C.S. Pacat

There was a man I was supposed to meet. He’s got all these ideas about honour and fair play, and he tries to keep me from doing the wrong thing. But he’s not here right now. Unfortunately for you.’

‘And is that what you think?’ said Laurent.
‘No.’ Damen said, ‘Nikandros doesn’t know you.’
‘And you do.’

Nikandros came to stand beside him. ‘Jokaste is confined in a cell in the east wing. Do you have further orders?’
‘Strip her and send her to Vere as a slave?’ Damen didn’t move from the sill.
Nikandros said, ‘You don’t really want that.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I want it to be worse.’

Someone had kept the servants out. Someone had kept everyone out.

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.’

He won’t kill you,’ said Laurent. ‘But I will.’

The child was never yours, but he is safe. In another life, he would have been a king.

I remember the way you looked at me, the day we met. Perhaps that, too, in another life.

Jokaste

‘Yes, Exalted.’

Pallas turned blindly, and made for the door.

‘What is it?’ Laurent looked at Damen, who had detached himself and was sitting with the sheet pulled up to where he had clutched it to cover himself. And then, with the burgeoning delight of discovery, ‘Are you shy?’

‘In Akielos we don’t,’ said Damen, ‘in front of other people.’

‘Not even the King?’

‘Especially not the King,’ said Damen, for whom the King still partly meant his father.

‘But how does the court know if the royal marriage has been consummated?’

‘The King knows whether or not it has been consummated!’ Horrified.

Ancel was a virgin the first twelve times he had sex. The thirteenth time, it lacked all plausibility.

He made up a figure. There was no Lord Arten. Ancel landed his first contract that day: three months of his time, signed over to the merchant’s son. At the end of it, he was gifted a peridot. The colour of his eyes, green as emeralds. But not as expensive.