Page 54 of The Traitor's Curse
I wrapped my hand around Benedict’s arm, half to make sure he didn’t fall over again and half to make sure I didn’t. “You need a doctor,” I said. “A mage. Can you walk if you lean on me?”
He blinked at me, eyes taking a moment to focus. “No doctor can help me,” he said, voice worryingly slurred. The mottled brick-red across his cheekbones and the clammy pallor of his forehead worried me more. “I know what he put in my blood. There’s no way out but through. Or death. As long as you’re not hurt, that’s all that matters. Tell me you’re not hurt, Lucian.”
His voice hitched on my name, and his eyes were so dark,fixed on me as if he couldn’t see anything else.
“No. Thanks to you, no. But I don’t believe you that no one can help you, and I’m not letting you die. Some of Tavius’s men are still alive, and we can’t stay here. Can you stand up?”
“I’ll kill them if they touch you. And—possibly.” I ran my hand up his body, feeling the ragged rise and fall of his chest, and resting my fingers on the side of his neck. His pulse hammered far too fast, thready and uneven.
The pathetic flutter of my own heart at Benedict’s eagerness to protect me aside, he wouldn’t be killing anyone else tonight. And while the man I’d wounded lay whimpering against the wall, probably too weakened from blood loss to do much, the ones whose heads Benedict had knocked together were stirring and groaning. If they realized their liege lord was dead, they might choose to throw themselves on my mercy…or they might kill us both to eliminate the witnesses to their treason, climb over the gate, and disappear into the night.
I could lay Benedict on the floor, take his sword, and kill all three of them before they recovered enough to fight back.
My stomach flipped and churned. I’d never be able to murder three men in cold blood.
“You have to,” I said. “Direct command from your duke. Get up, Benedict. And leave that sword. It’s extra weight I can’t help you carry.”
Benedict huffed a laugh that turned into a soft groan. “Direct command, hah,” he muttered, and I’d have been much angrier with him for that if I hadn’t been desperately, unbearably terrified that he’d fall over dead at any moment.
But he dropped the sword and started trying to shove to his feet. I got him under the arm and heaved, and we staggered up to standing and started to lurch toward the door.
The fresh, chilly damp of the night air came as an overwhelming relief after the salty iron reek of blood andthe stench of viscera inside the gatehouse. Moonlight filtered through the trees, clean and cool, Dromos’s uncaring gaze sweeping over us.
Asshole. Viewed from a certain perspective, this was all his fault. If it weren’t for his meddling with humanity, I wouldn’t be collapsing under Benedict’s weight, legs aching, lungs laboring, with icy fear seeping through all my veins.
“I’m sorry,” Benedict said at last, after we’d been staggering along for a couple of minutes in complete silence except for the hoot of an owl off in the distance. His arm around my shoulders tightened. “About Lord Tavius.”
I had to swallow down the lump in my throat. “He would’ve killed me.”
“I know. But he was still—fuck—your brother.” A tremor went through him, and he bent over for a moment as if struck with a sudden pain. “I’m all right, keep walking,” he gasped. “But you could leave me here. Go ahead for that doctor, hmm?”
“The doctor you claim won’t help you,” I snapped. “You just want me to leave you here so you can die alone, and I wish you’d tell me why! You seem better. You are better. Perhaps you’re resistant to whatever it is, or it’s not what he thought it—”
“Don’t,” he said heavily. “I’m not better. It hit me all at once, and then ebbed a bit, but I’m—it’ll be worse again. Soon. I’ve been to Ixyon, actually. While I was—away.”
Away. A nice, neat word to describe those two years where he’d left me here to take my chances with assassins and my hostile council and my sullen, barely loyal populace and an army that blamed me for the loss of their adored commander.
How much more would they blame me if he died tonight because of a plot against me?
How much would I blame myself?
New resolve straightened my spine, even under the burden of Benedict’s weight, slowly increasing as he lost his irongrip on his strength.
“Tell me what you bloody well know, then! And if a doctor can’t help you, we’ll get a mage. A dozen mages. Everyone in the city.”
“They don’t even have an antidote in Ixyon, Lucian! It opens up—it’s hard to explain to someone without magic, but it opens up a channel, a, fuck, a sort of conduit. Everything that bastard Tavius told you was true. The curse is moving more quickly. I need to sate it, or I’ll die, and if I do I’ll be handing control of my magic to whoever it is. And I won’t,” he snarled, “I fuckingwon’t.”
That cut deeper than a sword, a sudden, shocking pain.
“You didn’t want Clothurn to control you,” I said. “And I understand that, even though you were there to fuck him in the first place, which I—I suppose doesn’t matter now, but—”
“I was there because he sent a message to meet him, that he’d discovered something important. He’d never been—a threat, I didn’t think.” Well, I couldn’t really criticize Benedict on that front. I’d stupidly thought the same. “I was overconfident and arrogant, didn’t think I needed anyone with me as long as I had my magic and my sword. Tavius stuck me with some kind of needle with the poison on it right when I walked in, Clothurn distracted me, but I wasn’t there to fuck him, Lucian, believe me! I wasn’t there to—”
“It doesn’t matter!” It did matter, although it shouldn’t. Benedict hadn’t made me any promises. He’d told me he wouldn’t fuck anyone else while our arrangement lasted—but that had been more of a threat than a promise. And the fact that Benedict had clearly seen my jealousy stung, a horrid humiliation that I truly didn’t have the strength to bear at present. “What matters is that I’m here.” I swallowed, closing my eyes for a moment, bracing myself. “I won’t let you die, Benedict. Bond with me. If you have to do it to live, then use me.”
A long pause followed, in which I heard a shout up ahead, toward the palace. My heart thudded against my ribs in a sick, uneven rhythm.
“No,” he said, with absolute finality. “Not a chance, Lucian.”
