He knew that he was not in control of himself. He wanted to go and rip the truth out of her with his bare hands. What did you do? What did you and Kastor plan? He knew that he was vulnerable to her in this state, that her expertise, like Laurent’s, was in finding weakness and pressing down. He looked over at Laurent and said, flatly, ‘Deal with it.’
Laurent gazed at him for a long moment, as if searching for something in his expression, then he nodded wordlessly, and made his way to the cells.
Five minutes passed. Ten. He swore and pushed away from the window, and did the one thing that he knew better than to do. He left the hall and descended the worn stone steps to the prison cells. At the grating on the final door, he heard a voice from the other side, and stopped.
The cells at Karthas were dank, cramped, and underground, as though Meniados of Sicyon had never anticipated having political prisoners, which was probably the case. Damen felt the temperature drop; it was cooler here, in the hewn stone under the fort. He passed through the first door, the guards coming to attention, and moved into a corridor with uneven stone flooring. The second door had a section of tight grating through which he could glimpse the interior of the cell.
He could see her, reclined on an exquisitely carved seat. Her cell was clean and well furnished, with tapestries and cushions that had been transferred from her solar on Damen’s orders.
Laurent was standing in front of her.
Damen stopped, unseen in the shadowed space behind the door grating. Seeing the two of them together made something turn over in his stomach. He heard a cool familiar voice speak.
‘He’s not coming,’ said Laurent.
She looked like a queen. Her hair was twisted up and held in place by a single pearl pin, a gold crown of polished curls atop her long, balanced neck. She sat on the low reclining seat, something in her posture reminiscent of his father, King Theomedes, on his throne. The simple white sheaf of her gown, gathered at each shoulder, was covered by an embroidered silk shawl of royal vermillion, which someone had allowed her to retain. Under her arched golden brows, her eyes were the colour of woad.
The extent to which she and Laurent resembled each other, in colouring, in their cool, intellectual lack of emotion, in the detachment with which they regarded one another, was both unnerving and extraordinary.
She spoke in pure, accentless Veretian. ‘Damianos has sent me his bed boy. Blond, blue-eyed, and all laced up like a virgo intacta. You’re just his type.’
Laurent said, ‘You know who I am.’
‘The prince du jour,’ said Jokaste.
There was a pause.
Damen needed to step forward, announce his presence, and stop this. He watched Laurent arrange himself against the wall.
Laurent said, ‘If you’re asking, did I fuck him, the answer is, yes.’
‘I think we both know you weren’t the one fucking him. You were on your back with your legs in the air. He hasn’t changed that much.’
Jokaste’s voice was as refined as her poise, as if the practice of high manners was not disturbed by either Laurent’s words or her own. Jokaste said, ‘The question is how much you liked it.’
Damen found himself with his hand on the wood beside the grate, listening as intently as he could for Laurent’s reply. He shifted position, trying to get a glimpse of Laurent’s face,
‘I see. We are going to trade stories? Shall I tell you my preferred position?’
‘I imagine it’s similar to mine.’
‘Confined?’ said Laurent.
It was her turn to pause. She used the time to peruse his features, as if sampling the quality of silk. Both she and Laurent looked utterly at ease. It was Damen whose heart was pounding.
She said, ‘Are you asking what it was like?’
Damen didn’t move, didn’t breathe. He knew Jokaste, knew the danger. He felt fixed to the spot, as Jokaste continued her study of Laurent’s face.
‘Laurent of Vere. They say you’re frigid. They say you rebuff all your suitors, that no man has been good enough to prise your legs apart. I believe you thought it would be brutish and physical, and maybe a part of you even wanted it that way. But you and I both know that Damen does not make love like that. He took you slowly. He kissed you until you started to want it.’
Laurent said, ‘Don’t stop on my account.’
‘You let him undress you. You let him put his hands on you. They say you hate Akielons, but you let one into your bed. You weren’t expecting what it felt like when he touched you. You weren’t expecting the weight of his body, how it felt to have his attention, to have him want you.’
‘You left out the part near the end, when it was so good I let myself forget what he’d done.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Jokaste. ‘That was the truth.’
Another pause.
‘It’s heady, isn’t it?’ said Jokaste. ‘He was born to be a king. He’s not a stand-in, or a second choice, like you are. He rules men just by breathing. When he walks into a room, he commands it. People love him. Like they loved your brother.’
‘My dead brother,’ said Laurent helpfully. ‘Shall we now do the part where I spread for my brother’s killer? You can describe it again.’
He couldn’t see Laurent’s face as he said it, though Laurent’s voice was easy, as was his elegant lean against the stone wall of the cell.
She said, ‘Is it difficult to ride with a man who is more of a king than you are?’
‘I wouldn’t let Kastor hear you call him a king.’
‘Or is that what you like about it? That Damen is what you’ll never be. That he has surety, self-belief, strength of conviction. Those are things that you yearn for. When he focuses it all on you, it makes you feel like you can do anything.’
Laurent said, ‘Now we are both telling the truth.’
