Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
E van was most put out when he woke up alone.
He’d had plans which involved getting thoroughly debauched by his captain again, and now he was going to either have to get dressed and go and find him or wait until he returned.
He stretched, wincing at the ache in his arse. It was a good ache, one that reminded him he’d been well used, just the way he liked. But it also had him deciding that perhaps it would be more sensible to wait here. Surely Thomas and his impressive cock hadn’t gone too far. Maybe he’d ducked out to the privy or gone to the kitchen for something to eat.
A half smile played around his lips as he recalled the night before. Thomas had been everything he’d hoped for in a lover and more.
And quite apart from that, he was handsome and clever and good company—in short, everything Evan wanted in a man. He was no longer able to pretend that his feelings began and ended with simple physical attraction. Evan wanted Thomas as more than a lover. He wanted to court him properly.
His smile grew pensive as it occurred to him that Thomas might not feel the same. And even if he did, Evan spent a lot of time away. Would Thomas be prepared to tolerate him disappearing for weeks and months at a time?
Perhaps Thomas could travel with him as his personal guard. It would mean giving up his role as captain, but?—
Evan stopped that thought in its tracks. He wasn’t going to get his hopes up until he’d spoken to Thomas in the cold light of day. As much as he liked to think he was a catch, he couldn’t be certain Thomas felt the same way.
This might be a simple case of hero worship. Now that Thomas had fucked the Rogue, it was possible he was no longer interested.
Perhaps that was why he’d left.
A wave of disappointment washed over him, unfamiliar and unwelcome, and his gut churned. Evan wasn’t used to rejection, even imagined, and he disliked the sting of it intensely.
Perhaps he would go searching for Thomas after all. He got out of bed and lit one of the lanterns so he could see, and he was just about to pull on his trousers when a noise caught his attention.
The door handle squeaked, moving slowly, and Evan slumped with relief. Thomas hadn’t changed his mind after all.
A smile spread across his face as he stepped forward, and the door swung open. “You know, it’s bad manners to leave someone without at least a ki?—”
As quickly as it had appeared, his smile vanished when a familiar figure pushed his way inside and slammed the door behind him. “What the hell are you doing here?” Evan demanded.
“I’m here to kill you, obviously,” the ambassador for Falsmark said, right before he pulled a knife from his sleeve and pointed it at Evan’s throat.
Evan held his breath and went still. Being threatened with a knife wasn’t ideal, but it also wasn’t new. He could still get out of this. He just needed to distract the ambassador for a moment to get the upper hand.
The door flew open.
Thomas stumbled into the room gasping for breath, beads of sweat rolling off his brow. “It’s you! The threat’s against you !”
“I’m aware, thank you,” Evan said.
The ambassador’s gaze flicked from Evan to Thomas, his attention wavering for a split second.
It was enough.
Evan ducked nimbly out of his reach and then surged forward, knocking the knife from the ambassador’s hand. While the ambassador was still staring at his empty palm, Evan turned him and slammed him against the wall, pushing the man’s arm halfway up his back and rendering him immobile. “Who sent you?” he snapped. “I won’t ask twice.”
The ambassador tried to break free, but Evan had fought and won too many times for some awkward flailing to have any effect against his iron grip. He pulled the man’s arm further up his back, eliciting a squeal of distress, and grunted out, “Talk.”
“I know who you are,” the man moaned out. “I was sent to get rid of you.”
Ah .
That wouldn’t do at all.
Evan considered questioning the man further, but the ambassador started struggling anew, with more purpose this time, and he decided that on the whole, he’d prefer to save his skin now and look for answers later. He spun the man back around and looked him in the eye as he wrapped both hands around his skinny neck. “I think we both know how this ends, yes?”
The ambassador’s eyes widened like he hadn’t considered the possibility that this might go badly for him. His mouth opened and closed but no sound came out, which was for the best, really. Evan didn’t gain any pleasure from disposing of his victims, and he preferred to get the whole thing over with quickly. It was so tiresome when they started crying and begging and dragging the process out.
He tightened his grip.
The ambassador tried to push Evan away and when that didn’t work, he cried out desperately, “Let me go or I’ll tell everyone the truth about you!”
Which was a foolish thing to say because the old adage that dead men tell no tales was nothing if not accurate. Evan debated explaining to the ambassador why his threat made no sense but decided that since he’d be educating a corpse, it would be a waste of everyone’s time. He sighed and said, “I do so hate incompetence.” Then he adjusted his grip on the ambassador’s neck and with one brutal twist, dispatched him to the next life.
The body hit the floor with a thud.
Evan turned to Thomas and opened his mouth to reassure him that he was fine, but before he had a chance, two firm, muscled arms were enveloping him and dragging him forward until his face was pressed against the bulk of Thomas’s chest. He took several deep breaths, pressing his ear against the wall of muscle he was currently plastered to and taking comfort in the steady beat of Thomas’s heart as he let himself be held. Truth be told, it was rather nice having someone care about him.
Warmth bloomed in his belly at the knowledge that Thomas had been there to save him.
Not that he’d needed saving exactly, but still. It was the thought that counted.
