Chapter Seven
Running my own bath, laying out my own clothing, and dressing without assistance didn’t present any particular challenge. In fact, I preferred it, and I’d been suffering Fabian with very poor grace since my father’s death.
But his absence hit me even harder than I’d expected in the unforgiving light of day.
This wasn’t any nightmare.
Someone had tried to kill me. They’d succeeded in murdering Fabian. And no matter how many precautions I’d taken or how many times I’d braced myself to expect it…I hadn’t. Not really. Not viscerally. My father had made so many enemies through his own actions that I could imagine dozens of people who would’ve killed him for revenge, or to prevent him from continuing on his deadly course of paranoia and violence.
But I’d executed no one but the usual handful of murderers, rapists, and violent robbers that any ruler had to condemn. I’d done nothing but work for Calatria’s best interests.
And yet some person, or likely more than one, had chosen to put deadly poison in a cup I had been meant to drink. That person had probably spent this morning frustrated, confused, or afraid of the consequences—my only real, if cold, comfort.
That and Benedict, who’d promised to keep me alive, and for whose help I’d already paid such a high price.
Every time I bent or stretched, the warm ache between my legs reminded me of it. No bath could completely remove the traces of him.
Could he keep me alive? And would he? Did his mysterious “business” include causing a hubbub in the kitchens and setting off exactly the sort of rumors and gossip I needed to avoid? I’d been too angry to ask him. Not that he would’ve given me a straight answer—or obeyed any contradictory commands of mine—in any case. Besides, he’d almost certainly been vague solely in order to annoy me. Overseeing training, inspecting weapons stored in the armory, adjudicating disputes between hot-tempered officers, and all the other minutiae of leading an army occupied most of his time, and today would be no different.
Trailed by my two guards, including an intimidatingly silent tall fellow I’d never seen before, I left my rooms and made my way downstairs. The whole palace felt quiet. Too quiet? Surely all of the servants hadn’t conspired against me and then fled. But the paranoia persisted, and I had to exercise every bit of my self-control not to jump at every noise and shadow.
My meetings were jarringly but reassuringly normal. The wool merchants’ guildmaster scolded me—with, he insisted, all the respect due to me—for allowing foreign tradesmen to import cotton, and no matter how I tried to convince him that woolen undergarments were unpopular for a reason, he remained unmoved. And there were indeed more fish-related documents to sign.
As the door closed behind the clerk carrying away the ream of paper my morning had generated, I took a moment to lean on my desk, sigh, and rub my temples, for once not caring about my secretary seeing me in a moment of weakness. The events of the night had left me lightheaded with exhaustion, and Benedict had left me in a state I didn’t even have words for. Sitting straight in my chair without shifting my weight to try to relieve the aching emptiness between my cheeks had been torturously endless. My stomach gurgled, speaking of emptiness. But a glance at the clock on my desk told me I had less than half an hour before I needed to appear in court, crowned and robed and dignified, to dispense the duke’s justice.
“What will you have for lunch, Your Grace?” Mattia asked me, his tone on the border of sympathetic, something that might have annoyed me from someone else. He’d been my secretary since long before my father’s death, and he was one of the few people in Calatria I thought might actually respect me.
“Coffee and sandwiches will need to do,” I told him, and sent him off to the kitchens, hoping that his personal oversight might be enough to ensure I’d survive my hasty meal.
A moment later, Benedict’s assigned guard stepped into the room, stopped before my desk, and bowed smartly before assuming a parade rest.
“Your Grace,” he said, the first words he’d spoken to me. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to eat until General Rathenas is able to attend you. Strict orders from the General, Your Grace.”
I stared at him, so tired and hungry that my anger stirred slowly, creeping up on me. General Rathenas. No one called Benedict that but his veteran soldiers, everyone at court using the proper Lord General Rathenas or, more familiarly, Lord Benedict.
This man was no palace guard; I knew all of them, at least by sight if not by name and a few words of conversation here and there. And I thought I’d have met all of the army’s officers, particularly those in the city, but I’d heard his men calling him Captain Venet. Wherever he’d come from, I doubted any palace guard or city guard or common soldier under his command would be likely to dare to disobey him, given his tall, heavy build and hard expression.
If he thought he could command me too, he’d be disappointed.
That said…I couldn’t countermand Benedict’s orders. Not when he’d supposedly given them with my blessing and in my name. Besides which, no matter how much it stung to wait on Benedict’s pleasure to have my meager luncheon, this was precisely what I’d “paid” him to do when I bent over the side of his bed and allowed him to use me: check my food, appoint guards who could actually be trusted to be vigilant, and see to it that I didn’t die an ignominious death at the figurative hands of tainted ham and watercress. Gods, how would that look in the history books? Duke Lucian, reigned less than three years, killed by a sandwich. He is barely remembered for lowering taxes on shellfish . What an epitaph.
