Chapter Eleven
“Remi? Remi, wake up.” Stefan’s voice. My eyes fluttered open, eyelashes catching on the edge of the pillowcase. I blinked. “Remi?”
When he laid his hand on my shoulder, I felt it through fabric. He’d covered me up, then. I’d slept right through it. How very disturbing that I’d been so lost to the world that I hadn’t even noticed.
Oh. Oh, gods.
I had to squeeze my eyes shut against a spinning slap of sudden dizziness. My stomach clenched. He’d covered me up after he stripped me, took me, and spent inside me. My curse. The potion that hadn’t done anything but nauseate me.
“He’s awake,” said an unknown male voice. “I can see it in the flow of his magic around him. But it doesn’t matter if he falls asleep again. I can examine him either way.”
Examine me? That had a far too scientific ring to it, and now my chest had seized up too.
Examine me? Like a specimen? While I fell unconscious again?
Ennolu preserve me, not that he’d done a good job of it so far.
And this man could tell I’d woken by the sight of my magic, which meant…
the mage Stefan had sent for. From the palace.
Who’d been intended to help me, except that there hadn’t been time…
all right. Perhaps he didn’t mean to dissect me after all.
“I’m awake,” I murmured, and pushed up on my arms. The coverlet slid down my bare back.
Stefan tugged it up again. “You can turn over, I’ll keep you covered,” he said, with a strange note to his voice. Well, of course he’d sound a bit off. He had to be furious. Or disgusted. Or—honestly, I had no idea how he’d feel about all of this. Gods, my head had started to ache.
I flipped over, and Stefan smoothed the edge of the covers down over my collarbones and stepped back.
And standing behind him was…surely I had to be delirious, but I didn’t think my imagination would’ve provided the aching stickiness between the cheeks of my ass.
In his attempts to educate me on the world I’d been dragged into, Aldrich had described Duke Lucian’s consort, the intimidating and powerful Lord General Benedict Rathenas, in some detail—right down to his penchant for all-black clothing and the huge ruby on a chain that hung from his left ear.
Probably because Aldrich seemed to exclusively enjoy the company of women, he hadn’t sufficiently emphasized Lord Benedict’s absurdly handsome face or the breadth of his shoulders, but I had no trouble at all understanding what had led the duke to marry the man who stood before me, politics and their awkward familial relationship be damned.
He didn’t outshine my husband, though, be damned to both of them. Even with his unlaced shirt hanging askew and his hair a tangled mess, face pale and stubbled, brows drawn together in a brooding frown, Stefan held his own as a blond counterpoint to Lord Benedict’s tall, dark good looks.
And ridiculously handsome Stefan, standing there with his arms crossed and his stormy eyes fixed on me unwaveringly, had gotten that disheveled by spreading my legs and putting his cock inside me.
I tore my gaze away and forced it to settle on Lord Benedict, because my face might combust if I didn’t. I couldn’t think about that right now. In fact, I ought never to think about it again.
“Lord Remi,” Lord Benedict said, with a courteous little nod. “My apologies for the intrusion.”
I had to lick my lips before I could even think about speaking, and everything still felt so dry. “You need water,” Stefan said, and turned away to my dressing table, which held a pitcher and a glass.
Lord Benedict shot a quick glance over at Stefan with a shake of his head, as if he also couldn’t believe my husband would be that attentive to my needs.
“I think the Lord Consort of Calatria can go where he pleases,” I managed to rasp, trying to smile. It didn’t feel all that successful.
Lord Benedict’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he said, with a note of suspicion—and a faint thickening of the air around him that set my teeth on edge and stirred the edges of senses that had been dormant for so long I hardly knew how to interpret them.
“My valet described you and your earring, and I already knew you were a mage. Stefan sent to the palace for someone.” I started to cough, and Stefan slid a hand behind my shoulders and held out the water glass.
A long drink cooled me all the way down my esophagus.
Stefan took the glass and whisked his hand away as if I’d burned him.
The impression of his skin on mine tingled as if I really had.
“It’s not a hard conclusion to come to,” I said, dropping back on the pillow.
It might’ve been more polite to sit up, but my spine felt like jelly.
