Chapter Two
Benedict had left Calatria for parts unknown on a gloomy March day, riding into the cold and damp and hopefully catching a devil of a grippe in the process, damn him.
He returned with just as little warning two years, one month, and a week or so later, on a bright, crisp morning in April. Even the weather cooperated to make his grand entrance to the palace as joyful and as striking as possible, with a light breeze stirring his black hair in a romantic manner and the sun glinting off of his sword hilt and the ruby in his ear and the polished tack of his horse.
I had a perfect view of the entire revolting spectacle from my study window. The dukes of Calatria had many flaws, as a dynasty and as individuals, including paranoia, bloodlust, and plain old lust for people who weren’t their spouses.
But we’d always had a well-deserved reputation as rulers who kept our fingers on the pulse of the duchy—leading from the front, as Benedict put it, and damn him for the way I couldn’t seem to forget him no matter how long it’d been since his dereliction of duty.
And so my study, previously my father’s study, and his father’s study, and so on into a long and checkered past, overlooked the main courtyard of the palace. State visitors didn’t go through it, there being a much more formal entrance on the other side of the east wing. But all of the palace’s actual business went through there, and the guard barracks occupied one corner of it.
And, of course, Benedict chose that courtyard as the venue for his triumphant return.
My first warning that something had gone amiss came in the form of cheers and shouts from the main gate, a roar of laughter, another round of whooping.
I lifted my head from the trade agreement I’d been squinting at, an overly complicated arrangement with Surbino, our neighbor to the south. Why were the tariffs structured like that? It didn’t make much sense to me. It should have. I’d been raised for this, and lacking any great military talent, I’d turned to diplomacy and the law to prove my worth as a future, and current, duke of Calatria.
Someone had some explaining to do, whether our ambassador or my increasingly insolent council or both, but in the meantime I couldn’t possibly concentrate with all that racket.
When I walked over to the open window, I expected to see a particularly attractive woman, possibly several. Or an unusually ugly horse.
Instead, there he was, somehow seeming to saunter even on horseback. Had he trained his stallion to saunter? Absurd. Of course he hadn’t.
And yet as he nodded and smiled, threw his head back and laughed with that ridiculous ruby bobbing and glinting and his hair flowing glossy around his shoulders, it certainly seemed like that stupid horse was preening too. Like beastly master, like nasty beast.
Benedict. Home.
No, not home, because this wasn’t his palace and he wasn’t welcome. But back, anyway. Popping up again like a boil you thought you’d lanced and gotten rid of.
For more than two years, he’d abandoned me to the circling, snapping wolves: the council, the court, the army. Within a few days of his defection, there had been a wave of officers resigning their commissions, giving excuse after excuse for no longer wishing to serve me. Their elderly parents needed their help, the family farm had fallen into disrepair, an old injury troubled them in the winter. Anything but the truth: that they’d respected my father’s leadership, no matter what a vicious bastard he’d been, and they’d loved and trusted Benedict, and without either of them at the head of the army they’d as soon not risk their lives, thanks.
I’d let them go. What choice did I have? They’d either desert or mutiny. Or transfer their loyalty to whichever one of my council had the wit to spread gold and brandy and dissension among them. Benedict’s departure had removed the most likely usurper of my throne. But that didn’t mean some other lord wouldn’t eventually grow more ambitious, more ruthless, and more daring.
Someone, after all, had murdered my father. And I didn’t think that person had done it out of any great love for me.
Another lusty, roaring cheer broke out down below as more soldiers streamed out of the barracks, surrounding Benedict and filling the courtyard.
My stomach twisted into a sick, hard knot.
I’d spent my reign so far trying to straighten out our trade agreements and diplomacy, set aside a grain surplus, actually administer the duchy in a way that benefited us all, and not only the council. My father had been decent enough to the common folk of Calatria. But he’d spent more and more of his energy rooting out “traitors” amongst his courtiers, and that had left precious little time for more than paranoia and executions. I’d been the one to pick up the slack then, too. Years I’d spent putting every spare moment into doing my duty.
And yet when I reviewed my troops or rode out among the people, I got sullen mutterings and polite, perfunctory bows. Their rightful duke!
But Benedict, who’d abandoned all of these people for more than two years without a word of explanation, received a hero’s welcome on his return.