I leaned back in my chair and raised my eyebrows at Benedict’s insolent officer.
“Do you really think I need Lord Benedict’s orders quoted back to me? Your job is to inform him that his attendance is required within the next ten minutes, not to attempt to enforce orders that I commanded your commander to give. You’re dismissed.”
He leveled me with a disturbingly shrewd gaze out of sharp dark eyes. “I’ve already sent a page to fetch General Rathenas, Your Grace. In the meantime, I’ll ensure that your orders are obeyed, and keep the coffee tray safely outside your door until the General arrives.”
He bowed smartly and backed up to the door in the most approved courtly style, slipping neatly out of the room with far more grace than some big, ungainly soldier ought to be able to do and leaving me seething with suppressed annoyance—also in the most approved courtly style.
No, definitely not a common soldier. It shouldn’t surprise me that Benedict had surrounded himself with men as irritating and contradictory as he was himself.
A few minutes later, a small hubbub in the corridor announced the arrival of my coffee, Mattia’s voice rising indignantly above the guards’ admonishments.
My stomach growled ferociously, nearly drowning out the argument—the increasing argument, as Mattia clearly didn’t think the guards’ orders outweighed his. Fascinating, if I’d been in the mood to ponder it, how court power struggles played out at every level: between me and my council, between my guards and my secretary, and probably between the kitchen maids, too, if they had time in between ignoring poisoners skulking through the pantry. Something about the proximity to or possibility of power. It made people lose their bloody minds.
“You’re not fit to touch His Grace’s sandwiches!” Mattia shouted.
Well, case in point. Great gods. At this point, I didn’t care if everyone, including the palace poisoners, had touched my fucking sandwiches. I simply needed them in my rumbling stomach! And my thrice-damned coffee!
But Benedict had buggered off to only Ennolu knew where, I couldn’t intervene in the squabble outside the study without losing any dignity I had left, and besides, I might yield to temptation and have them all executed if I did.
The study had a second entrance, a discreet little door opening into a passage that would take me to a private suite near my throne room. My equerry, Gerfred, would be waiting there with my state robes, the smaller crown I wore on less formal court occasions, and a list of everyone who’d be harassing me with their problems.
The clock ticked its way around, marking off another minute.
Fuck it. Only ten minutes remained before Chancellor Zettine would smugly take over for me in court, putting another nail in the coffin of public opinion. It was very unlikely that anyone would murder me on the short walk if I went alone, and honestly, I was too tired to care either way.
Of course, that wasn’t the only thing I had to fear. But if I allowed myself to be ruled by what might or might not anger Benedict…
That settled it.
Leaving Mattia, the guards, and my rapidly cooling coffee to all irritate one another, I slipped quietly out through the side door, my heart pounding unevenly as I shut it behind me with a quiet click.
What the hell had delayed Benedict, anyway, after all his fine talk of not letting me out of his sight? Business to attend to . Business more important than my life? Bugger the armory’s inventory and his buggering soldiers.
My soldiers, I supposed.
But bugger them all, anyway, whomever they might belong to.
Righteous anger carried me along the passage, quickening my steps and surely accounting for the rapidity of my heartbeat and breaths as well.
Benedict had no authority over me, no matter how imposingly he might loom over me as he tried to insist otherwise.
And no matter how effortlessly authoritative he’d been as he held me up off the ground by my hips, my legs spread, forcing me to come on his cock like a slut.
He didn’t frighten me. What could he do to me, anyway? Scold me? Bah.
That confidence lasted me all the way through dressing in my robes, skimming the list of petitioners, and striding into the throne room, nodding regally at Lord Zettine where he hovered to the side of the throne’s dais attempting to appear deferential rather than impatient for me to make some stupid mistake he could exploit.
Had he tried to kill me last night? His perfect courtier’s mask told me nothing either way, and of course he’d have known, when no one summoned him in a panic, that I hadn’t died. He’d have had more than twelve hours to make sure his disappointment didn’t show. Did he have darker shadows beneath his eyes than usual? Perhaps. But that didn’t mean much.
Anyway, my presence would surely annoy him whether he’d been the would-be murderer or not, and I’d be happy to give him as many reasons as possible to regret his failure. Old bastard.
