Chapter 3
Alaric
Princess Guinevere is a brat. Spoiled and childish.
Yet her body is not the body of a child. No, it is the body of a woman. That much I saw plainly today when she brazenly undressed in front of me.
I could have left. Could have called a maid to dress her, could have dragged her straight to the solar in her riding habit.
I did none of those things. Instead, I stood there and ogled her until it became obvious I would be dealing with a problem in my breeches, which is more surprising than it sounds.
I haven’t had an erection in nearly fifty turns around the sun. I thought my barely warm corpse was long past such human functions.
Now I linger in the doorway of the queen’s solar, hidden for the most part in shadow, watching her still. The princess may have a sour attitude, but she has the sweetest face in this kingdom and the ones surrounding it. More beautiful even than her stepmother, a famed beauty in her own right.
Guinevere’s skin is pale, needing no paste to fake the look that most highborn women strive for.
As she looks up and her gaze meets mine across the room, though, her cheeks bloom with a flush of high color.
Her thick, dark brows lower over her blue eyes, and she lifts her chin in a show of that very same stubborn temper that plagued me this eve.
The gown she selected for tonight is modest as far as ladies’ fashion in this century goes.
Yet when she leans forward to lift her goblet from the table, I’m still gifted with the swell of a full bosom and more inches of her flawless skin than should be permitted.
I should not be looking. Of course she wants me to look, having sensed how it unsettles me. I’m only unused to my body’s reaction. That is all. And she is using it to her advantage, as if she needs another.
No woman since Melantha has paid me so much attention in many years. The princess certainly glares at me with the same malevolence as her stepmother.
Discomposed by my awareness of her, I step back, sinking further into the shadow where I belong. The talk around the table goes on. Melantha always did like the sound of her own voice.
Melantha’s women lap it up just as they do the decadent food she insists on feeding them night after night, even in a winter where supplies are scarce.
The monsters in the Gloamwald are restless. Their numbers have increased despite the best efforts of me and my men. Perhaps it has been a good breeding season. Perhaps they have scented the stink of death which now hangs over Blackthorn Keep and have gathered here.
In any case, game meat is hard to come by. The monsters devour anything that scampers out to sniff the sunlight.
The farmers cannot even tend their crops properly in the short daylight hours of winter before they must scurry back behind the walls or huddle around tiny fires, praying to whatever gods they serve to keep them safe from what waits for them beyond.
But no one at the queen’s table ever goes hungry.
As the first dessert course is brought in, two servants carry the king in on his chair. The old man looks more sunken every day. The dark circles beneath his eyes seem to have swallowed his whole face. He can hardly keep his head up, and I wonder that they made him get out of his bed.
Melantha claps her hands, and the musicians fall silent. She gives the table a bright smile that could freeze the petals off the hardiest of spring daffodils. “My love, you are looking so much better today. I’m so glad you could join us this evening.”
I catch the worried look Princess Guinevere shoots her father across the table, and I can’t say I blame her. The queen is devouring him as she is devouring his kingdom.
The withered old man forces his thin lips into a besotted smile.
“My dear Guin,” Melantha continues. “Your father and I have some wonderful news, and now seems like the perfect opportunity. Ladies, raise your goblets with me and congratulate my darling stepdaughter, for she is to be married this spring.”
Around the table, the queen’s ladies lift their glasses and chorus their congratulations.
The princess and the king are the only ones not moving. Guinevere stares down the table at Melantha in horror, her fists suddenly tight on the silver knife and fork.
So she did not know.
This doesn’t surprise me. Melantha does nothing that isn’t a calculated move, and I cannot imagine Guinevere going along with this easily. She is far too headstrong.
Finally she lifts her goblet and shoots an icy smile at her stepmother. “Ma’am, you’ve taken me by surprise. Who will I be fortunate enough to call my husband?”
Without missing a beat, Melantha sets down her drink. “Why, the prince of Dolmire. A worthy match for a princess of such beauty and renown.”
Her ladies clap and pay no attention to the icy stare Guinevere directs at Melantha. “The prince of Dolmire? A man old enough to be my father?”
“My dear, you know very well that age has nothing to do with how well you are matched. Look at your father and me and see how happy we are. Are we not, my dear?”
The king looks up, blinking, and bestows another addled smile at his wife. “Yes, my love. So happy.” His gaze drops back to the bowl of broth a servant has placed in front of him.
A low growl of frustration escapes Giunevere.
Melantha’s dark brows crease just a fraction.
I’m not certain they can actually move much more than this.
Not with all the dark magic coursing through her veins.
“Now, now, my dear. What will your noble prince think of us all if you were to make such noises in his hearing? I must remind you to mind your table manners. Even your great beauty will not be enough to distract him if you insist on behaving like an animal.”
“But I—”
“Enough.” Melantha waves her hand, and the musicians start up again.
I do not catch the sound that comes from the princess’s mouth this time, but I can imagine it. The petulant whining of an angry child.
Only is that fair? I have met the prince of Dolmire, and what Guinevere protests is true.
He is old enough to be her father. And he was not a handsome man even in his youth.
But such is the fate of the highborn whose lives are not our own.
She would hardly be the first girl to be married off for the political advantage of her family rather than for love.
Nor for that matter would her fate be any different should she have been born male.
The same fate awaits as many princes as princesses.
A low chuckle beside me finally draws my attention from the princess. One of the footmen who carried in the king nudges his companion and leans close to whisper in his ear. “And from what I hear, that prince will have a time of it on his wedding night.”
The shorter man snorts. “Why? Too old to get it up? I hear they make special potions for that now.”
“No,” the other replies. “Our sweet princess is as like to bite it off as suck it, and I doubt she’ll let him put it in without a fight.”
“She is a feisty one, that,” agrees the second man. “Perhaps we should offer to help hold her down for him. The old man might need a helping hand.”
“Enough.” I round on them, stepping forward to tower over them.
The stupid grins fall from their faces.
“Keep a civil tongue in your head while you wait upon the queen’s table, or you’ll lose it.”
“Yes, Sir Alaric.”
“Yes, sir.” They stare at their toes until I step back, irritated with myself for letting it get to me.
What do I care what they say about Princess Guinevere? She deserves it and more, and no doubt her new husband will have trouble keeping her in line.
And if my mind wanders to the moment he pushes up her skirts to claim his marital prize, it is because I’ve no soul left to check my baser impulses. Nothing to teach me compassion when I imagine pushing a finger roughly between her virgin lips to sample her ripeness.
With a curse, I turn away from the scene. I need to be gone from here before I imagine more.
No white clouds of breath escape from my lungs to decorate the air as I stride toward the stables.
The young boy on duty tonight scrambles from his hay bed as he catches sight of me, wiping his arm across his pale face and looking as if he might shake his trousers loose with the way he trembles.
“Sir Alaric! Shall I saddle your horse?”
I dismiss him with a curt gesture. “No. A brush and oil will do.”
“I-I can groom him, sir. If it please you.”
I sigh, trying to keep my voice gentle. “It does not. Go back to your rest, boy.”
I slow my steps as I approach Tharrok’s stall. He’s a feisty thing, prone to displays of temper should someone approach him the wrong way. Even if that someone is me.
He seems to be the only creature who isn’t afraid of me these days. He and the queen and her brat of a stepdaughter. Chained as I am to her, Melantha has no need to fear me. Not unless I ever get my hands on my phylactery again. Then it will be a different story.
The horse has no justification for his confidence. Perhaps that’s why I like him.
As for the princess…
Best to keep my mind from the womanly curves which seem to have appeared overnight. That, after all, is why I came to the stables. Grooming Tharrok always calms my mind when nothing else works.