Page 51 of The Traitor's Curse

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Tavius chuckled. Oh, thank the gods, I’d gotten to him. He’d always been most susceptible via his vanity, and he’d never been able to resist the opportunity to brag. I’d used to find it endearing, the way he’d puff up and tell me about the stag he’d brought down that no one else could hit with an arrow at that distance, or the beautiful women who’d been unable to resist his charms.

“Formidable, hah,” Tavius scoffed. “Didn’t seem that formidable after he’d gotten that potion into his veins. And all it took was a pretty face to get him off his guard and down at the end of the grounds where there wasn’t anyone around to—here we are. Stop here.”

I stopped, my blood turning icy. The end of the grounds, he’d given me enough to go on, if we could only get out of this tunnel and into the stables! Was he going to kill me and leave me here in the passage after all?

“We’re not at the end of the tunnel yet,” I said. “Only a little further to go, though, I think.”

“We’re not going out that way.” Tavius elbowed me aside and lifted his lantern, shining it on a patch of unremarkable mortared stone wall.

Apparently unremarkable, anyway, because he wrapped his fingers around a slightly protruding corner of one block and tugged—and with a grinding grumble, a section rotated inward to reveal another branch of the passage retreating into darkness.

No. Fuck, no, I didn’t know about this route, and Taviushad said “the end of the grounds where there wasn’t anyone around.” No one would be there to help me. And my plan, such as it was, had crumbled.

I stared open-mouthed, too astonished and terrified to hide my reaction. “How the hell did you know about this?” I demanded.

“Fabian told me,” Tavius said brusquely. “He told me a lot of things after he told me the truth. Now move. Clock’s ticking.”

Fabian. Fucking Fabian. My better nature, such as it was, had been shocked by his murder and horrified by the painfulness and grotesquerie of his end.

But my better nature couldn’t overcome the burst of rage that swept over me. I’d guessed Fabian must have been the one to tell Tavius about his parentage, sometime after my father died, but this confirmation infuriated me far more than I’d expected.

Of course. Of course it had been Fabian. He’d hated me, but he’d never supported Benedict either because he wasn’t my father’s blood. But Tavius would have been a viable alternative, in Fabian’s mind…

Which meant this was Fabian’s fault. All of it. If he’d still been alive I’d have murdered him myself—after torturing the truth out of him. The whole truth, including who else he’d told, because Tavius had to be right: Fabian must have told someone else, and that confession had gotten him killed.

Tavius shut the section of wall behind us with a terribly final-sounding clunk. My heart fluttered and sank. Gods, somewhere up there someone would notice I’d gone, wouldn’t they? First they’d look for Benedict. When they discovered he’d also gone missing, they’d either waste precious time searching all the city’s brothels for him, or they’d report to the next available authority, Lord Zettine or one of the other councilors. Would they find us in time?

Fuck. If I’d reached the point of pinning my hopes on my ducal council caring enough to rescue me from Tavius, I might as well give up and slit my own throat.

My mind spun in helpless circles as we walked along the new tunnel, this one simply bored through the earth and shored up with timbers rather than built from stone. The damp seemed to seep into my bones, and I wished I’d thought to take a cloak. A pretty face? What fucking pretty face? If Benedict had gotten us into this situation by chasing a whore right into Tavius’s trap, I’d slit his throat too.

But I had no trouble at all believing that he had.

He hadn’t murdered Fabian. I clung to that conviction with every fiber of my being, partly out of the same horror at the idea that I’d felt earlier and partly because if he’d had any idea that Tavius was my older, illegitimate brother, he’d have killed him, too. Benedict had always been the pragmatic sort.

And as for Tavius’s other accusations—well, Benedict certainly hadn’t killed my father, that was simply absurd.

No, he probably wasn’t a murderer. But a philanderer? Yes. It seemed all too likely that he’d risked both of our lives by looking for a quick fuck while he was supposed to be investigating Tavius’s possible treachery—now thoroughly confirmed, with no thanks whatsoever to Benedict and his wandering cock.

A few hours ago, he’d held me in his arms and kissed me. He’d known that my life depended on his help. How could he? A pretty face. The searing pain of it nearly knocked me breathless.

But I forced one foot in front of the other, and at last the tunnel came to an end, this time at a rough-hewn wooden door with a simple iron latch.

“Go on, then,” Tavius said, and I opened it and slipped through.

As the tunnel had slanted slightly upward, I’d expectedthe outdoors, but instead there was a rickety set of stairs leading further up to a wooden trap door.

“I’ll go first,” he said, and shoved past me to climb the stairs, knocking on the trap door in a pattern before he pushed it up. “Is the fucker alive?” he called out.

“Yes, my lord,” said a male voice. “Not happy, though.”

Tavius responded to him, and someone else was speaking too, but it faded into a meaningless hum as I closed my eyes against a wave of lightheadedness. My knees nearly gave out, and I sagged against the wall, catching myself with a hand.

Benedict was alive.

It shouldn’t matter so much to me, should it? We weren’t really family. I’d never liked him. In fact, I’d hated and resented him. Circumstances had forced me to yield to him, to accept his kisses and his manhandling and his humiliating, degrading use of me. If Tavius had killed him, it would’ve been no more than one traitorous rival for my throne eliminating another.

And yet I knew, leaning there in the dark and shuddering with relief, that I wouldn’t have felt that way at all.