It’d help that I’d arrived on time and looked the part of a duke, in my black velvet robes all embroidered with silver and pearls. Past practice allowed me to swirl them impressively as I took my seat. The silver inlay and ornately carved ebony and mahogany of the throne framed me well, if slightly overwhelmingly. It’d been made for a somewhat larger man.
Benedict would fit it.
A little tremor there, but Benedict wasn’t the one with the crown on his head, so fuck him.
I shoved that thought away and settled in, allowing my gaze to drift over the assembly with regal nonchalance. My courtiers had arrayed themselves, as usual, down the length of the throne room to my left. That side faced out on the palace’s great courtyard and steps, and a score of windows provided light and ventilation for Calatria’s noble and ambitious. Their jewels competed for the most ostentatious sparkle in the muted sunlight, and the open windows hopefully would provide an exit for their abundance of hot air.
Before me stretched an expanse of intricate black and white tile leading to the double doors to the throne room and the ceremonial guards in their polished armor and peaked helmets, as still as statues, who flanked it.
And then to my right, marshalled into perfect silence and order by far less ceremonial guards, were my petitioners of the lower orders: merchants and tradesmen, country gentry, and the occasional laborers or peasants who’d mustered the nerve to place their grievances directly before their duke. Anyone could insist that I hear them; the unstated but understood risk was that I’d probably give them short shrift if I felt that my time had been wasted, and that a lower authority could’ve dealt fairly with the problem.
A rustle and low murmur ran through the crowd as everyone in the room took their own seats again now that I’d assumed mine. The leg of a bench scraped and squeaked, one of the ladies to my left tittered, and Lord Zettine cleared his throat and stepped forward.
“His Grace Duke Lucian will now graciously hear his subjects’ petitions,” he intoned, with only the slightest sarcastic twist to the word graciously .
He had state robes of his own, also black but with only a tasteful touch of silver around the collar and in the cord of his button loops. The robes billowed magnificently as he stepped forward and took his own richly upholstered seat at the foot of my dais. I had to consciously relax my hands to keep them from clenching into fists on the armrests of the throne.
No. I would not be jealous of my elderly chancellor’s dashing appearance, because that would be a new low. And besides, I was the one who’d spent the morning with the court’s most notorious lover between my—
And again, no, and now I had to clench my fists to take the edge off of the heat that tried to flood into my cheeks. The ones on my face, specifically, although the others…more between them, really. Where I’d been stretched, pulled open, and then forced open with Benedict’s…
Another pointed throat-clearing tumbled me back into reality with a shocking jolt, as if I’d fallen several feet into my throne.
Lord Zettine had turned to face me, eyebrows raised, and below him knelt the first of the petitioners. By the strained silence in the throne room, he’d been waiting there for me to bid him rise and present his case for rather longer than protocol dictated.
Oh, bloody hell.
I had to clear my own throat and cross my legs, subtly adjusting my robes to make sure nothing was visible in my lap, before I could speak.
“Rise and approach,” I said, in my best approximation of my usual judicial calm. “We will hear your grievance.”
The brass badge of the vintners’ guild he wore on his shoulder gleamed as he hefted himself to his feet, and he launched into an improbable tale of woe involving soured vats of wine that he swore on all the gods and his own life had been delicious—“Fit for your own table, Your Grace!”—before his rival had hired a mage to spoil them. Reading between the lines, the rival had simply made a better batch of wine despite my petitioner’s best attempts to badmouth his products.
The local magistrate had declined his case and sent my court clerk his reasons why, and his pungent commentary on idiots who’d clearly consumed too much of their own vinegar made me smile. He deserved greater scope for his legal talents and sense of humor. I lifted a finger to summon the clerk, meaning to have him make a note for me to promote the magistrate into a higher position within Calatria’s justiciary.
But as the clerk mounted the steps, pencil and tablet at the ready, a prickling tingle swept up my spine, raising all the hair on the back of my neck and settling in my scalp, the silver circlet I wore suddenly too heavy and too tight.
My fingers went rigid around the armrests of my throne an instant before Benedict’s voice rang out from behind me. “Perhaps I can offer my humble assistance, Your Grace.”
Humble? Every syllable dripped with arrogance, and as he took up a position beside my throne, cloak swirling in a way that even Lord Zettine would have to envy, a low murmur went through the assembly, lords and commoners alike.
No, I would not give him the satisfaction of looking directly at him, even though his presence exercised a nearly irresistible magnetic power. Instead, I tilted my head barely enough for a sidelong view and nodded at him as he bowed, one hand resting dashingly on his sword hilt, glossy hair and ruby earring swinging. My neck had gone so stiff the nod felt jerky and awkward, hopefully not visibly so.
