Page 61 of The Traitor's Curse
He’d murdered my father and then abandoned me, and lied about it for years. Tavius had bled out on his sword.
I swallowed hard, but the lump didn’t go anywhere, damn it.
“He mentioned, I mean, Tavius,” and my voice cracked a little, “said something about having another plan. For that potion. Another mage. Make sure Venet asks if they know anything about that.”
“Very well,” Benedict said quietly. I waited. That was all.
He didn’t speak another word to me as we collected the guards waiting at the end of the corridor and made our way to the cells behind the barracks, where Venet had taken the prisoners. There were real dungeons under the palace, but I’d had them mostly in disuse since my father died. He droppedback, quietly explaining Venet’s instructions to him, and then joined me again as a guard unlocked Clothurn’s cell and bowed us in.
Clothurn stood from the rough wooden bench bolted to the wall, quickly brushing dirt off of his breeches and tossing his hair back, though it accomplished precisely nothing. Blood and splinters and dirt streaked him from head to toe, his hair matted and one of his gilt shoe buckles missing, the satin shoe and silk stocking all torn to reveal his bare, filthy foot.
“Benedict,” he said, widening his eyes and clasping his hands in front of him. “Benedict, look what they’ve done to me! And, ah, thank the gods you’re all right,” he added, an obvious afterthought.
Oh, how fucking dare he. If Benedict responded to this blatant, manipulative act, I’d kill them both.
“No thanks to you,” I said, barely restraining myself from snarling. “You have five seconds to begin explaining how and why you spied on me for Lord Tavius. If you’re forthcoming I might not mount your head on a spike over the gates tomorrow morning.”
“Oh!” Clothurn gasped. “Your Grace, your cruelty is—Benedict, will you not intercede for me?”
He took a step forward, raising his hands as if to plead with Benedict, and Benedict moved in front of me so quickly thatmystep forward ended in my nose flattened against his back.
“You conspired to murder your duke,” Benedict said, with no apparent sense of irony, and I’d never heard that flat, deadly tone in his voice before. He’d certainly never spoken to me that way. “If you come within arm’s reach of him again, I’ll put your head on that spike myself. Sit down, hands in sight, and fucking talk.”
Another, “Oh!” followed by a soft thump and rustle, suggested Clothurn had sat down rather abruptly.
Not that I could see, because Benedict might as well have been a brick wall in front of me. “Move,” I hissed, and shoved at him.
Gods, this was undignified. Finally he took one step to the side, allowing me to come around and stand next to him again in the small cell. Clothurn had retaken his seat, and he’d gone pale as milk, ashen around the mouth and eyes. When I glanced up at Benedict, I could see why. His eyes blazed pure fury.
Well, who could blame him after the way Clothurn had taken him to bed, pretended to be besotted with him, and then plotted to turn him into a magical slave?
Although…Benedict hadn’t mentioned that, had he? Only Clothurn’s willingness to watch Tavius drag me away and murder me so long as he got what he wanted. He didn’t seem angry at all on his own account.
The world around me went still and silent, and I stared up at him, mouth open, feeling as if a bolt of lightning had struck all the way through me and down to the ground.
Had anything he’d done been on his own account? Anything at all? Or had it all been…gods, forme?
If he’d wanted to stay off the Calatrian throne at any cost, he could simply have disappeared. Ridden away one day, concealing any trace of his route with magic, and gone wherever the hell he pleased—precisely as he had done, in fact, when he’d left almost three years ago.
Except that he’d run the incredible risk of killing my father first. Which had, now that I really thought about it, offered him no benefit at all.
He’d had no other reason to do it than protecting me, and a lot of reasons not to—such as the fact that no magic, no skill with a sword, would’ve been enough to save him from the headsman if he’d been caught.
Protecting me.
Three years ago, and now, and with or without any of the “payment” he’d demanded. Certainly without any appreciation from me.
His task had been quite literally thankless.
Gods damn it, Lucian, you’re begging me to do what I want more than anything in this world or the next.
It couldn’t be.
A heavy scrape of metal on metal jolted me back to the world around me—just one of the guards opening the door to another cell across the way, probably for Captain Venet to go and question one of Tavius’s men.
My fists had clenched, my breath coming too quickly, and Benedict was peering down at me, his brow furrowed.
“Are you even listening to me?” Clothurn demanded.
