FIRE EATER AND DEATH CHEATER #2
Chester nodded. “Quite a departure from your usual countenance. I’m… assuming the Bran I know is your natural appearance? Not a glamour?”
“You assume correctly. When I decided to become Lady Guinevere’s guard, I knew it was easiest to be my natural self.”
“Why did you decide to become her guard? I know many higher-ups enjoy trotting about the slums now and then, but this is different. Holy Hades, the love potion laws make sense now. You were there every damn day. I”—he held up his palms—“cannot even begin to understand.”
“You don’t have to. You just have to fix it.”
“Does she know? That you’re… that Bran is a duke?”
“Hell no. And it must remain that way.” She’d kill him. She’d cut his balls off using some technique he’d taught her and soak them, no doubt, in some potion to preserve them so she could keep them on the corner of her desk forevermore.
Not that she had a desk anymore. Or maybe she did. Bran would have known what overtures she’d made toward rebuilding her shop, but Braxton had no clue.
Chester shifted, rolling the whisky in his glass.
“Listen, Bran or Braxton or whomever you are, I understand why you’d expect me to do some lying for you, and normally I would.
For the fun of it. But I don’t lie to my wife.
I don’t keep secrets from my wife. And if you ask me to, I’ll burn you to ash and feed you to my plants. ”
“You can, can’t you.”
“I can.” He thrummed his fingers against his glass, making it shimmer gold and hot before hardening it again.
“Can your wife keep a secret from my wife, then?”
“Your wife? You’re not married.”
“I am. Have been for six years.”
“Sybil’s not friends with a duchess.”
“She is.”
“You’re toying with me, Braxton.” Chester’s eyes raged.
He was toying with the man. Just a little. Bran didn’t like not having the upper hand. And this fire eater seemed to hold all the cards. But he needed the man’s help.
So he poured the rest of the whisky down his throat as he slammed to his feet. He set the glass on the fireplace mantel and folded his forearms beside it, studied the flames.
“My wife is Gabriella Guinevere Lennox, Duchess of Braxton, better known to all of London as Lady Guinevere.”
In the grate, flame crackled and cackled as Apollo’s face contorted into one emotion after another until finally, he said, “Holy Hades. Secrets folded into secrets. Is anyone who they say they are?” The last said almost to himself as he leaned closer.
“Let me see if I have this straight. You are the Duke of Braxton, but for six years, you’ve been pretending to be Bran, plain Bran the guard.
And your wife, the Duchess of Braxton, is Lady Guinevere, she of the infamous potions. ” He glanced at Bran for confirmation.
Bran nodded.
“But no one knows Lady G is Duchess of B.”
“She left me. Soon after we were married. She wanted a new life, and she wanted to keep it secret. I gave her money, let her go. She changed her name, bought the shop.”
“Then you… what? Followed?”
“To watch over her, protect her. She’d only ever seen me in my glamour. I interviewed as myself, as Bran, the duke’s glamour turned off. Then”—he scrubbed his palms over his face—“it was easier to be Bran than it was to be a duke, so I… kept at it.”
“You mean… she doesn’t know? That you’re him… that he’s you?”
Bran didn’t answer.
“Bloody hell, she’s going to cut off your balls and preserve them in something pink, isn’t she.”
“That is the most likely outcome, yes.”
Chester launched out of his chair and paced across the room. “Have you considered remaining as you are? Living a double life seems terribly tedious.”
It was. Some days he needed a mirror to remind him who he was.
At least as Bran, with Guin, he could be himself.
No need to change his appearance or hide the brogue.
He could use the skills he’d trained in all his life before inheriting the dukedom.
And Guin… she needed Bran. She only wanted to be rid of Braxton.
“For four years I’ve kept her safe, and now I have no idea where she is. I need this glamour gone, Chester. I’m stuck, and I need your help getting unstuck so I can get back to my position.”
“As a potion mistress’s bodyguard and not as a leader of British society.”
“Correct.” At Guin’s side in whatever little corner of the world she decreed her own.
“You are mad.”
Bran shrugged. The state of his mental capacities hardly mattered. “It happened during the fire. I was inside, at the hottest part of the conflagration. A beam fell. I was trapped, and that’s when I saw you come in. You swallowed the fire, extinguished the heat.”
Chester stopped pacing, scratched his cheek. “What do you think I can do? For your… situation?”
“There’s new rumblings about glamours, that they’re nothing but manipulations of light.”
Laughing, Chester dropped back into his chair.
“Don’t let the little queen hear you say that.
Talent is in the blood, my friend.” He drew an index finger down a blue vein in his forearm.
“Passed from eldest son to eldest son forever into eternity. To say otherwise, particularly as a duke, is close to treason.”
“You don’t believe that. You can’t. I know what you can do.”
“What I can do?” He snorted. “I can do nothing. I dabble in dirt.”
“You eat light. I would guess you can even conjure a glamour if you liked.”
“Of course I cannot. My cousin inherited the talent, not me.” As he spoke, he gave a half grin and twirled one finger in the air.
Light gathered around that digit and spun itself into a little moon, then a scattering of stars, then they fell like comets and the light dissipated once more. “See, no glamours here.”
“Do not play with me. I may look like a na?ve boy, easily fooled, but I know hundreds of ways to kill a man. I need you to take this glamour away so I can go back to protecting Guin.”
Chester propped his elbows on the chair arms and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “What’s in it for me?”
“I let you live.”
“I do like living. Hmm.”
“If glamours are nothing but light, and you can conquer it, then take my light, Chester, and dissolve this damned glamour.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You’ll try.”
Silence, then a sigh, then: “I am a bit bored. Yes, I’ll try. But I need to think on it first, consult the sacred texts, et cetera, et cetera. Come back tomorrow.”
“I need it gone today.” Bran loomed over the other man’s chair.
And Chester stood slowly, pushing Bran backward. “I, too, have ways of killing men, some quite unexpected. Come back tomorrow.”
Bran left the office, pausing in the doorway. “I’ll return at noon tomorrow. Be ready.”
The plants seemed to recoil from him as he made his way through the shop and toward the entrance. The bell above the door sounded less irritating than when he’d arrived.
And he sensed the hand that grabbed his arm as he stepped out into the street a half second before it caught him.
Bran threw his arm upward and slammed the heel of his boot into the stranger’s foot. A curse, a whip-sharp movement behind him, then a blade appeared at Bran’s throat.
“What do you want?” Bran demanded.
“It’s not what I want,” the stranger said. “It’s what the queen wants. And that would be you.”