Jaibriol bent his head and kissed her hard, too full of anger and hunger to be gentle. He gripped her between his knees, with her torso against his chest. The conduits on his coat scraped her skin, but if it bothered her, she gave no sign. She molded against him, pliant in his hold, far more lush than an Aristo, compliant in a way he would never find in his wife. Her scent surrounded him, intoxicating, and he should have savored every moment with her. He owned the most desirable sex slaves alive—and he couldn't enjoy them even after his wife had goddamned cheated on him.
Jaibriol stopped kissing her and sat with his head bent over the girl, his arms around her. He wanted to smash something, because he didn't want her, he wanted Tarquine. Even immersed in the aphrodisiac of this lovely girl's pheromones, he couldn't make love to her because he couldn't be unfaithful to his wife.
Claret pulled herself up so she could look into his face. "Why are you sad, Your Highness?"
"I'm not sad," he lied.
She slid her hand across his chest. "What would you like?" she murmured. "Whatever you want. Anything."
He folded his hand around hers. "I couldn't imagine a sweeter night. But it seems sweet isn't what I want."
Fear sparked in her gaze. A brutal image jumped into her mind, what she had endured at the hands of the Blue-Point Diamond Aristos, and Jaibriol felt as if he would die.
"Claret, I'm not going to hurt you." He brushed the tousled hair from her face. "How could I harm such a gift?" Her Kyle strength was a balm on his traumatized mind. He kissed her again, more gently. "You can sleep here tonight. Whatever you need, just let the house staff know."
Her puzzlement washed over even his guarded mind. She had no mental barriers. Of course Aristos never taught their providers how to shield their thoughts. The more open a psion, the more the Aristo received their pain. Jaibriol couldn't imagine how they could have tortured this tender girl and taken enjoyment from it, and for a moment he hated them so much, he felt capable of murder. The only person he hated more was himself, for not protecting the people in his care.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. It was an insane thing for the emperor to tell a provider, but he couldn't stop the words.
Claret touched his temple. "You hurt so much."
"No." He could never let her know. "I don't."
"It's in you." Her eyes were luminous. "Such terrible pain. It is yours rather than mine. And you have no void."
"No. It isn't true." Tears he could never shed burned in his eyes. He had known he couldn't hide from a psion, but he had thought for just one night he could keep his nature a secret.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. "That you are a gift of the gods," she whispered, "we have always known."
His voice rasped. "What does that mean?"
"You are kind."
He had no answer to that. He wasn't kind, he was a monster who had let them be misused on a terrible scale.
"If only I could give you kindness," Jaibriol said.
"You have given me all I need," she answered, but she was lying, for an image jumped into her mind of what she wanted and could never have.
Hidaka.
In her memory, that taciturn monolith he knew as one of his deadly cybernetic guards was instead a man full of affection and loving words, though the two of them had never dared act on their feelings, lest they be caught and punished, even executed. Jaibriol wanted to die then, as he realized what Hidaka's "odd" look had meant at the lodge. It was a man in pain and trying to hide it. Hidaka had saved Jaibriol's life in a thousand ways when he shot Muze, and in return Jaibriol had taken the woman he loved.
The foyer outside of Jaibriol's bedroom was dim. Hidaka was standing with his feet apart and his arms crossed, his face a study in impassive neutrality. He lowered his arms and bowed as Jaibriol walked into the foyer.
"Are my other Razers outside?" Jaibriol asked.
"Yes, Sire." Hidaka guarded his voice well. If Jaibriol hadn't realized what had happened, he wouldn't have noticed the captain's strain. But he couldn't miss it now. He remembered Hidaka leaning over the console in the lodge. He had assumed the guard was checking security, but now he wondered if Hidaka had been trying to discover whether or not Claret was all right. Jaibriol had noticed her because of the intensity of Hidaka's response to her holo, and he felt like a swine for not realizing why his guard had reacted that way.
"I'm not going to stay," Jaibriol told him.
The captain nodded, and if Jaibriol hadn't been looking for it, he might have missed the relief in Hidaka's gaze.
"But I want you to remain here," Jaibriol added. "Tonight."
"Sire?"
Jaibriol spoke gently. "She is yours, for as long as the two of you want to stay together. She can move into your rooms in the palace if you would like."
Fear burst across the face of his guard—his stoic, mechanical Razer. "Your Highness, I would never presume—"
Jaibriol lifted his hand, stopping him. "Just promise me this. You will treat her well."
Hidaka took a deep breath. Then he said, simply, "I will."
"Go on." Jaibriol tilted his head toward the bedroom. "The suite is yours tonight."
