Page 1 of Garden of Poisoned Delights

CHAPTER 1

The Brattening

Adrien de Guillory started his campaign to personally ruin Isiodore de Mortain’s day at dawn.

He’d spent two hours prior carefully marking his notes in a series of letters sent from country nobles. A number of them wanted to curry favor with their future king, and while Adrien responded to their letters and invitations with distant if not friendly politeness, he also used them for his own research. He picked apart their attempts at flattery, made careful lists of each positive trait they claimed to have, and then compared them to the often vitriolic missives they sent the royal clerks. It was enlightening but deeply time-consuming, and Isiodore tended to stop Adrien before he spent half the night and morning decrypting his future court. He was, as always, most of Adrien’s impulse control when Sabre wasn’t there.

Of course, Izzy hadn’t been around to do that for some time, had he? And Sabre had Laurent, who was dependable and loyal and didn’t ignore him for days after returning from a trip that had taken weeks, leaving him to grumpily undo a complex self-tied bondage harness and scoop flower petals into the bin around midnight.

No. Laurent was thoughtful.

Perhaps Laurent wanted a second submissive. He’d certainly bother to say hello, at least.

Adrien picked up a brush, looked at his disheveled reddish hair in the mirror, and narrowed his eyes.

If Izzy wanted to see the king so badly, perhaps Adrien would give that to him.

He tied his hair back with a spare bit of ribbon—even though it hurt on a deep and primal level not to pick one of his color-coordinated ones by the mirror—and picked his least ostentatious outfit. Adrien always dressed in the royal image his father avoided, these days, but it gave him a slight, vindictive pleasure to deliberately rumple the collar of his shirt.

He stared at it in the mirror.

“Don’t,” he said to himself. “Leave it alone.”

His hands instinctively went to smooth out the wrinkle, and Adrien barely stopped himself in time.

He threw on any old trousers, ignoring his labeled hangers in the closet, put on boots that were only somewhat polished and in fact had a scuff on one side, and only put on two rings. He considered leaving Isiodore’s signet ring off, but he knew the court would think that indicated a serious break in their marriage, not just Adrien wanting to wind Izzy up until his springs popped. So he left that one on, tossed his messy hair over his shoulder, and strode out into the hall.

“I believe I’m going to be late to Council,” he told Luca, the guard outside the door.

Luca stared at him in shock. “But your highness, you’re already twenty minutes early. As usual.”

Damn. Adrien’s mind raced. “I shall be late because I—Luca, if I give you five gold, will you?—”

“No, your highness,” Luca said, rattling to attention. “Duke de Mortain said if you bribed us to sneak out, he’d hang us from the wall by our thumbs.”

Adrien narrowed his eyes. “Did he? A duke of Staria, threatening torture?”

Luca gave him a curious look. “Yes? I know he wouldn’t actually, but sir, I’m a submissive, and when he’s disappointed, I want to dig a hole through the marble and live there, if you understand my meaning.”

“He’ll have to learn to manage his disappointment better, then,” Adrien snapped, and Luca made a soft sound. “But don’t worry, you won’t be implicated. I’ll simply…head to the library for a moment.”

The library was a little diverting, at least, but Adrien kept eyeing the clock until Luca gently asked him about it, and in the end, he was only precisely one minute late to Council. Most nobles filed in a few minutes behind regardless, so it ruined his dramatic entrance, but at least he wasn’t already sitting at the table when they came in.

Izzy was, of course. He looked painfully handsome, with his dark hair tied back and his clothes perfectly pressed, and Adrien had to clasp his hands behind his back for a breath to stop himself from scampering outside to tidy up a little.

Instead, he breezed in, barely meeting Izzy’s curious gaze, and took Izzy’s water glass from the table in front of him.

“Thank you for fetching me water, I’m sure, Duke de Mortain,” he said. Sabre, who was usually as early as Adrien but never took a seat on principle, made bewildered faces at him from behind Emile’s empty seat. Adrien tried to ignore him, and Sabre started gesturing.

“Any time,” Izzy said, nodding slowly, “your highness.”

Adrien tried not to choke on his water. So Izzy had caught on to his frosty demeanor—of course he would. But had he caught on to the reason for it?

Adrien pointedly didn’t look at Izzy as he collapsed on his chair and then, with deliberate care, tilted it back on the rug. It was the sort of thing that his father did so often that Adrien could bet on it, and while Sabre was moving his eyebrows in some kind of code and Izzy watched calmly, Adrien tipped his chair a little further back…

And lost his footing.

There was a second of breathless panic, then he felt a jerk as Izzy’s boot caught the chair under the table. Izzy held him there for a second, his gaze boring a hole into Adrien’s, before he gently eased Adrien back down.

---