How had he snuck up on me? He must have followed me through my private antechamber behind the throne. Hopefully he’d refrained from skewering Gerfred, either with his cock or his sword. But I doubted he’d made much of a fuss about allowing Benedict through. No one ever did, damn them.
I allowed myself a smirk in Benedict’s general direction, raising one eyebrow. We might have a private arrangement, but if he wanted to interrupt my public audience with condescending offers of help, distracting everyone present with his eye-catching appearance, then I could publicly jab at him, too.
“I welcome your opinion, Lord Benedict,” I said. “You of all men are qualified to offer one on large quantities of cheap wine.”
A nervous-sounding wave of laughter swept through the left side of the room. On the right, someone chortled, coughed, and went abruptly silent.
Benedict stared down at me, his expression completely bland—except for something heated and dangerous kindling in the depths of his eyes, something no one else in the room would be near enough to see.
Everything faded away but Benedict, and the uneven hum of my blood pumping too fast, too hard. His eyes bored into me, penetrating right through the velvet robes and the mask of indifference and unerringly finding that soft, inner part of me that had no defenses at all.
“My wine is not cheap, Your Grace!”
I sucked in a sudden breath, startled out of my daze, and turned back to the indignant winemaker. He’d gone as burgundy as one of his spoiled vintages, and his pursed mouth had the same level of acidity.
Damn it, I’d have to rebuke him for his interruption even though I couldn’t possibly be more grateful for it.
But Benedict spoke first, as if he’d read my mind. “His Grace shouldn’t need to chastise you for your insolence in interrupting him, and so I will. Mind your manners.” All the color drained out of the vintner’s cheeks, leaving him more the chalky color of the soil his grapes grew in. “That said, the cost of your wine doesn’t matter much. I have an opinion on large quantities of any wine.”
I glanced over at the assembled courtiers, who were—smiling up at Benedict like fools, and laughing.
With him. Not at him, as I’d intended. And certainly more genuinely than they’d managed for my joke at his expense.
Benedict stepped forward, moving down a step so that he’d be showing me the respect I deserved—while also still looming over me and dominating the room, of course.
“With your permission, Duke Lucian,” he threw over his shoulder, and hardly waited for my nod to address the vintner. “I can detect the traces left by magic. I’m willing to inspect your vats. And surely I’ll find evidence of perfidy. Won’t I?”
The vintner’s mouth dropped open and then snapped shut again, and his eyes darted from side to side, as if he hoped someone else—someone less intimidating than Benedict—would pop out of nowhere the way Benedict had and intervene.
“Ah, my lord,” he stammered. “Your time is so valuable. Surely the duke can pronounce a judgment without—”
“You sound as if you’re suggesting that His Grace’s attention and time are less valuable than mine,” Benedict cut in, and my back stiffened involuntarily at the low, furious timbre of his voice. “Are you? Surely no one could be so foolish. After all, Duke Lucian dedicates every moment of the day to Calatria’s welfare. I merely serve him and support his efforts to the best of my ability. Do you want my expert inspection or not? I can’t speak for His Grace, but if I don’t find any evidence of magical tampering, I will advise him to hang you for your lies and your impudence both.”
A strange, unfamiliar warmth bloomed in my chest, flooding up into my heating cheeks. I stared at Benedict’s hard profile, the set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulder and arm.
Surely he had some agenda of his own that would be served by supporting my efforts, didn’t he? Because why else would he praise me like that? Step in to handle a common rascal to whom I really shouldn’t take the time to address myself, thus preserving the dignity of my rank and showing me a genuine respect I hadn’t received from anyone at my court in the gods only knew how long?
Something unpleasant tickled at the back of my mind, something I really didn’t want to admit might be shame.
Benedict might have been genuinely offering his help when he arrived, not condescending to me at all. And I’d replied with mockery. Perhaps, if I changed my tune now, that joke about the wine could pass as more or less good-natured.
“As my nearest advisor, Lord Benedict does speak for me,” I said, the words flowing surprisingly easily off my tongue, as if they’d been awaiting the opportunity to take flight. “And I trust his expertise implicitly. I’ll render my judgment now. If you decline Lord Benedict’s generous offer to examine the evidence, then I’ll assume you’re lying, and the clerk will assess your fines on your way out. If you accept, then Lord Benedict will pronounce his own judgment, and it will be final.”
I glanced up at Benedict, and I found that he’d turned to gaze down at me, lips parted in what could have been shock. Our eyes met—and held, precisely as they had a few minutes ago.
