The Black Prince: Part II (43 page)

He cried out, collapsing against her.

She held him, saying nothing.

The floor was oddly comfortable. Then again, anywhere would be comfortable with her. He wondered, idly, how the bride and groom were getting on. The romantic he’d been as a child thought that it would be magical, sharing that time with a partner one had actually chosen. The anticipation alone must be intoxicating: like the rush to every Solstice present pile ever presented during one’s childhood. But the rational, adult part of him knew that that same anticipation might make it impossible to achieve anything at all. Especially after a reception full of rich food and alcohol. If Liam hadn’t deflowered her already, Gretchen would likely greet the morning still a maiden.

“What are you thinking?” Lissa asked.

“About your brother, Liam.”

“He’s down the hall, if you’d like to check on him.” She giggled.

“That’s even worse. Trying to gird your loins for battle and your parents in the next room. Likely trying to listen in.”

“Well maybe they’ve got a cup to this wall.” Lissa snuggled against him. It was like he’d never left. Like the time they’d been apart had never happened. “And I need to know: what does it mean, exactly, to gird one’s loins?”

“To prepare oneself—or, more properly, one’s tunic—for battle. It was a highly specific process, for the ancients, that involved pulling the excess fabric through one’s legs and tying it up in knots. Like a diaper on an infant.”

“Well I hope he hasn’t done that, then,” Lissa replied. “Or he’ll never manage to become a father!”

Hart stroked her hair, smiling.

“When he kisses her,” Lissa quoted, “storms rise beneath her skin. For she is the ocean and he, her moon.”

“You are my sun, my moon, and my stars,” he replied. The poem was an old one. And one of his favorites also. Lissa had the soul of a poet. He’d always thought so. He didn’t doubt, either, that she’d grown by now into a far better reader than he. He looked forward to showering her with books. And libraries in which to house her books. And everything else her heart desired. He could do that now; he was a rich man.

“I have a present for Thomasina,” he said. “Of couches.”

“Oh?”

“I need all the goodwill I can muster. Especially now. Otherwise,” he added, “she might castrate me as I sleep.” With the mother in law he’d chosen—or, as she might say, mother in spirit—that was a real possibility. Thomasina did not suffer insults to her children gladly.

“I won’t tell her.” Lissa turned her head, looking up at him. She wasn’t smiling, but her eyes were warm. The bond between them was still there. Hart hadn’t destroyed it, with his greed. “And neither should you. It’s between us, at least for now. And your wife, I suppose. Thomasina doesn’t need to know.”

Hart, as he had so many times before, marveled at her strength. There was a core to Lissa that, through all her degradations, had never been touched. “She’s our wife, now. Regrettably, this is going to have to be a joint venture.”

Lissa’s laugh was all that brought beauty to the world. “The next time Tristan decides you have to get married, he should really let me help pick out the bride.”

T
ristan sat at his desk, studying what had once been Father Justin.

He’d received a report from Eir, who’d gone back into the field again, which he’d then burned. And ever since, he’d been here. In this position. He felt no need to fidget, unlike his human companions. There were no restless energies swirling within him, seeking release. He was a shell.

Eir was a good, and useful, companion. But within castle walls was no place for a gnome. He’d trusted her to bring Isla north because he had her loyalty. And her tribe’s loyalty. Both difficult things to earn. Eir came from a culture where it wasn’t uncommon for children to eat their own parents. She and Tristan had a history, though. Gnomes were long-lived, and there were certain things she remembered. She had something else, too: a complete lack of interest in the war plaguing Morven. The war that was not a war. Eir would not have been interested in bribes, to hand over Isla. There was nothing a human man, or woman, could offer that would be of interest. Gnomes did not crave lands, or titles; they preferred to live in the peaks, far from human settlement. They avoided even the crudest huts, preferring instead their caves. And they had no use for coin.

Eir had discovered evidence of Maeve’s prior movements, but none of her current whereabouts.

Which concerned him. Gravely. That she was still close, he had no doubt. She’d set her eyes on the prize, which was their son. His son. Would that Piers had killed her, when he’d had the chance. But there was a reason that Piers was king and Tristan was not, and it was more than Tristan’s preference for living in the shadows. Piers understood men, as Tristan never would. He’d known that he needed to forgive. Or at least be seen doing so.

The war would end, eventually. If for no other reason than that everyone capable of raising so much as a bill hook would be dead. But Morven would continue on, in some form. Life would continue on. The hatreds had to die, at some point.

Isla was asleep upstairs. It was late. Very late. The sun would rise within a few hours. Tristan did not sense the passage of time as other men but he could sense the approaching dawn. Sunlight banished spirits. He hated it, but he’d grown to tolerate it. After bidding Hart goodnight he’d gone to her, made love to her. She needed reassurance. And although he could only ape the part, they could live together in his lie.

The door opened.

Rowena.

He studied her. She was an interesting specimen. Especially this night. She’d foregone her gown for a robe, also fur-collared but much more revealing. That she’d apparently traversed some goodly portion of the castle dressed like this told him a great deal about her state of mind. Not that he couldn’t plumb its depths, if he so chose.

Of the three ties, only a single one had been knotted. The lowest one, bringing the thin material together at her navel. The twin swells of her breasts were clearly visible, the ermine of which she seemed so fond just barely covering her nipples. Her hair was free, cascading down her back in ringlets. And her expression was one of the purest innocence.

He sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers. His claws clicked. He waited.

“I need your help.”

He wondered how long she’d practiced that plea in the mirror.

“It’s Rudolph.”

He was certain it was.

“You have to help me.”