Thomas let out a shuddery sigh and his voice rumbled deep in his chest as he murmured, “I was afraid I’d be too late. I thought I might lose you.”
Evan pulled back and tipped his head up, only to find Thomas gazing down at him, eyes suspiciously shiny.
“Careful,” he said quietly, “or I might think you care for me.”
Thomas’s expression did something complicated, his brows pinching together. “I do care for you, Evan. More than is good for me perhaps.” Evan wanted to ask what he meant by that but then Thomas was kissing him, soft and gentle.
Evan leaned into the kiss and let it wash over him like a soothing balm. He drew back, lips still tingling, and cupped Thomas’s cheek in one palm. “Your timing is impeccable by the way.”
“I’m glad,” Thomas said quietly. He pulled Evan close again, and they stayed like that as the minutes ticked by.
When Thomas finally relaxed his hold, he shook his head ruefully. “I can’t believe it didn’t occur to either of us that you might be the royal family member at risk.” He gave Evan a shaky smile. “You’ve done such a good job of making yourself invisible that even you forgot you were an heir to the throne.”
“That was a closer call than I’d like,” Evan admitted. “Nobody’s discovered who I am before now.”
The enormity of the situation started to sink in. Somehow the ambassador had discovered his identity, and Evan had no idea how or when it might have happened. He prided himself on being careful—but apparently, he hadn’t been careful enough.
He settled his head against Thomas’s chest again and sighed when Thomas ran a hand down his bare back.
“Who do you think sent him?” Thomas asked, his broad palm sweeping up and down Evan’s spine in a soothing motion he suspected was for Thomas’s benefit as much as his.
Evan considered the question. The ambassador hadn’t been the only one who was trying to kill him, but it was possible that it had simply been a case of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’—with Evan being the common enemy.
“The thing about people in my line of work,” he said at last, “is that often the left hand makes certain that the right hand doesn’t know what it’s doing. We’re sent out to deal with situations as we see fit. Sometimes that’s passing on information, and sometimes it’s saying nothing and making a problem go away. I think that I was a problem that several someones wanted to make go away, so they joined forces.”
Thomas pulled back from their embrace, brow furrowed. “So you don’t think the King of Falsmark was behind this?”
“I doubt it. He tends not to involve himself in politics if he can help it. I do know that Marchesi and Calthrope were close, so if one of them found out who I was, it wouldn’t surprise me if they came up with a scheme to get rid of me. And I’ve likely thwarted quite a lot of their plans over the years, so it makes sense they’d want me gone.”
Thomas made a low growling noise in his throat that warmed the very cockles of Evan’s lying, murderous little heart and made him want to drag Thomas to bed and celebrate the fact that he was alive.
Sadly, he had other priorities right now.
He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He needed to work out how he’d been identified. He was confident he hadn’t let his facade drop—acting the fool was like slipping into a second skin. But clearly he’d made an error in judgment somewhere along the line, and now he had a dead ambassador to deal with.
Thomas was obviously thinking along similar lines. “I think we can still assume that somebody knows who you are,” he said, pacing around the room. He came to a halt in front of the fireplace, his back to Evan as he stared into the embers. “You heard about the threat after you came back for the trade talks, so it must be somebody local. And they’ve sold you out.”
Evan tipped his head back and sighed, closing his eyes. “That would make sense, except I haven’t dealt with anyone outside the castle. Well, nobody worth mentioning.”
“Well, that’s just insulting,” an unfamiliar voice said.
Evan’s eyes snapped open as an arm wrapped around his throat and a hand grasped his naked bollocks tightly enough to be painful.
A desperate whine left him.
Thomas whirled on his heel and his eyes widened. “ Ned ?”
Ned? Who the hell was Ned?
Evan turned his head and caught a glimpse of a young man with sandy hair and sharp features. He stopped moving when the hand on his bollocks tightened further, and he shot Thomas a panicked look.
“Ned’s a local. He offered to bed me—quite persistently,” Thomas said.
Something in Evan’s gut twisted, sharp and unfamiliar, and it took him a moment to identify the feeling as jealousy.
“I was most disappointed when the captain turned me down after I so kindly bought him a drink. But he at least has the good manners to remember me,” Ned said. “You don’t, though, do you?”
Evan closed his eyes and thought hard, and a faint memory came to him. He’d been waiting to meet a nameless contact at a nondescript tavern. It was the kind of place where nobody paid attention to who visited or the company they kept, which meant it was perfect for Evan’s purposes. Ned had approached him and offered to keep him company for the evening. Evan had turned him down without a second thought and promptly forgotten about the entire encounter.
But obviously Ned hadn’t—and it seemed he was holding a grudge.
“I—the tavern,” Evan said, flinching at the press of cold steel against his throat. “I remember now.”
“You told me no, rather rudely I might add,” Ned said. “But I’ve often found that when someone says no, with enough persistence it can be turned into a yes. So I followed you home, intending to give you a chance to reconsider. I didn’t expect your home to be the castle, which meant I couldn’t follow you inside, but at least it made it easy to keep an eye on you. I thought you must work here. And you always use the same two little side gates for your comings and goings, so that helped.”
