Page 50 of The Traitor's Curse
“Yes,” Tavius almost shouted, and then looked aroundquickly and lowered his voice to a hiss. “Of course fucking yes! Damn you, Lucian, you bloody well know what he is. What he’s capable of. You have to break this hold he has on you. It’s his sorcery, that’s what it is. It is poison, but it’s the kind that works on the mind, not the body. And I have the answer to that, the answer to all of it. You’ll have him under your thumb, doing exactly what you want. What we want. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Tavius smiled, the kind of smile you’d give a recalcitrant child who wasn’t sure he wanted the treat you were offering him, but his eyes were as hard and cold as granite. Nothing like mine at all, now, but they could’ve been my father’s—ourfather’s, gods—any one of the times he’d gazed down on some terrified wretch from his throne and sentenced him to death.
“We’ll settle this between brothers, eh? You’ll have charge of Rathenas, and he’ll give us the army. And I’ll guide you in what to do with him. I’m the elder. It’s a simple enough matter. You have to see that, Lucian.”
See it. Yes, I saw it—some of it, anyway, and too clearly. My illegitimate brother thought he’d been unjustly deprived of his throne, and he expected me to meekly hand it to him. Do his bidding. Control Benedict and force him to Tavius’s will, because the council and the army and probably the rest of Calatria would never accept Tavius as their ruler unless he had our full endorsement and support.
I’d have laughed, except it’d have come out a sob.
“I don’t see that it’s simple,” I managed. “Control Benedict? You don’t know him at all if you think I could do that. Or that anyone could do that. He doesn’t care what you do to me. And he won’t respond well to threats to either of us on principle.”
Tavius laughed, a nervous, unpleasant sound. “Threats? I’m not threatening you, Lucian. I’m sorry I frightened youearlier, eh?” He smiled again, but still with that opacity to his eyes that I knew so well from seeing my father’s in moments of cruelty. “But I had to get your attention. Make sure you’d listen to me and not call out for those men Rathenas set on you. I have another way of controlling him and his foul magic. A potion they use in Ixyon to keep their blasted twilight mages in line, tying them to a bondmate they can’t sate their curses without. I was getting another one—but I’m surrounded by fucking incompetent fools. Anyway, I’ve already given the potion to Rathenas, and this’ll work as well. He’s helpless. And he’ll stay that way. You just need to do your part. Because if you refuse, I have someone else who will.”
A bondmate.Can’t sate their curses without…gods, that couldn’t be possible, a potion that would force a twilight mage to have only one lover or die. Could it? The large, powerful island kingdom of Ixyon had a sinister enough reputation for such a thing, but it lay far to the southeast, distant enough that Calatria didn’t even have a diplomatic relationship with them.
There was some trade, though. They had a formidable navy and extensive merchant fleet, and the latter’s ships called at our port from time to time. If such a horrid, poisonous potion existed, Tavius could have heard of it and gotten hold of some, certainly. It sounded like he’d tried to use it on some other victim already. If he’d dosed Benedict with it, and wanted me to “do my part,” then—gods, he must mean me to be the bondmate.
Or he had someone else who would. The mysterious correspondent? It looked like I’d be unlucky enough to find out.
Fuck, it was too much to take in, and I needed at least a moment. To draw breath, to be weak, to be knocked over by the betrayals and the fear and the bewilderment and the grief. Most of all, to wrap my mind around all of this and make a plan of my own to counter Tavius’s.
Even without the opportunity to think, though, I didknow I wouldn’t be helping Tavius force Benedict into some kind of magical slavery, and I wouldn’t be abdicating in Tavius’s favor. It was possible that I’d have considered giving him the title, or sharing its responsibilities, if he’d come to me with proof of his paternity, with a measured, affectionate appeal for justice and for me to support him and bolster his reign and use my own talents to help him do what was best for Calatria.
But he’d lied to me. Threatened my life and assaulted me. Kidnapped Benedict and forced some hideous concoction on him.
And no matter how much I wanted to believe that he wanted me by his side in the future, a loved and trusted brother, I simply wasn’t that stupid. He’d use me and Benedict until he didn’t need us anymore, and then he’d get rid of us. He might even feel some regret over killing me—or convince himself he did, because no one wanted to be the villain in the privacy of their own minds. But it would need to be done if he were ever to have any security in his title and position. And he wouldn’t hesitate.
I’d let him take me to Benedict, and I’d pretend I did believe him. And I’d pray to any gods who might be listening to help me seize my moment when it came.
Chapter Seventeen
It’d been more than a decade since I used the passage from my dressing room, and on that occasion I’d been escaping my rhetoric tutor in order to ride to the lake and go for a swim. At the time I’d been so angry, chafing at the restrictions placed on the life of a duke’s heir.
If I’d only known the life of a duke would be infinitely worse—or that an alternate heir had been waiting in the wings to kidnap me—I might have passed the lake and kept on riding.
Tavius chivvied me along the narrow, claustrophobic tunnel under the palace, the webs and corpses of ancient spiders feathering over my face and getting caught in my eyebrows. He’d brought a pocket alchemical lantern with him, an expensive little contraption that cast just enough illumination to send my shadow wavering out in front of me, watery and eerie, but not really enough to see what might lie ahead.
Of course, it didn’t matter much. I had the worst thing in this tunnel at my back.
“Where are we going?” I asked, unable to bear my own panting and Tavius’s huffing and puffing echoing around the tunnel. “And how did you learn about this entrance to my rooms?”
Another step, two, three, my elbow knocking into the wall, and finally Tavius said, “They ought to have been my rooms.”
I flinched at his tone, glad he couldn’t see my face. If hehad, he’d have realized that I knew: his mask had slipped too far for recovery. There was no going back for us. That degree of venomous bitterness would have only one possible outlet.
But I had my own mask, the face and voice of the Crown Duke of Calatria. A duke didn’t show worry, and he didn’t show weakness, and he certainly didn’t allow himself to be intimidated by the brutal by-blow of a ruthless father who’d never loved me any more than Tavius did.
“If we had known the truth sooner, things might have been different,” I said, because it was, for one thing, patently obvious, and for another it might mollify him to think that only my ignorance of his claim had stood in the way of my ratifying it.
He grunted something that could’ve been agreement, and I slowly, silently blew out a long breath of relief. Another few steps took us to a turn in the passage, a tight corner that probably followed the juncture of two rooms in the wine cellar, if my sense of direction could be depended on in the slightest.
I squeezed around it carefully, before venturing, “Instead, I was saddled with Benedict. Our father did favor him more than I could ever understand.”
What I really wanted was to spin around and seize him by the collar, shake him, shout in his face, demand to know what the fuck he thought he was doing, how he could do it tome. But I couldn’t. Not if I wanted any chance of surviving—or getting to Benedict in time for him to survive.
This tunnel let out in the stables, and there would be people there, grooms and cavalrymen, stableboys going about their business. How did Tavius think he’d get us through there without attracting attention? If he’d only tell me where we were going, I’d be able to call for help once we were out in the public eye, overpower him, and hopefully reach Benedict before the potion killed him.
“Perhaps it was because father was a soldier too,” Iwent on, as if simply musing aloud, but my heart pattered against my ribs and my palms had gone slick with sweat. We were getting near the stable exit. I didn’t have much time left. “Benedict impressed him with his swordsmanship, I suppose. He’s formidable.” I put as much admiration and wonder into my tone as I could and asked, “How did you manage to capture him? And where have you put him?”
