Page 10 of The Traitor's Curse
My father’s bloated face and Fabian’s slack lips mingled in my mind, superimposed and then one after the other, and the room blurred around me sickeningly, and gods, if I threw up all over Benedict or his belongings that would be fine, but from terror and weakness? No, I couldn’t.
I managed to side-stagger to one of the armchairs, dropping into it with a thud. Leaning back might’ve been more manly, but my spasming esophagus left me no choice but slumping over my knees with my head on my crossed arms. That meant I couldn’t see Benedict’s expression, damn it all. I’d at least wanted the pleasure of seeing him off balance. Fabian’s miserable death could give me that much, couldn’t it?
The wind seemed quieter in here, or perhaps it’d died down at last. My panting breaths echoed in the stillness.
“That can’t—no,” Benedict said at last, his voice heavy and harsh. “I don’t believe it. You’re certain he’s dead? Not drugged? Or that he didn’t faint?”
That deserved a withering glare, and I reached deep inside myself and found the strength to lift my head and deliver it. Benedict stood rooted to the same spot, apparently frozen in shock—far more of a reaction than I’d expected. He’d been fighting and killing his entire adult life, and he hadn’t had anyparticular attachment to Fabian, who’d been one of the few people at court to have no use for Benedict. That was perhaps all we’d ever had in common.
“Perhaps you’d like to go and stab him once or twice to make sure. Or speak to him for a few minutes. If he doesn’t respond, then he’s either dead or he’s been sent into a coma by your stupidity.” Benedict’s cheeks flushed, and…had he grown even taller? “Of course he’s fucking dead, Benedict! I ought to know what dead looks like by now, don’t you think?”
Benedict’s chest rose, held, and finally fell as he blew out a very long breath.
“I think that in your state of mind you could very well mistake unconsciousness for death, and it matters,” he gritted out. “If whoever meant you to drink that wine wanted you alive, to kidnap you or for some other villainy, that’s very different from wanting you dead.”
Ah. Well, he had a point there, one I hadn’t considered. Of course, why would I, when Fabian was clearly dead as a doornail?
“I heard him fall and groan, and I got out of the bath and found him stone dead thirty seconds later,” I said. “He’s dead. Expired. On the other side of the veil. In Dromos’s cold embrace. Do I need to sketch it for you?”
My irritation, and irritating Benedict in turn, had started to return a bit of warmth to my chilled body. I could almost feel my knees again. Sitting up enough to brace myself on them with my elbows made me feel slightly less like a pitiful object—not that Benedict had spared me any pity, or gods forbid, sympathy. He stood precisely as he had, eyes blazing. I could’ve collapsed to the floor instead of making my way to the chair, and he probably wouldn’t have moved any one of those huge muscles to catch me, even though he might only have needed a couple of fingers.
Benedict took a step forward, scowl deepening. Oh, therewent my knees again. But I was sitting down, so it didn’t matter. I met his gaze with a lift of my chin and a continuing glare of my own.
“All right, he’s dead. I’m still not convinced it was the wine. Who would—and why are you here?” His jaw tightened. “Do you think I had something to do with it, is that it? Do you think—why are you here, instead of calling for the guards?”
That forced a laugh out of me, and it hurt my chest. “I already thought about that. You wouldn’t kill me that way if you were going to do it. And the guards? Really? You mean the ones who’d be more likely to draw their swords on me rather than a potential assassin, despite how much I pay them?”
Benedict froze again, this time with his brick-red flush going all the way down his neck.
“You already thought about that. I can’t fucking believe you. And you’re talking about the guards I command,” he said flatly. “The guards who answer to me as well as to you. You think they’re plotting to kill you? Or that they’d stand by while someone else had that pleasure?”
Oh, he had a lot of nerve, acting like my suspicion of him somehow offended or wronged him. And the implication that answering to him would keep them in line more effectively than answering to me, their duke and generous employer, stung like nettles.
Not that he was wrong. I’d thought about that already, too.
“Someone tried to kill me a few minutes ago. Right down that corridor. You and your guards seem remarkably unconcerned, not to mention completely oblivious!”
Benedict’s lips pressed together in a thin line, and he uncrossed his arms at last, fists flexing by his sides. “They have strict orders from both of us to be vigilant, but they have no reason to stop and challenge your own valet carrying a tray ofwine, Lucian!”
Benedict only rarely used my name, probably because we were almost never alone, and it hung in the air between us, almost shimmering with the force of his anger.
Now that I thought about it, he usually didn’t call me anything at all in front of other people. No names, no honorifics, no titles. He simply spoke to me without them. As a member of my “family,” he got away with it—no one seemed to notice.
I hadn’t even noticed until now. That fucker. He hated me being his liege lord so much that he wouldn’t even address me as such.
“Your Grace,” I said. “If you think we have an intimate relationship that entitles you to use my name, think again.”
Benedict shrugged, a jerky, awkward motion that belied his attempt to look at his ease. “Trust you to give a fuck about what I call you in private when you have a dead man in your bedroom,Lucian. You still haven’t answered my question. Why are you here, if you don’t trust me at all?”
My swallow did nothing to clear the lump in my throat. How could I explain my reasoning to him, my need for his help and protection, without sacrificing the veneer of pride that was all I had left to cling to? Best case, he’d burst out laughing.
How had my accursed life brought me here? Wearing only my dressing gown with my bare feet turning into blocks of ice on Benedict’s floor, alone in the night with him? With my mostly naked stepbrother, wild waving hair and stupid earring and big fists included, my only hope for staying alive?
“I need to make it look as if the attempt failed and Fabian died accidentally,” I said, unable to bring myself to spit out the rest of it quite yet. “Your magic would be of assistance. And I can’t move him alone without creating even more of a mess.”
“Move him—why would you—the attempt did fail. You’re alive. Sitting here and talking to me about moving the body as if—damnit,” he said, with sudden, shocking vehemence, and spun away from me, striding the length of the room to brace himself on the fireplace mantel.
He hung his head down, and the light of the candle set on his desk off to the side gilded the muscles of his back and shoulders as if he’d planned it that way. Most of the art in the palace consisted of stiff, cloth-of-gold-clad ancestors of mine, varied with the occasional fluffy landscape. But there were young artists living in the city’s dockside quarter who had begun to make a name for themselves by painting the human body: lingering on its gods-given glories and using light and shadow to pick out details most people wouldn’t consciously think to appreciate.