I strode away from the window before I vomited out of it, mind buzzing with something akin to panic.
I’d have to welcome him. Without joy, obviously, because even if I could bring myself to fake it everyone would see right through it. But with regal and possibly even familial graciousness, at the very least. Because yet again—and this had formed the depressing, overarching theme of my life thus far—what choice did I have? Given my army’s enthusiastic welcome, if Benedict wanted to step right back into his role as my Lord General, I’d be suicidal not to grit my teeth and pretend it had been my idea all along.
Besides, the rest of the court would be doing the same thing. Many of them, usually the ones he’d fucked into some bizarre state of starry-eyed compliance, genuinely liked him. (Sometimes I wondered if he used magic in addition to his cock when he took someone to bed. No one’s cock alone could be quite so persuasively mesmerizing.) And the ones who didn’t, who saw everyone as a path to power or wealth or one-upmanship, would either plot to use him or pretend to support him so as not to piss off his partisans.
They’d be pissing me off, of course. But no one seemed to care much about that.
Leaning my fists on my desk, I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe evenly, to allow my cheeks to cool and lose their flush, to show nothing.
When I stepped out of the study on my way to receive Benedict on the steps of the palace, as everyone would expect me to do, no one would’ve known that my teeth ached from the force of their grinding, or that the bland neutrality pasted on my face covered a mental image of my hands around Benedict’s muscular neck.
After his triumphant entry to the palace courtyard that morning, it had taken all of five minutes for Benedict to step back into his former role as Lord General of Calatria, two days for him to have the council eating out of his hand, and apparently no time at all to have every pretty young lord at court in his bed.
Twilight mages, born at dawn or dusk and bearing the sun god Ennolu’s curse along with the magic gifted by his brother Dromos, god of the night, dealt with their tainted powers in different ways. Some drank a potion that protected them from the effects of the curse but also prevented them from accessing their magic.
Not Benedict. He embraced his curse—so to speak. Dawn mages had to yield to another man the way night yielded to day, the gods being given to obnoxious metaphors that tended to ruin their followers’ lives. Dusk mages, on the other hand, took the other role in the magical coupling Ennolu demanded, fucking another man and spending inside him to relieve the pressure of their power at regular intervals. Twilight mages all had varying cycles, more or less time between when their curse would rear its head and cause them pain, fever, mania, and eventual death, sometimes only a day and sometimes a week or more.
I’d tried to work out the timing of Benedict’s magical cycle, but even after years of observing him I had no idea. He never ran out of available men, either at court or in one of the several highly selective brothels around the city.
Or the less selective ones. For all I knew, he fucked a poxy dockside whore every night, whether separately from fops like Lord Clothurn or all in one filthy heap.
Making my way from that blasted balcony to the council meeting on that rainy winter morning, a long and exhausting eight months since Benedict’s return, I should’ve been strategizing for the council meeting.
Instead, I contemplated Clothurn’s likely reaction if Benedict showed up at his rooms with a whore in tow. Clothurn seemed the type to expect to be gallantly complimented, enjoy a fine wine, and be taken in the dark in a gentlemanly manner. Not groped by some grinning bit of rough from down the hill.
Of course, Benedict himself wasn’t actually a grinning bit of rough from down the hill, but he could convincingly play one on the stage. Clothurn might have a rude awakening.
Not that I’d be following Benedict’s repulsive, mocking suggestion that I watch through Clothurn’s window to find out.
A shudder passed through me as that image, unbidden, flashed through my mind. Benedict bearing Clothurn down onto his bed, his broad shoulders gleaming with sweat, his offensive grin, the grasp of his big, callused hands on Clothurn’s pale flesh. Clothurn’s head thrown back in mingled moaning ecstasy and shame as Benedict spread his legs and knelt between, huge cock rampantly flushed and erect…
My fists clenched, and I strode faster down the hallway that led to the council chamber, more rampantly flushed myself than I wanted to admit.
It’d been too long since I had anyone in my bed. Who could I trust, for one? Any courtier’s motives would be suspect at best, a servant was out of the question, and unlike Benedict I had no taste for paid company. And any of the above might try to murder me.
Besides, my physical desires had been sublimated to my duty and the stresses of my position for so long I hardly remembered how it felt to want.
