Page 184 of Dragon Slayer

“If you wanted more jewels, all you had to–”

Val pressed in with the knife; a tiny bead of blood welled, and Mehmet’s frantic gaze flicked between the knife and Val’s face. Val could feel the silver pulling at his energy – always pulling, always making him weak – but even then, fresh from feeding, he was as strong as Mehmet. Maybe stronger.

“Arslan,” he said.

Mehmet wet his lips. “Your little eunuch? What about him?”

“I’ve seen your eyes. Following him. Covetous. You will not touch him.”

Mehmet’s gaze tightened. His hips shifted a fraction, a bare flexing of his spine.

Val tightened his grip: on the knife, on his hips, on his throat.

“You want something to fuck, is that it? Instead of always taking it?”

“He is a child. A little boy who had his pants pulled down and his balls cut off. He won’t suffer your lust – not anyone’s. You do whatever you want to me, but don’t touch him. He’s mine – you gave him to me. And I won’t have him used for that.”

Mehmet studied him an endless moment. “You’re serious.”

“Deadly serious.”

It turned out the sultan enjoyed a bit of an even match in bed, a true fight like they hadn’t had since Val had stabbed him that first night. Val hadn’t been able to leave the bed the next morning, Arslan helping him sit upright and bringing him breakfast and blood on a tray. Watching him with outward worry, nibbling at his lip while Val nibbled at flatbread on back teeth that felt loose against his tongue.

But Mehmet had given his word about Arslan, and so far, he’d kept it.

No one else would dare lay a finger on Arslan – Val’s property. Mehmet’s property, by default. And, worried about the impending siege, trying desperately to make Constantine see reason, Val had grown lax. He’d been sending the boy to run errands, take messages, assuming he was safe.

But a war camp was a war camp, after all.

Soldiers bowed their heads in deference as they passed. A few went down on their knees. They turned between two tents, and then two more, moving away from the more orderly rows where soldiers camped, and toward the workmen and camp followers, the modest tents crowded together at haphazard angles, a maze of human and animal filth; and wide-eyed craftsmen and whores, startled to see the sultan and his pet prince in their midst.

Not too startled, surely, because janissaries had been dispatched a half hour ago. A group of uniformed, armored men with crested helms, shiny and out of place in the midst of the blacksmith’s yard. Two tents had been set up, open-sided, and a moveable forge assembled in a patch of trampled grass. A few horses on pickets, waiting to be shod, shifted nervously a short distance away, snorting. They could smell fear, just as Val could, as they entered the yard and saw the rapists.

There were four of them. Two blacksmith apprentices, and two of their friends. Sturdy, thickset men in their twenties. Strong, heavily muscled from physical labor.

Four against one. Brutes against a delicate boy.

One sported a swelling eye – Arslan had admitted, haltingly, that he’d kicked one of them as they tried to hold him down.

Val felt light-headed, and forced himself to take a deep breath. He’d ground to a halt, staring, fuming, aching inside.

Beside him, Mehmet said, “Well. This is your show. Run it how you see fit.”

Val couldn’t believe Mehmet had let him get this far, and now he was handing the reins over fully?

He turned his head and searched his lover’s face.

Mehmet lifted his brows. “They need to be put down. They laid hands on something that belongs to their royalty. But this is your slave. This is your punishment to mete out, my dear.”

He’d never punished anyone in his life.

He’d rarely ever raised his voice.

(Holding a knife to Mehmet’s eye didn’t count. Of that he was sure.)

Val took a deep breath and walked toward the accused. He didn’t have to interrogate them – he could smell Arslan on them. But he found himself speaking anyway.

“The slave you raped,” he said, voice surprisingly even. “Did you know who his master was?”

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