Chapter One #2
“Your behavior reflects poorly on the Crown,” Varex ground out.
“I don’t see why.” Tor’s grin was particularly satisfied. “I assure you, everyone involved has enjoyed themselves.”
“You’re making an unfavorable impression on those who see you… carousing before you finally retire to your room.”
“If others wish to join me, they have only to say so.”
His brother’s jaw tightened again. “You know full well that’s not what I meant! You’re thirty-five years old.”
“Thank you for that reminder.”
Varex was still staring him down with that obnoxiously stern expression. “What was tolerated when you were younger grows less seemly as you age.”
Tor couldn’t help himself. “Actually, I’ll have you know that I’ve improved with age. I’ve never gotten complaints about my performance.”
“I’m complaining about your performance,” Varex ground out.
Tor grinned involuntarily. “Really? Do tell, Brother. Exactly what is it about my performance that distresses you?”
There was a fleeting moment where Tor thought Varex was actually going to laugh because this was the most ridiculous conversation ever, but then—
“I don’t believe this is an appropriate conversation.”
At his wife’s prim words, Varex was once again the sober, disapproving monarch he’d become when he married the red-headed shrew. Tor’s heart sank.
“It’s time you performed all your duties as High Prince.”
“How have I failed to do so?” Tor challenged. “What have I done that you haven’t also done at some point?” He cast a look at Fernila. “Or are we pretending none of that ever happened?”
Varex reached out to squeeze his wife’s hand, as though she needed constant reassurance and support and couldn’t simply function as her own person.
Narrowing his eyes, Tor squinted at the thrones.
He’d never noticed before, but he was pretty sure they hadn’t been this close together when it was their mother and father who’d ruled.
Had Varex moved them closer together just so he could soothe his perpetually sensitive wife?
Varex intoned, “What I did prior to my marriage has no bearing upon it—something for which you will be eternally grateful when you are married.”
“Fortunately, that’s not something I need to worry about. I have no wish to marry.”
“Nevertheless, it’s time you do so,” Varex said with a worrying amount of finality in his voice.
Tor scoffed. “Why? Your wife has managed to give you an heir.”
Fernila flushed again. Tor still couldn’t understand how someone could have hair that spectacular a color, behave like a mouse, and also be a shrew.
How Varex could stand it, he couldn’t begin to imagine, and yet he was either putting up the finest front ever, or for some unfathomable reason, he actually liked the woman.
Tor had assumed for years that he was overcompensating in public, but there had never been a crack in his brother’s armor.
He chose his wife in every instance over his own flesh and blood, and he seemed genuinely to want her to be comfortable—and happy, although Tor was not actually convinced that was a state which she was capable of attaining.
Varex’s face grew angrier. “Since you are no longer my heir, you cannot simply hide behind that position.”
Tor felt his spine stiffen and his shoulders straighten in automatic response to this attack. He hadn’t asked for this accident of birth.
“I was not aware I was hiding, Brother.”
“What value would you say you’ve brought to the United Realms in recent years?”
Swallowing against a constriction in his throat, Tor said, “I hadn’t realized that my worth was being measured in such a way.”
“Is not every person measured for how they contribute to society? Drinking and carousing is hardly a productive lifestyle.”
“I had a position,” Tor said stiffly. “It was not to your liking.”
“You were not fit for command,” Varex ground out.
Sucking in a sharp breath, Tor kept his words light with an effort. “That was a matter of opinion.”
“Nearly a dozen guards died,” Varex snapped, eyes blazing.
Tor clenched his teeth until his jaw creaked and didn’t snap back. His stomach churned. He knew exactly how many people had died. He could never forget it. But did it constantly have to be thrown in his face? Should one mistake ruin everything?
“What do you want of me?” he asked instead, voice clipped.
With a visible effort, Varex reined in his own temper, though his voice had an edge when he spoke. “To do what you’re good at.”
“Meaning?”
“Bessar and Vayrin have an alliance.”
It wasn’t like this was news, but Tor gamely agreed, “Yes, they’re united by a political marriage. Following, I believe, your example.”
Fernila sat up straighter, and Varex laid a hand over her arm again. Why was she even here? Simply to sit there and be anxious and critical?
“It is concerning,” Varex pronounced. “We are connected to Filon and Lotar through marriage ourselves, and that forges strong alliances.”