If imagining Benedict and Clothurn in the throes of passion had me flustered, clearly I’d spent so long without a bedmate that I’d become not only celibate but a prude. Or desperate.
Or worse, a desperate prude. Gods help me. I’d shrivel into a vinegary prune before I reached thirty in a couple of years.
Turning the corner into the narrow hallway outside the council chamber, I forced all those thoughts aside. Surviving to thirty would be enough of a challenge, prudish prune or no. And surviving meant keeping my council on this side of banding together to assassinate me, which would require at least my partial attention.
The guards on the polished double doors to the council chamber—at least the maids in the palace continued to do their jobs loyally—pulled the handles in unison and bowed perfunctorily as I strode through, my chin lifted, projecting as much ducal confidence as I could manage. The almost-trusted bodyguard who trailed me everywhere peeled off and took up a similar position by the door, nodding to his fellows, leaving me to enter the room alone.
My council comprised nine lords and ladies, including Benedict, Clothurn, and Chancellor Zettine. All of them were seated already, of course, due to Zettine’s childish games.
Only one of them rose when I entered.
Benedict.
Of course he’d take this opportunity to both mock me and shame the other councilors, wrong-footing us all simultaneously. Unfolding himself from his chair to his full, commanding height, shaking out his glossy black hair and making that hideous earring swing, and bowing a fraction more deeply than the bloody door guards had, enough to make a point to them, too, if they’d still had the doors open.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the flush that came and went around the edges of Zettine’s steel-gray beard.
Belatedly, he shoved to his feet too, the other councilors pushing up out of their chairs for a moment a beat behind him.
“Your Grace,” he said, his tone almost halfway to polite. The old hypocrite. “How charming of you to honor us with your presence. We have awaited you with the greatest respect, despite all being busy day and night attending to the welfare of your duchy.”
And there went Zettine’s attempt at courtesy. Benedict smirked and took his seat again, his expression conveying a satisfied dusting of hands. What an asshole.
Well, he wasn’t the only one who could piss off more than one other person at the same time. In fact, that could be considered one of my greatest skills, right next to staying awake while reading about tariffs.
“That must account for your oversight in appearing here before the time the meeting had been set,” I said gently. He didn’t have a sole claim to condescension, thank you. “But I’m sure these busy lords and ladies will forgive you for inadvertently wasting all of our valuable time.”
Everyone at the table stirred and muttered, and Zettine’s mouth opened. No, I still had the floor. I might pay for it later, but I couldn’t resist.
“A man of your age, with your heavy responsibilities, deserves our gratitude and support. In future, I will be the one to set the council meetings.” I glanced around the table, taking in everyone’s expressions. My eyes went to Benedict first, damn it all, and found him lounging back in his chair, gleaming eyes fixed on me. Mine caught and snagged as if he’d used more of his miserable magic to hold me.
When I tore them away, I found several of the older councilmembers, and also Clothurn, looking like they’d sucked on lemons, although Lady Bethenna had the faintest hint of a smirk. I made a note of that; she might be an unexpected ally in this infighting of mine, even though she’d known Zettine for a hundred years.
Maybe because she’d known Zettine for a hundred years, the old bastard.
Zettine, though, had gone a shade of purple that would’ve made an eggplant proud. Good.
I smiled at him with regal graciousness. “I hope relieving you of this small burden demonstrates some of my appreciation for your diligence, Lord Zettine.”
With everyone in the room watching him like vultures, he had no choice but to bow and mutter something that almost sounded appropriate. But his eyes flashed hatred.
Taking my seat at the head of the table, opposite where he sat at the other end, I favored everyone with a smile and nod.
“No need to stand on formality,” I said dryly. Perhaps next time they’d remember to stand unprompted, period. Although I wouldn’t be holding my breath. “Let’s get right to business. Lord Clothurn, what is the state of our treasury?”
Clothurn answered me with a minimum of sneering, which I accounted a win, and the meeting went on—smoothly, to all appearances.
But Zettine remained silent throughout unless someone dared to address him with a direct question, and the cold, calculating fury in his deep-set dark eyes never faded.
Oh, I’d pay for this.
But asserting my authority gave me a gleeful, giddy fizzing in my veins that made me feel ready for anything.
Hopefully I’d survive long enough to enjoy it to the fullest.