The quality of this pause was different. Jokaste gazed back at Laurent.
‘Meniados is not going to defect from Kastor to Damianos,’ said Jokaste.
‘Why not?’ said Laurent.
‘Because when Meniados fled Karthas, I encouraged him to head straight to Kastor, who will kill him for leaving me alone here.’
Damen felt himself turn cold.
Jokaste said, ‘We now have dispensed with pleasantries. I am in possession of certain information. You will offer me clemency in exchange for what I know. There will be a series of negotiations, then, when we have decided on a mutually beneficial arrangement, I will return to Kastor in Ios. After all,’ said Jokaste, ‘that is why Damianos sent you here.’
Laurent seemed to study her in turn. When he spoke, it was without particular urgency.
‘No. He sent me to tell you that you’re not important. You’ll be held here until he’s crowned in Ios, then you will be executed for treason. He’s never going to see you again.’
Laurent pushed himself off the wall.
‘But thank you,’ said Laurent, ‘for the information about Meniados. That was helpful.’
He had almost reached the door before she spoke.
‘You haven’t asked me about my son.’
Laurent stopped. Then turned.
Enthroned on the reclining couch, she was regal, like a queen in a sculpted marble frieze commanding the length of a room.
‘He came early. It was a long birth, through the night into the morning. At the end of it all, a child. I was looking into his eyes when we got word of Damen’s soldiers marching on the fort. I had to send him away, for safety. It’s a terrible thing to separate a mother from her child.’
‘Really, is this all?’ said Laurent. ‘A few pinpricks, and the desperate appeal of motherhood? I thought you were an opponent. Did you really think a prince of Vere would be moved by the fate of a bastard’s child?’
‘You should be,’ said Jokaste. ‘He is the son of a king.’
&nbs
p; The son of a king.
Damen felt dizzy, as if the floor was scrolling out from under his feet. She delivered the words calmly, as she had delivered every remark, except that these words changed everything. The idea that it might be—that it was—
His child.
Everything resolved into a pattern: that the child had come so early; that she had travelled so far into the north to deliver it, to a place where the date of the child’s birth could be obscured; that in Ios she had heavily disguised the first months of the pregnancy, both from himself and from Kastor.
All of Laurent’s features whitened in reeling shock, and he stared at Jokaste as though he had been struck.
Even through his own shock, Laurent’s sheer horror was excessive. Damen didn’t understand it, didn’t understand the look in Laurent’s eyes, or in Jokaste’s. Then Laurent spoke in an awful voice.
‘You have sent Damianos’s son to my uncle.’
She said, ‘You see? I am an opponent. I will not be left in a cell to rot. You will tell Damen that I will see him as I require, and I think you will find that he will not send in a bed boy this time.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS STRANGE that all he could think about was his father.
He sat on the edge of the bed in his rooms, with his elbows on his knees and the heels of his palms digging hard into his eyes.
The last thing that he had been truly aware of was Laurent turning and seeing him through the grating. He had taken one step back from Laurent, then another, then he had turned, and pushed his way up the stairs to his quarters, a hazy journey. No one had bothered him since.
He needed the silence and the solitude, the time alone to think, but he couldn’t reason; the pounding in his head was too strong, the emotions in his chest in a tangle.
He might have a son, and all he could think about was his father.
It was as if some protective membrane had been torn away and everything that he had not let himself feel was exposed behind the rupture. He had nothing left to hold it back, only this raw, terrible feeling, of being denied family.
On his last day in Ios, he had knelt, his father’s hand heavy in his hair, too naive, too foolish to see that his father’s sickness was a killing. The smell of tallow and incense had mingled thickly with the sound of his father’s laboured breathing. His father’s words had been made of breath, nothing left of his deep-timbered voice.
‘Tell the physicians I will be well,’ his father had said. ‘I wish to see all my son will accomplish when he takes the throne.’
In his life, he had known only one parent. His father had been to him a set of ideals, a man he looked up to, and strove to please, a standard against whom he measured himself. Since his father’s death, he had not allowed himself to think or feel anything but determination that he would return, that he would see his home again, and restore himself to the throne.
Now he felt as if he stood in front of his father, felt his father’s hand in his hair, as he never would again. He had wanted his father to be proud of him; and had failed him, in the end.
A sound from the doorway. He looked up, and saw Laurent.
Damen drew in an unsteady breath. Laurent was closing the door behind him and entering. He must deal with this, too. He tried to gather himself.
Laurent said, ‘No. I’m not here to—’ He said, ‘I’m just here.’
He was suddenly aware that the room had grown dark, that night had fallen, and no one had come to light candles. He must have been here for hours. Someone had kept the servants out. Someone had kept everyone out. His generals and his nobles and every person who had business with the King had been turned back. Laurent, he realised, had guarded his solitude for him. And his people, fearing the fierce, strange foreign prince, had done as Laurent ordered, and stayed out. He was stupidly, profoundly grateful for that.
He looked at Laurent, meaning to tell him how much it meant, though as he was, it would take a moment before he could muster himself to speak.
