Chapter One #3
“You see,” the Lord Chancellor said, lowering his voice to a confidential, would-be soothing pitch that set all my teeth on edge, “I’m sorry to say that my son hasn’t always behaved properly.
Some of his habits would seem quite shocking to decent people, especially to one who’s spent his life devoted to holy Ennolu’s will, and so I won’t go into the details of that.
But the main point is that his travels have kept him far from home, and his mother and I both wish for him to settle down.
Take his place here in the capital as one of Calatria’s eminent men, as his talents fit him to do.
With my guidance, I’m sure that you can help lead him down a better path.
Once you’re married you can come to me any time you need counsel. We’ll be very good friends, Remi.”
Any time I needed counsel?
Instructions, he meant.
Gods. He hadn’t brought me back to Calatria to please his son, but to seduce and manipulate him. What if Lord Stefan didn’t want this marriage any more than I did? He’d hate me for being an instrument of his father’s control.
And if I tried to argue, to defy either one of them, let alone both… I’d be ground to powder between two powerful men who were clearly at odds in ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine.
The Lord Chancellor’s smile would’ve chilled a shark’s blood. “I can see that you have reservations. Ethical scruples, perhaps. Very admirable, Remi. Praiseworthy, even. But as I now have the honor to advise you as a father would, I feel we can speak openly.”
He paused long enough that he clearly expected a response. As a father would. He dared to speak of taking my father’s place!
I managed a stiff nod.
“Hmm. I’ll look for more family feeling than that in the future, Remi.”
“I beg your pardon, my lord,” I bit out. “You’re right that the journey was long. I’m not myself. I’m nothing but grateful for your concern for me.”
The Lord Chancellor favored me with another sour smile, an acknowledgment of my transparent lies and my cowardice. I’d have preferred to think of it as a calculated and temporary retreat from hostilities, but I couldn’t even sell that lie to myself.
“Your sister Edelfina, like so many very young people, has made some poor decisions of late,” he said.
“She has begun to associate with the wrong friends. Spoken rashly. Worse, written rashly. Letters that have been collected and sent to me by men whose job it is to ensure the duke’s safety and Calatria’s peace and prosperity. You ought to sit down, Remi.”
The sparkly black spots swimming across my eyes agreed with him.
Through the haze, I saw a chair a few feet away, and I staggered to it, my knees giving out as I fell into it with a thump.
My sister. Oh, gracious gods, my sister.
Fifteen years old. Exactly the age at which I’d been burning with impotent rage over my father’s fate.
If I’d been on the mainland, going to taverns and meeting other young firebrands, railing against injustice to a like-minded group rather than at the unhearing sky over the abbey’s quiet, windswept garden…
Propping my elbows on my knees and leaning down kept me from fainting, barely. My face had gone numb.
“You see my dilemma,” the Lord Chancellor said, sounding as indifferent and unsympathetic as the sky itself, with a thin, false veneer of solicitude painted over it.
“It is my duty, as the highest non-royal official in Calatria, to ensure that no sedition is allowed to take root. And yet, one so young might deserve an opportunity to redeem herself. To change her opinions. Particularly when her elder brother will be married to my own son. Do you not agree?”
Fifteen was old enough to be convicted of treason and sent to the headsman, particularly when the accused had a good reason to hate her liege lords—such as the conviction and execution of her father.
It didn’t matter if the letters were genuine, or if Fina’s “sedition” had been no more than a complaint about our family’s reduced circumstances.
Duke Lucian might be less paranoid than his father, and require some proof before he pronounced guilt, but no ruler in history had ever been casual about treason amongst the nobility.
I couldn’t take the risk.
Trading my freedom, my body, and my self-respect for my sister’s life could only be considered cheap at the price. Even if I hadn’t loved her with all the force of my heart, I’d have done anything to spare my mother that fresh, redoubled horror and grief.
It took several tries before I could force words through the thickness in my throat. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I agree.” He didn’t speak. “To everything. Everything you ask of me.”
“Very good,” he said. “Very good, Remi. But I’ve already told you what’s required of you.
Stefan has a brilliant future ahead of him with the guidance and assistance I can provide.
Your task is to please him and ensure that he’s in a receptive frame of mind.
And speaking of which…to that end, I’ve made sure he understands that you are in a receptive frame of mind, and of body.
That you’re eager to leave your dull, religious exile and become the consort of a wealthy, powerful man, and that you’ve had some previous experience of other men, enough that he won’t need to take any particular care to cosset your sensibilities.
He might not be inclined to press the issue with a completely innocent virgin. ”
Lord Ettori grimaced, as if he could hardly believe his own son could be weak enough to show basic human decency.
And instead, Lord Ettori wanted to ensure Lord Stefan wouldn’t take any particular care to cosset my sensibilities…
oh, gods, if he said one more word, I might throw up on his shoes the way I had on his secretary’s.
I’d thought Abbot Junius’s way of discussing pleasing my husband-to-be had been revolting, but this!
What kind of man encouraged his own son to use his new consort like a whore?
“He believes you’re entirely willing, as, of course, you will be,” Lord Ettori added, and his tone brooked no denial.
“This will be a legal, consummated marriage. And you will say nothing to Stefan to contradict what I’ve told him, or your sister will face the consequences of my displeasure.
Do you understand? Look at me, Remi, and tell me you understand. ”
This kind of man, obviously. The kind of man who threatened the life of a fifteen-year-old girl to get his way.
You will do as you’re told, and you will keep your wits about you, and there’s nothing else for it.
“Yes.” I forced myself to raise my eyes from the carpet and meet his, even though I’d rather have gazed into the face of a venomous snake. “I understand.”
“Good. Then I’ll send you to freshen up after your long journey and ready yourself for the wedding. But I do have one more inquiry to make. How long has it been since you took your potion, and how long will it be before you would need relief from your…curse?”
My potion. The bottles had been in a small satchel inside my trunk, which I hadn’t seen since Ser Prendian had gotten his grasping claws on it.
The dread that had gathered in a hard, hot knot at the base of my skull grew into a painful throb.
“My last dose was yesterday morning, my lord. I’d need another…” My curse cycled fairly quickly, on an interval of slightly more than two days. “Tomorrow. Around midday.”
The Lord Chancellor didn’t do anything so crude as sigh with relief, but the lines around his mouth softened slightly. “Excellent. The wedding will be tomorrow, so you’ll no longer need your potion. You won’t require it once you’re married.”
You won’t require it.
Won’t require it.
The words rang and rang in my ears, setting up a humming resonance like running a finger around the mouth of a crystal goblet. My uncle had used to do that for me, to amuse me.
Before Duke Treviso, and this man who’d just taken away the very last semblance of my autonomy, had murdered him along with his only sibling. And now he’d forced me to his will by threatening mine.
The Lord Chancellor picked up a bell from his desk and gave it a quick shake.
Ser Prendian opened the door so instantly that I suspected he’d had his ear pressed to the keyhole.
“Take Remi to his rooms and see to it that he’s appropriately attended, and then return. Remi, I will see you at the wedding.”
And with that ominous promise, the Lord Chancellor dismissed me both literally and figuratively—he’d turned his attention to a document on his desk before Ser Prendian had even finished chivvying me out the courtyard door.