Varex offered the Queen a smile that was so sickeningly tender that it took Tor a moment to focus on what his brother was implying. Normally, he’d try to address his brother’s erroneous assumption that marriage always made a strong alliance, but he had something even more important to say just now.
“No.”
Varex’s attention snapped back to Tor. “I beg your pardon.”
“I realize it’s not a word you hear very often anymore,” Tor said wryly, “but I trust you still understand its meaning. I said ‘no.’”
“Princess Terila is a very attractive prospect,” Varex continued, rather like Tor hadn’t spoken at all.
Although Terila was more powerful than Fernila, that wasn’t saying much. Someone who could be that charming and that abrasive in practically the same breath depending on who she was talking to made Tor think of nothing more than a viper. They had not been compatible, in more ways than one.
Tor grimaced. “Her beauty is the only thing to recommend her.”
“Is that not what you value most?” Fernila asked pointedly.
Glaring at her, Tor snapped, “The criteria for which I search for a bed mate and life-long companion are not at all the same. As I believe is true for most people.”
Fernila stiffened, her lips compressing, but Varex proceeded as though they weren’t insulting one another.
“It is the duty of children of the Crown to marry,” he said calmly.
“We are not simply chips on a board. We are people,” Tor argued.
“People with a duty to their people,” Varex corrected with a chiding expression, like he thought Tor was being purposely ignorant. “And since you’re spending your time here drinking the nights away and seducing the Queen’s attendants—”
“So that’s what this is?” Tor interrupted, shooting a look of loathing at Fernila. “You want me out of the castle because I’m bothering the tender sensibilities of your wife?”
It was surely why Terila was being touted rather than Marwila or Solil or any of the other second or third-born royalty. Clearly, they wanted to get rid of Tor and didn’t want to risk him living here with his spouse afterward.
Fernila’s eyes met his, the dislike equally evident in her expression. “Six attendants in the last two months! Six!”
It was with an effort that Tor didn’t laugh. It was eight, actually, but two of them had been discreet. Tor had intended to outrage Fernila by seducing all of them, but he didn’t actually kiss and tell. If they wanted to keep the matter private, he wouldn’t say anything.
With would-be innocence, Tor asked, “Can I help it if they’re appealing folks who find me equally appealing?”
Varex shot him a look that said he didn’t buy Tor’s manner for an instant—which was understandable, Tor supposed, since it was the same one that they’d used as children when they’d filched pies from the kitchen or insisted it was absolutely not them who’d tracked mud through the entranceway.
“You’re thirty-five,” Varex repeated sternly. “And it’s time you settled down.”
“Says who?” Tor demanded. “Not everyone is the same, you know. Just because you apparently found domestic contentment doesn’t mean that everyone else will.”
“It is the common condition.”
“You say that as if there were no unmarried people in the United Realms.”
“In our position, it is rare, and you know it.” Varex was starting to sound impatient now.
The marriage contract between Varex and Fernila had been in place since practically the moment she was born, one more peace negotiation to unite the fractured realms and stop the fighting for good.
Tor had always been relieved that he’d been the younger son and the Queen hadn’t fixed his future when he was only ten years old.
“I don’t want to marry a child.”
“Terila isn’t a child; she’s twenty-two.”
“And I’m thirty-five, as you keep reminding me,” Tor pointed out sourly. “I have no interest in marrying someone who is that much younger than I am.”
“I married someone who was ten years younger.”
“I know.” Tor’s voice was as dry as dust.
If he were looking to marry, a partner as different as possible from Fernila in every conceivable way would definitely be on his list.
Varex continued, “Terila is a wise choice for the United Realms.”
“Not if we make one another miserable,” Tor protested.
Miserable royals not only made themselves miserable, but they ran the risk of causing strife in their realm and beyond.
Varex sounded definitive and supremely self-assured. “Choose not to do so.”
Tor blew out a breath. “Varex, that’s not how life works.”
“Of course it is. One has only to make an effort.”
Sometimes, Tor wanted to hit his brother’s head repeatedly against a wall and see if that made an impression.
“First of all, you would both have to make an effort for—”
Fernila made a shrill, wounded noise, and Varex’s face darkened like a thundercloud.
“That’s it!”
For once, Tor hadn’t been trying to insult Fernila. He had no idea what she contributed to this marriage beyond a lot of red hair and spite, but he knew Varex didn’t feel that way.
“No,” Tor protested, “I meant Ada and—”
Varex cut him off. “Torex, your behavior is atrocious!”