So breathless. So desperate. Her lips parted just right. Just a pathetic young girl, throwing herself on her lord’s mercy. That her lord was her sister’s husband and she all but naked were, apparently, two things he was meant to overlook. For now.

Women like Rowena thought all men stupid. Stupid and, worse, tractable. Thought that all it took for a man to forsake his vows, his sanity, was a bit of flesh. There were, granted, some men like this. But they—their supposed intellectual superiors—never stopped to consider capturing one didn’t amount to winning much of a prize. He’d be hers, until he saw the next woman on the street.

“He…he treats me terribly.”

“Oh?”

“He…abuses me.”

“From Chilperic?

She fluttered her lashes, which had been colored. Perhaps that was meant to simulate heart palpations. Utterly ignoring his insinuation, that Rudolph hadn’t been home to abuse her, or indeed do anything else to her, she forged on. “You saw how he was at dinner. So cruel. So cold.”

“I saw,” Tristan said dryly, “that he was insulted.”

“He abandoned me!”

At last, a little of her true nature breaking through. It had never occurred to Rowena that anyone—not Isla, not her husband—would actually stop catering to her every whim, simply due to how she treated them. She’d thought them all her captives forever. But then first Isla had defected and then, finally, a man who’d always been far too good for her. Even if he’d only lately realized that, himself. A man she’d cast aside, as if he were worthless.

“He’s a cruel and evil man and I need you to help me.”

“Help you to do what?”

“Dispose of him.”

“I see.” He watched her, watching him. She was struggling to regain her composure. To present herself, once more, as the helpless maiden. Forgetting that he’d known her now for the better part of a year. The true content of her character presented no mystery. Nor could it be hidden. Especially not to a parent who’d seen his child brought low by her condemnation.

“I am the victim, here.”

In her mind, at least.

“It’s no blemish on Rudolph,” he observed, again rather blandly, “that you’ve been throwing yourself at Callas. While he’s been defending the realm and, indeed, saving your brother’s life.”

Rowena colored, but recovered herself quickly. “I meant to speak to you about him, as well.”

“Who? Callas?”

She took another step closer, and another, until she was right beside him. She pretended to study the objets d’art on the mantel. “He, too, is corrupt. Probably,” she added, “in league with Maeve.”

“That’s a serious accusation.”

Her head turned, in a flash. “I caught him. A tergo with another man.”

Which was a bit of an exaggeration, Tristan thought. They’d been kissing. In the privacy of Callas’ own office. They
might
have been a tergo, if Rowena had left them enough time. But judging from how Callas had told the story, seeing two men even holding hands might have been equally as upsetting.

Tristan also found it interesting, how Rowena assumed that the particulars of his close confidante’s life would elude him. That anything, which happened in this castle, would elude him. Callas, apart from being a powerful mage in his own right and therefore dangerous if unstable, was the captain of his personal guard. Responsible, not simply for his safety but for his family’s.

“If he’d do that,” she said, “I shudder to think what else he’d do.”

An interesting argument, that homosexuality led to murder.

He watched her leave the mantel, move about the room.

“According to the teachings of your own church, so-called
unnatural acts
between a man and a woman are just as sinful as those between two men. Pleasure, is the sin. In particular pleasure arising elsewise than from the knowledge that one is fulfilling one’s sacred duty to procreate.”

Rowena paused.

“Moreover, no such sin exists in the North.” Sin needed a priest to enforce it. “A man can do as he pleases, here, so long as he meets his other obligations. Obligations from which Callas is freed.”

“You know the right words,” she said, “but I know your heart.”

“Do you.” This had started out amusing, after its fashion, but was becoming tiresome.

“Even the Dark One can cite scripture, for his purpose.”

“And yet here you are, asking the Dark One for help.”

She sat down on the edge of his desk. She let her robe fall open, revealing a pair of round, firm breasts. They were quite appealing, just shy of too large, capped by nipples that had grown pert in the cool air. She traced a finger over one voluptuous curve. Her tone, when she spoke, was more than suggestive. “Aren’t beauty and the Dark One the same thing?”

A crude ploy, but not ineffective. He felt himself stirring. Although not, perhaps, for the reasons she might think.

“Are you certain you wish to do this?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He made an elegant, dismissive gesture. “I presume, then, that you also know what is said about dancing with the Dark One.”

“But,” she said, leaning forward, “I don’t wish to dance.”

Very well then.

He stood up, and came around the desk. “Show me.”

She let her robe fall.

“Turn.”

She did so. She was quite nicely rounded. He appreciated the glow that the fire gave her skin, if in an abstract sense. She was just flesh, nothing more.

“Now undress me.”

She did so, with a practiced hand. He wondered how many men she’d fucked. He guessed a fairly great number. A pity for her that none of them had been her husband, the one man for whom she might have been more than a momentary diversion.

She freed his cock, took it into her hand. She was bending to take it into her mouth when he grabbed her by the shoulders and, letting his claws sink into her soft flesh, pulled her upright and in a swift movement turned and bent her over the desk. He held her there, squirming, as he thrust himself into her.

He was heedless of her pleasure. Heedless, even, of her comfort. She’d wanted to see the monster up close, and she would. She’d thought she was seducing him. But she was nothing to him, and he wanted her to know it. Wanted her to feel the humiliation she’d made others feel.

Buried deep inside her deepest recesses, he asked her, “is this what you want?”

She cried out.

“I can make you come, if I choose to.” Little whore that she was, he doubted she ever had.

“What—stop this!”

He slid one hand around, pinching her nipple. Her squirming, now to escape him, produced a delightful effect. He came.

He rested for a moment, still impaling her. Recovering himself. And then he pulled free, and began to dress. He wasn’t tired, he didn’t get tired. But he thought he might like to rest. And then feed.