For one instant a full smile lit the Razer's face, a flash of white teeth. It only lasted a second, but that single moment spoke volumes against his supposed mechanical nature.
Jaibriol felt even smaller than before. They acted as if he had given them a great gift simply by allowing them to love each other. He could never say the words they deserved, never free Claret or Hidaka or Robert or anyone else, and most of all, he could never reveal his aversion to the foundations of Aristo life, for if he did, he could end up in the same inventory where he had found Claret.
Glory's six-hour night was half over by the time Jaibriol returned to his mountain lodge with his three guards. He couldn't find Tarquine. The central room was empty except for one of her Razers monitoring the console. That the guard had stayed here had to mean she was in the lodge. He could have one of his Razers find her. But he couldn't bring himself to show even that hint of how much he needed the woman he had insulted beyond forgiveness.
She wasn't in any room, including the bedroom. They should have been asleep together, but apparently neither of them could rest. Guilt and insomnia seemed to be partners tonight.
Standing by the perfectly made bed, he noticed a line of light across the room, under the antique door to the bathing chamber. Puzzled, he went over and pushed it open. No one was in the room beyond, with its round pool and earthen colors. A lamp with a blueglass shade glowed on a table in one corner, and a fountain burbled in the center of the blue-tiled pool.
Jaibriol turned to the Razer with him. "Wait here."
His bodyguard bowed. "As you wish, Sire."
Jaibriol went into the chamber and closed the door. The fountain was a scalloped bowl shaped like a flower with arches of water that curved up into the air and sheeted down the bowl.
He found Tarquine on the other side.
The empress was sitting by a sculpted bowl at the edge of the pool, hidden from the door by the water spuming through the air. She had leaned on the bowl, her head bent, her hair hanging around her face.
"Tarquine?" He stopped, bewildered by the strange tableau. He had seen her look many ways, but never vulnerable like this.
She lifted her head. Dark circles rimmed her eyes, and her pallor frightened him. Jaibriol knelt beside her, dismayed that while he had been stealing away to the palace, his wife had been sick. Except she couldn't be ill. Like him, she had health nanomeds, molecular laboratories that patrolled her body.
"What happened?" Jaibriol asked.
"Nothing." Her voice was low. "Where have you been?"
"At the palace."
Her voice turned acid. "Did you enjoy yourself?"
"No." He whispered the word.
"Neither did I." She pulled a lock of hair out of her eyes. "I never touched your providers."
He stared at her, incredulous. "You sure
as blazes made it sound that way."
She rested her elbow on the edge of the bowl and rubbed her eyes. "Perhaps I wanted to hurt you."
"Why?" She had succeeded, more than she knew.
"Because you make me care too much." She lowered her arm and met his gaze. "You force me to care if you are happy, if you are well, if you are satisfied with your life. And you never are, Jaibriol. Your sorrow saturates everything."
"I thought you had betrayed our vows."
She didn't tell him an Aristo could never betray a spouse with a provider. Incredibly, she said, "So you had to as well?"
"I couldn't." He spoke bitterly. "I don't know what hells our marriage exists in, Tarquine, but it seems I love you too much to act in a manner any other Aristo would consider normal."
"You express your love in strange ways."
So do you, he thought, but he couldn't say it, for he was never certain of anything with her, especially whether or not she loved him, and it hurt too much to ask her, for she would never acknowledge anything she believed made her weak. So instead he touched the bowl where she was leaning. Its purifying systems had cleansed its water to a pristine perfection, but he had no doubt she had thrown up in it.
"How can you be sick?" he asked.
"I'm not." She said it with a straight face, though she looked too exhausted even to stand.
"You just happen to be hanging over this bowl?"
Her gaze never wavered. "I lied to you, Jaibriol."
He didn't know which amazed him more, that she admitted it or that she stated it so simply. "About what?" He could think of so many possibilities, he hardly knew where to start.
"About why I missed your dinner with Minister Gji."
"You were in a meeting that night."
"No. I was here, in the mountains."
Although he had suspected as much since he saw her clothes, her confession made no sense. "Why lie about that? The lodge is here for us to use."
"I didn't come to the lodge."
"Where did you go?"
"A clinic."
"What clinic?" He had no idea what she was about, and he couldn't bruise his mind further by lowering his barriers.
"The Jaizire Clinic. The late Empress Viquara, my niece, established it, accessible only to the Qox Line." Bitterly, she added, "Modern medicine can accomplish almost anything our glorious empire requires it to do."
Jaibriol was beginning to understand, but he shunned the knowledge, as if doing so would protect him from this new agony she was about to inflict. "Tarquine, don't."