Only this time, I had no doubt at all of the meaning of the heat in his, of that dangerous gleam. The moment he had me alone…I shivered, my cock stirring and a heavy, needy ache building behind my balls.
Benedict turned away, and I was able to draw a full breath.
“Well? What’s your answer?” he demanded.
The vintner hunched in on himself, expression gone as sour as his wine. “The fines may bankrupt me,” he grumbled.
“Be grateful His Grace isn’t sending you back to the magistrate to stand trial for making a false accusation.”
Benedict waved a hand, and one of the guards stepped forward to escort the man away.
A loudly cleared throat drew my attention: Lord Zettine, about whom I’d completely forgotten, and whose tight-lipped, subtly murderous expression was focused on…not on me at all. On Benedict. Benedict, who’d blithely usurped Zettine’s role as my Lord Chancellor, putting himself quite literally between Zettine and the throne. And in the process, drawing Zettine’s ire away from me and focusing it, at least temporarily, on himself.
Intentionally? Or simply because Benedict didn’t give a single damn about what anyone thought of him?
Either way, it seemed less and less likely that Benedict and Zettine had some kind of secret understanding.
And as little as I wanted to come to depend on Benedict’s protection, when he could revoke it at any time, I found it hard to be afraid of someone when I had Benedict standing between us with his hand on his sword.
In lieu of sticking my tongue out at Lord Zettine, I smirked with one corner of my mouth, the courtier’s equivalent. “Allow the next petitioner to approach,” I said, in Zettine and the clerk’s direction.
“Momentarily,” Zettine said. “First, perhaps Lord General Rathenas would like to take my chair for this session? I would be honored, my lord.”
I had to give the old hypocrite credit. He sounded almost convincingly as if he’d think it an honor to vacate his almost-throne in favor of a much younger, much more popular man.
Would Benedict take his seat? That would be a terrible misstep, making him look power-hungry and insecure about his place as my advisor and general. But of course Benedict had better instincts than that, and as I watched him in bemused, aroused confusion, he put a hand on his sword hilt and used the scabbard to push his cloak out of the way, settling himself on the step below me and lounging back onto an elbow, entirely at his ease. Far too much at his ease for the setting and the occasion, and disturbingly close to me, his hip pressed against the side of my ankle.
That one point of contact burned through me like he’d burrowed a hot coal under the leather of my boot and under my very skin.
“No need,” Benedict said airily. “This is more than comfortable enough for a soldier. I believe His Grace said he was ready for the next case, Lord Chancellor.”
“Step forward,” Zettine said, voice tight.
And court proceeded: I heard their petitions, and I rendered judgment, and the clerk took notes, and the guards escorted those deemed guilty away.
But it might as well have been happening to someone else for all the notice I took of any of it. As a boy I’d had a book filled with tales of far, exotic places and adventures, and one beautiful illustration had shown an emperor with a great, deadly tiger in a jeweled collar lying down beside his throne. Benedict sprawled at my feet in the same way, all coiled, dangerous power and lazy willingness to pretend to be tame. Like the tiger, he could shake the collar off and rip everyone in the room to shreds anytime he wanted.
His choice to remain there, guarding and supporting me and pretending I had him on a leash, left me flustered and too hot and with my heart pounding so hard it rattled my ribs. I knew damn well he’d stop pretending once no one else was watching us, but what form that lack of pretense would take…
At last the final petitioner filed out, the assembled courtiers rose and bowed, and Lord Zettine declared the session at an end. Benedict moved at last, sitting up straight and stretching his legs.
When he turned his head, I turned mine too, as if that leash were attached to my neck. Benedict’s mouth quirked up at the corner, showing me a hint of tooth. Apparently the barely restrained tiger wanted me to be on my guard.
He didn’t stand up with everyone else, and when I shifted my weight he slipped a hand under my robes where no one could see and wrapped it firmly around my calf, giving me an almost painful squeeze. His eyes gleamed silvery.
Well. Message received. And the defiant courage that had carried me out of my study and into the throne room without waiting for Benedict to arrive and escort me had finally withered away under the force of his presence.
“I would be alone with my thoughts for a time, Lord Zettine,” I said. “Thank you for your diligence, as always.”
A few whispers from the departing court, magnified by the echoes of the high ceiling, suggested that at least some of them thought it odd that being “alone with my thoughts” included Benedict. But they were outside the bubble of space that included me, rooted to my throne, and Benedict, poised to pounce the moment they were gone.
The tall double doors shut behind the last pair of guards with a muted thud.
And Benedict and I were alone.