The subtle tension bled out of Lord Benedict’s stance, and he sauntered forward, standing right by the bed. “Then it may be redundant, but I’m Benedict Rathenas, at your service,” he said. “Stefan, out. I’ll call you back when we’re done.”
Stefan growled, “The hell I will. I’m not leaving.”
“Yes, you are. Actually, Lord Remi. Your choice. Do you want your husband here while we discuss what’s happened to you tonight?
We’ll do whatever will put you more at your ease.
” At my ease? Ha! He smiled as I let out a pathetic, watery chuckle, the closest I could come to amusement at the present.
“I know better than anyone that this isn’t easy, Lord Remi.
I promise, I do, from experience. And Stefan won’t hold it against you if you have me throw him out.
” He turned to Stefan and raised an eyebrow. “Will you?”
“Of course not, but that doesn’t mean I want to leave you alone with him!”
Lord Benedict’s glare could’ve peeled paint off a wall, but Stefan’s matched it.
“All right,” Lord Benedict said, and his mild tone held far more danger than a sharp one would’ve.
“I’ll take you to see Lucian, shall I? And you can look him in the eye and explain what danger, precisely, you think I pose to your lovely young consort. ”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ben,” Stefan said, and ran a hand over his face. “I know you wouldn’t—that’s not why. He’s the one who doesn’t know you.”
Ben? He could summon the Lord Consort peremptorily in the middle of the night to attend to my health, and he called him Ben? Not for the first time, and almost certainly not for the last…who the bloody hell had I married?
Too addled by the appearance of yet another mystery to add to the list of what I didn’t understand about my husband, and addled even more by the very attractive Lord Benedict’s use of the word “lovely,” I didn’t think before saying my first thought aloud.
“I don’t really know you, either,” I told Stefan.
“So it’s not as if your staying makes any difference. ”
“I can go in the next room,” Stefan said stiffly, and I watched in fascination as a dark red flush rose up his neck. Anger? Embarrassment? “Of course I won’t blame you for wanting me gone.”
I had no idea what to say to that.
“Don’t be so touchy, Stefan,” Lord Benedict put in after a moment, with a roll of his eyes.
“He’s always been given to amateur dramatics, Lord Remi.
He carries a quizzing glass, by all that’s holy.
” Stefan muttered something under his breath about people who wore one earring and still felt entitled to criticize the choices of others, and Lord Benedict flashed a grin.
“Ignore him. You’re safe with me and my magic, you have my word.
But he might as well stay if you’ve no objection, so that we won’t need to repeat ourselves later. ”
I glanced over at Stefan and found him staring at me again, jaw set tight, so intent on me that it sent a little shiver skittering down my back.
“He can stay,” I whispered, and Stefan nodded jerkily and turned away, going to the fireplace and leaning on the mantel, gazing down at the hearth. Or hiding his expression from me, anyway.
“Very well,” Lord Benedict said, and drew a deep breath. His eyes went unfocused and distant, and he sketched his hand through the air. And something shifted, something incredibly subtle, making me shake my head to clear it.
After a moment, I realized I couldn’t hear anything from outside the room.
A moment ago, a breeze had been rustling through the vines hanging down over my balcony, and a wagon or a carriage had been passing out on the street, the clopping and rattling echoing up to my window.
And those sounds had vanished instantly.
“I don’t think anyone outside this room should hear our conversation,” he said with a shrug.
I gazed at him in wonder I couldn’t conceal. All of the mages I’d ever met were twilight mages who suppressed their magic, and to see one use his so readily, so skillfully, so casually…
He went on with, “Did anyone, like your very informative valet, happen to tell you that I’m a dusk mage myself? Or that I was poisoned and nearly murdered a few months ago?”
“Ben, you shouldn’t,” Stefan said heavily. “You know why he’s here.”
Why I was here? Shouldn’t what?
Before I could ask, Lord Benedict shot back, “Yes, I know he’s here because your father brought him here and probably expects him to report on you, but Zettine already knows what happened to me, and it’s my decision to tell Lord Remi my business, in any case.
” Lord Benedict quirked a smile at me as I gaped up at him, frozen in horror as his meaning penetrated the haze in my sluggish mind.
“Zettine is hoping you’ll spy for him, isn’t he?
That’s not a hard conclusion to come to, either. ”