"It is already done," she said. "That night, after I came back, when we made love."
"No." His hand spasmed on the edge of the bowl.
"You need an heir," she said tiredly. "You will have one."
"You cannot!" He refused to believe it. "You're too old."
She gave him a dour look. "How complimentary."
"I don't mean an insult. But it can't happen."
"Yes, well, that which can't happen is making me very sick."
"You have to see a doctor!" Alarm flared through him. "I'll summon—"
"No!" She caught his hand before he touched his wrist comm.
"Why?" His mind reeled. This woman who sat slumped here, her face pale from illness, might carry the Highton Heir. "Haven't you gone to one?"
"Not once." She had that unrelenting quality he knew all too well. "Nor will I."
He took her hand. "You must take proper care of the baby. And yourself."
"That is why no doctor must see me." She squeezed his fingers, then released his hand so she could motion at the room around them. "And why I came here to rest."
"You aren't resting. You're sick."
"I'm fine. Only in here can you know otherwise."
"Why?" His heart was beating too hard.
"I've secured this room to the best of my ability."
Jaibriol knew that euphemism. To the best of my ability meant she had turned her prodigious and shady resources to the task. If any place existed where they could talk in private, she could create that refuge.
"Why would you hide the event the entire empire is waiting for?" he asked. The unending speculation as to if and when she could provide him an heir had been a bane on their lives.
"Because any child of yours," she said, "won't be what the doctors expect."
He wanted to rage then, for she was right, and he would have seen it right away if he hadn't been so shell-shocked. She carried the full Aristo genes, but he was only one eighth. It was why he avoided medical experts, and why he had doctored his own DNA to appear more Highton, both within and without. Could a physician discover the Highton Heir wasn't Highton? As his great-grandfather had protected his grandfather, and his grandfather protected his father, so Jaibriol would protect his heir. But how had they managed without endangering the mother or the baby? They had left no records that could help Tarquine.
He stared across the bowl at her. "You can do checks on yourself, can't you? To see if the child is well?"
"Yes, to both." With exquisite misery, she said, "It is a boy. The next emperor."
Jaibriol wanted to feel joy, but his emotions were ripping him apart. "My grandfather was only half Aristo."
"Never say it. Never think it. Even with my safeguards, you never know."
She didn't understand. "Whatever his genes, he was Highton." Like a train hurtling over a cliff, Jaibriol couldn't stop. "He thought like a Highton. Behaved like a Highton. Valued being Highton." He spoke in a low voice. "Aristo genes are dominant, Tarquine. The Kyle genes didn't manifest in the Qox Line until my father, who inherited them from both his father and his provider mother."
Her fist clenched the rim of the bowl. "Your grandmother was the empress Viquara. My niece. Your mother was the Highton empress Liza. Never forget."
"Our child will transcend." She had to acknowledge the truth. "He will grow up to crave his father's agony. And he'll know what I am. I can hide from my Ministers, my advisors, my judges and military officers and aides. But I can't hide from my own child."
"No child of mine will betray his father."
He felt as if his heart were cracking open. "You don't know that. My grandfather was a monster."
"Your grandfather was the esteemed emperor of Eube."
"That doesn't change his brutality."
"He didn't have you as a father."
That caught him off guard. "What?"
She spoke quietly. "Bring your son up as your father brought you up, and the Highton Heir will be a far better man than any of those around him."
He didn't know where to put her admission, one no other Aristo would even think let alone speak, that raising their child without Highton influence would make him a better human being. "I can't live in exile with him. Secluding him won't change the fundamental nature of what he and I are. My grandfather stayed away from my father to protect him. But who will protect me from my son?"
She started to speak, stopped.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It can be done."
Something in her expression set off his alarms. "You know of another case?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Yes, it does!"
"Ah, Jai, no, I don't know. We will handle what comes."
"You had no right to do this without telling me."
"That may be," she said. "But I will not undo it."
"Then you condemn us all to a misery of your own making."
"Your grandfather survived."
"I would rather die," he said flatly, "than have my son follow the brutal footsteps of my grandfather."
Tarquine watched him as if her cast-iron heart were breaking. "Love our son. It's all you can do."
His life was disintegrating, and he didn't know how to stop it. "Even if he never betrays me, what if someone uncovers the truth? What will happen to our son then? If I am unmasked, so is he."
She pushed back the hair that had tangled around her face. That she had let it bec
ome so disarrayed told him far more about her distress than any claim she might make to feel otherwise.
"Go to the Skolians," she said.
"They would never accept the son of Jaibriol II, grandson of Ur Qox, great-grandson of Jaibriol I. To them, I embody everything evil in the universe."