do his duty as a prince. Though I confess I didn’t understand how very much I’d miss him.
It’s a relief to have him back. Now that he’s visited Ergh and met the people, I see no reason for him to return.
” Her face smoothed into a smile, her tone sweet.
“I’m sure that will suit you both in the future. ”
She led the way from the gallery, late afternoon sun streaming down and illuminating her crown as if the gold were aflame. Cador had no choice but to follow, the thought of a future on Ergh without Jem haunting every heavy step.
*
The terrace was at the rear of the castle, a raised balcony so large you could get lost in the trees and flowering vines.
Yet Cador’s gaze found Jem immediately—leaning close to a tall, slim man in the shade of a tree with gnarled limbs and yellow flowers.
As Jem laughed, Cador estimated the strides it would take to cross the busy terrace and shove this man over the railing.
The queen was still talking, so he nodded, jealous fury rushing through him. Jem’s father and other people had joined them by a useless fountain that sprayed precious water in arcs.
He knew it was foolish to be so upset by the idea of Jem staying in Neuvella. Jem had said himself he was going home for good. Why should he ever want to return to Ergh with a husband who betrayed him? Where people he’d grown to trust had conspired to use him as a pawn?
Now here he was with all the summer mead he could drink, people playing songs that sounded like birds on stringed pieces of wood, and trays of fancy food made into the shapes of animals. And whoever the fuck was making him laugh .