Before he could, he felt Laurent’s fingers on the back of his neck, a shock of touch that caught him in a tumult of confusion as it drew him forward, simply. It was, from Laurent, slightly awkward; sweet; rare; stiff with obvious inexperience.
If he had been offered this as an adult, he couldn’t remember it. He couldn’t remember ever having needed it, except that maybe he had needed it since the bells had rung in Akielos, and never allowed himself to ask for it. Body leaned in to body and he closed his eyes.
Time passed. He became aware of the slow, strong pulse, the slender body, the warmth in his arms—and that was nice in a different way.
‘Now you are taking advantage of my kind-hearted instincts,’ Laurent said, a murmur into his ear.
He drew back, but didn’t move away completely, nor did Laurent seem to expect it, the bedding shifting as Laurent sat beside him, as if it was natural for them to be sitting with their shoulders almost touching one another.
He let his lips form a half-smile. ‘You aren’t going to offer me one of your gaudy Veretian handkerchiefs?’
‘You could use the clothing you’re wearing. It’s about the same size.’
‘Your poor Veretian sensibilities. All those wrists and ankles.’
‘And arms and thighs and every other part.’
‘My father’s dead.’
The words had a finality to them. His father was buried in Akielos beneath the columned halls of the silent, where the pain and confusion of his last days would never trouble him again. He looked up at Laurent.
‘You thought he was a warmonger. An aggressive, war-hungry king, who invaded your country on the flimsiest of pretexts, hungry for land and the glory of Akielos.’
‘No,’ said Laurent. ‘We don’t have to do this now.’
‘A barbarian,’ said Damen, ‘with barbaric ambitions, fit only to rule by the sword. You hated him.’
‘I hated you,’ said Laurent. ‘I hated you so badly I thought I’d choke on it. If my uncle hadn’t stopped me, I would have killed you. And then you saved my life, and every time I needed you, you were there, and I hated you for that, too.’
‘I killed your brother.’
The silence seemed to tighten, painfully. He made himself look at Laurent, a bright, sharp presence beside him.
‘What are you doing here?’ Damen said.
He was pale in the moonlight, set against the dim shadows of the room that shrouded them both.
Laurent said, ‘I know what it’s like to lose family.’
The room was very quiet, with no hint of the activity that must be taking place beyond its walls, even this late. A fort was never silent, there were always soldiers, attendants, slaves. Outside, the guards were making their evening rounds. The sentries on the walls were patrolling, looking out into the night.
‘Is there no way forward for us?’ said Damen. It just came out. Beside him, he could feel Laurent holding himself very still.
‘You mean, will I come back to your bed for the little time we have left?’
‘I mean that we hold the centre. We hold everything from Acquitart to Sicyon. Can we not call it a kingdom and rule it together? Am I such a poorer prospect than a Patran princess, or a daughter of the Empire?’
He made himself say no more than that, though the words crowded in his chest. He waited. It surprised him that it hurt to wait, and that the longer he waited, the more he felt he couldn’t bear to hear the answer, brought to him on a knife point.
When he made himself look at Laurent, Laurent’s eyes on him were very dark, his voice quiet.
‘How can you trust me, after what your own brother did to you?’
‘Because he was false,’ said Damen, ‘and you are true. I have never known a truer man.’ He said, into the stillness, ‘I think if I gave you my heart, you would treat it tenderly.’
Laurent turned his head, denying Damen his face. Damen could see his breathing. After a moment he said in a low voice, ‘When you make love to me like that, I can’t think.’
‘Don’t think,’ said Damen.
Damen saw the flickering change, the tension, as the words provoked an internal battle.
Damen said, ‘Don’t think.’
‘Don’t,’ said Laurent, ‘toy with me. I—have not the means to—defend against this.’
‘I don’t toy with you.’
‘I—’
‘Don’t think,’ said Damen.
‘Kiss me,’ said Laurent. And then flushed, a rich colour. Don’t think, Damen had said, but Laurent couldn’t do that. Even to sit there after what he had said, he was fighting a battle in his head.
The words hung awkwardly, a blurt, but Laurent didn’t take them back, he just waited, his body singing with tension.
Instead of leaning in, Damen took Laurent’s hand, brought it towards himself, and kissed his palm, once.
He had learned in the course of their one night together to tell when Laurent was taken unawares—taken aback. It wasn’t easy to anticipate, the gaps in Laurent’s experience not mapping to anything that he understood. He felt it now, Laurent’s eyes very dark, uncertain of what he should do. ‘I meant—’
‘Don’t let you think?’
Laurent didn’t answer. Damen waited, in the quiet.
‘I’m not—’ said Laurent. And then, as the moment stretched out between them, ‘I’m not an innocent who needs his hand held through every step.’
‘Aren’t you?’
Realisation came to Damen. Laurent’s wariness was not, at this moment, the high walls of the defended citadel. It was that of a man with a portion of his guard down, who was desperately unused to it.
After a moment: ‘At Ravenel, I—it had been a long time since I had—with anyone. I was nervous.’
‘I know,’ said Damen.