Evan’s breath rasped as he sucked in air, careful not to move and cut himself on the blade, or worse, get his balls yanked from his body. He had to hand it to Ned—the slippery little bastard had managed to make sure Evan wouldn’t pull out of his grasp. Evan truly was at his mercy. “You’ve been following me?”
“I couldn’t help myself,” Ned confessed, his voice taking on a playful lilt. “You were just so pretty. You can imagine my surprise when you appeared at the gate one day and you weren’t wearing your hooded cloak. No, you were done up to the nines in a silk shirt and stockings and trousers and an emerald green coat that was fit for a king—or a duke.”
He shifted slightly behind Evan, adjusting his grip so the tip of the knife jabbed into Evan’s flesh, and laughed low in his ear. “Well, that was when I realised who you were. And I started asking myself why a member of the royal family would be in a place like that tavern and why he’d be in disguise. And then one night someone mentioned the king’s mysterious spy that nobody had ever seen, and it all fell into place. I followed you for a few more days just to be sure, but all the pieces fit. You’re the Rogue.”
Evan didn’t bother to deny it. “How does the ambassador come into all this?” he asked. It was part curiosity, part stalling tactic. The grip on his balls had loosened as Ned talked, and he was hoping that by some miracle he might be able to slip free without sacrificing them.
“Oh, he overheard the other men at the tavern laughing at me when I said I knew who the Rogue was. He didn’t laugh, though. He was very interested in what I had to say, and when I told him what I suspected, he paid me handsomely to keep my mouth shut about it. He came back a week later and said that there was a new guard roster at the castle, and he’d pay me if I could get my hands on a copy.”
“Who gave it to you?” Thomas demanded with a face like thunder. “Was it one of the guards?”
Ned shook his head. “No, it was one of the kitchen staff. I got him drunk and persuaded him to draw a map for me. I told him it was so I could come and visit him.”
Well, that explained the shaky drawing and the extra curve on the shaft.
There was just one piece of the puzzle that Evan couldn’t make fit. “What was the ambassador doing at the tavern in the first place?”
“Oh, he always visits me when he’s in town. He loves a good buggering.” Ned glanced down at the body on the floor. “Well, he did.”
“But why are you here now? ” Evan persisted. “Surely the ambassador didn’t hire you.”
“No, but he is given to pillow talk, and he told me his plans last night after I fucked him,” Ned said. “I came because I wanted to see you get your comeuppance after turning me down.” He frowned at the dead body. “But it looks like I’ll just have to kill you myself.”
Ten years of espionage, and his secret had been uncovered by a brat who couldn’t take no for an answer and was planning to kill him in a fit of pique? It was almost enough to make Evan laugh.
Almost.
Except Ned chose that moment to let go of Evan’s bollocks and slide a hand up and over his bare stomach, pulling him close. Evan’s gut churned. “You missed out on a good time when you turned me down.”
“I don’t sleep with rude little gits,” Evan snapped, and the petty jealousy that was still coursing through his veins had him adding, “You’re probably terrible in bed.”
Ned let out an outraged gasp. “Excuse you! I’m bloody fantastic !” He drew his knife sharply back and thrust it forward.
Evan jerked his head to one side, and Ned sliced through air. Evan breathed a sigh of relief at having escaped injury—right before a long line of fire lit up along his ribcage as Ned lunged forward again and the blade split Evan’s skin.
Time stopped.
His mouth fell open in a silent scream, all the breath driven from his body by the deep, searing pain, and Evan sagged back against his attacker, clutching at his wound.
Oh, it burned. He blinked away tears.
“Evan! Duck!”
Evan obeyed instinctively, curling his chin against his chest. There was a flash of silver as a knife whistled past his ear, and then something hot and wet splashed against his cheek. A moment later, Ned let out a wet gurgle and collapsed in a heap on the floor, a jet of blood spurting from his throat in a veritable fountain that quickly slowed to a trickle and then ceased.
Evan blinked and ran a hand down the side of his face. It came away red. He blinked again and shock and pain had him sinking to his knees, unable to stand. Next to him Ned lay unmoving, eyes wide and sightless.
At the rapid clatter of boots, he looked up. Thomas was hurrying toward him, expression grim. Evan had never been so glad to see anyone in his life.
Thomas dropped to his knees next to him and Evan fully expected a hug, but instead the first thing Thomas did was hold two fingers against the side of Ned’s throat for a few seconds before nodding to himself. “He’s dead.” He pulled the stiletto out of the wound in one smooth motion and wiped it on Ned’s shirt before slotting the blade back into his boot.
The display of ruthless competence made Evan want to shove Thomas up against the wall and kiss him senseless—except that would have involved standing and moving, and both of those things were quite beyond him.
Still, he stored the image away to reexamine later—when he didn’t have a gaping chasm in his side that felt like someone had set his skin alight.
Thomas turned his attention to Evan, brow creased with worry. Gentle fingers grazed over the length of his wound, and Evan gasped as pain bloomed afresh and his world went fuzzy and dark around the edges. “You need the maester,” Thomas said, his voice tight.
And then he scooped Evan up in his arms and began to run.