CHAPTER 23
Get it off! Now! You heard Tyghan!” Cael pulled at the collar like all it took was brute strength to remove it. “An apology? There will be no apology! Why aren’t you—”
“Your Majesty, please,” Eris said. “Calm down. We think there could be dark magic in the amulets. We have to approach this carefully, so you don’t suffer lethal consequences.”
Dahlia and Eris exchanged a knowing look over Cael’s head. They were stalling, but the warning worked, and Cael stopped pulling. “Do something,” he said pitifully. “I can’t stand this on me for one more minute.”
“Of course. But after all this time, removing it might be painful,” Dahlia said. “With your permission, I suggest a potion to ease the pain.” She knew Cael was fond of potions of many kinds, and he readily agreed. She administered a sweet, potent one, and within seconds he fell into a deep sleep.
Eris heaved out a relieved breath, while Dahlia removed the collar and sniffed at the ease with which it fell into her hands. “Only petty magic. I expected more of Fomoria,” she said with contempt, and dropped it in her bag for safekeeping.
“How long will he be out?” Eris asked.
“Not long enough. Though I could always give him more—”
“No. We have to address this sooner or later.”
“Then let’s go with later.” Dahlia went to the sideboard and poured them each a generous portion of another kind of potion—Cael’s favorite sherry.
They sat on the sofa opposite the king’s bed and watched him sleep, enjoying the few minutes of peace.
Dahlia sighed. “You know we can’t allow him to resume power yet. He’s still unstable. He’ll ruin everything.”
Eris’s head bobbed in agreement. “I know. But he’s a good ruler at times. He wisely defers all matters of security to Tyghan. And when he’s in the throne room, he makes fair decisions.”
“And yet he is so rarely there. Any kind of invitation lures him away.”
“His mother always said he was impulsive,” Eris mused, taking a long sip of his sherry.
“She called him her little ram, always running headlong into anything that caught his attention. Tyghan should have been king. I think she knew it too, but Tyghan was still so young. And then things spun out of control.”
They fell quiet for a moment, both of them reflecting on that dark time that was filled with so much uncertainty and despair, those years before the two of them became confidantes and lovers. Dahlia knew nearly everything about his early life now, details spilling out over time in bits and pieces.
She leaned closer to Eris, cupping the goblet, the sherry warming in her hand. “What was she like, the queen?”
“You knew her.”
“Not well. Not the way . . . you did. I wasn’t High Witch yet.”
A low sound rumbled in Eris’s throat, recalling those difficult years.
“She was kind. Sensitive. Intelligent. She loved small animals, from mice to bumblebees. She never harmed anything. But she was broken after Cael’s father died.
He was her third husband to die suddenly, and the rumors were cruel.
Her inner court tried to protect her from them, but you know the gossip.
To quell the talk, her counselor sent off a marriage proposal to a lord who had shown interest once.
At the same time, I was broken in my own way after my wife’s death, and my banishment from the Elphame court—”
“Dismissal,” Dahlia corrected, as she always did. It was a chapter of his life that had been carefully concealed, but he had shared with her from the beginning of their relationship.
Eris shrugged. “Call it what you will, but it felt like banishment. I had nowhere to go, and I came home. It wasn’t exactly a love affair.
We had both suffered staggering losses, and for a few months, we took comfort in each other.
That was all. Comfort. Her counselor reminded us more than once that he expected a response to the proposal any day.
It was a subtle warning not to carry our consoling to a more permanent level.
I was a nobody with a tainted history if anyone went digging, and was shamed by my dismissal.
And then Lord Jannison, whom she had never met, accepted her marriage proposal, and I slipped into the background.
Tyghan was born eight months later. A bit on the small side, so no one questioned it.
Lord Jannison never said anything. Neither did I.
And the queen was happy again. That was what we all wanted for her. ”
“Will you ever tell him?”
“Tell him what? Even I don’t know for sure.
” He felt the pull of the lie. He had known from the moment he held the newborn Tyghan in his arms. When those tiny dark eyes peered straight into his soul.
Eris wanted everything for him, including the solid name and reputation that Lord Jannison could provide.
Dahlia scoffed at his answer. “You know. So do I. The evidence is there. Between his mother and you—that’s where his power comes from.
Jannison was a very good man, but he could barely kindle a fire with a match.
And Tyghan’s build, his curiosity, his expressions, even his temper—they come from you. ”
Eris didn’t like to be reminded of his temper. He had carefully excised that part of his past. “I’m a different man now than I was then.”
“You may rigidly follow the rules now, but you’re still the same man. You just keep it hidden.”
“Tyghan’s mother gave me a second chance when no one else would. She trusted me.”
“Which you deserved. If not for you, this whole kingdom would have crumbled after she left. He should know, Eris.”
“For what purpose?”
“You’re his father.”
“His father is the man who raised him as his own.”
“Yes, for the first seven years of his life. But you’ve been there and guided him for the last twenty.”
Eris drank back the last of his sherry. “His mother chose not to tell him. Neither will I.”
“He was too young to understand then. He would now.”
They both startled when Cael grunted some gibberish.
Dahlia checked him to be sure he was still sleeping. She shook her head. “Shouting orders even in his dreams.”
Cael. The enduring problem of a boy forced to be king before he was ready.
Dahlia returned to his side on the sofa and sighed. “I’m sorry that I’ve made you complicit with Cael.”
“It was my fault. Every day you had to listen to me complain as he flaunted every rule.”
She poured him more of Cael’s precious sherry. “It wasn’t your complaints, Eris. You know how I feel about cheating. I shouldn’t have told his betrothed where he was going when she asked.”
Eris was silent. It was true. Dahlia had committed a major breach in revealing the king’s destination to the angry young woman, but still, something told him it hadn’t been her.
Cael’s betrothed didn’t have the expertise nor the ability to inform Fomoria of Cael’s precise location.
No, Eris’s instincts told him, it was someone else—someone far more powerful, with a stronger motivation. Cael’s philandering was old news.
He put his hand on Dahlia’s thigh. “It wasn’t your slip. I’m certain of it. Put it out of your mind.”