“Fuck the deal!” Kelsea snarled. “That creature Finn offers actual aid. What have you ever offered?”
“Only your life, you ungrateful brat.”
“Get out.”
He gave her a mocking bow, eyes gleaming behind the mask. “Perhaps in time, you’ll grow as pretty as your mother.”
Kelsea grabbed the book from her bedside table and flung it at him. But it only bounced harmlessly off his shoulder. The Fetch laughed, bitter laughter that emerged hollowly from the mask’s mouth.
“You can’t hurt me, Tear Queen. No one can. I don’t even have the ability to wound myself.”
He slipped into Pen’s antechamber, closed the curtain behind him, and was gone.
Kelsea fell on the bed, buried her face in the pillow, and began to cry. She hadn’t cried in months, and tears were a relief, easing some strand inside her that had been stretched tight. But the pain in her chest wouldn’t ease.
I’ll never have him. She even murmured it into her pillow, but the Fetch remained there, lodged in her chest and throat like something she’d swallowed, too big for her to contend with. There was no way to make him be gone.
A hand touched Kelsea’s shoulder, gently, making her jump. Looking up with bleary eyes, she saw Pen standing over the bed. She put up a hand to convey that she was fine, but he stared at her in quiet consternation, and the anxiety in his face brought on fresh tears.
Here’s the man I should have fallen in love with, she thought, and that only made her weep harder. Pen sat down on the bed beside her and placed his hand gently on top of hers, clasping her fingers. The small gesture wrecked Kelsea, and she cried even harder, her face swollen and nose running freely. So many things in this life had proven more difficult than they were supposed to be. She missed Barty and Carlin. She missed the cottage, with its quiet patterns, where everything was known. She missed the child Kelsea, who had never had to make more than a day’s decisions, or worry about more than a child’s consequences. She missed the ease of that life.
After a few minutes Pen tugged her up from the pillow and wrapped his arms around her, holding her against his chest, rocking her in the same way Barty used to when she’d taken a fall. Pen wasn’t going to ask her any questions, Kelsea realized, and that seemed such a gift that her tears finally began to subside into gasps and hiccups. She huddled against Pen’s bare chest, liking the feel of it: warm and hard and comforting against her cheek.
It could be a secret, her mind whispered, the thought coming from nowhere, but a moment later Kelsea realized that the voice was correct. It could be a secret. No one had to know, not even Mace. Kelsea’s private life, her private choices, were her own business, and now she found herself whispering, repeating the thought out loud. “It could be a secret, Pen.”
Pen drew back, looking down at her for a long moment, and Kelsea saw, relieved, that he knew exactly what she was offering, that she didn’t have to explain.
“You don’t love me, Lady.”
Kelsea shook her head.
“Then why would you want this?”
That was a good question, but part of Kelsea was annoyed, anyway, that Pen had asked it. I’m nineteen! she wanted to snap. Nineteen and still a virgin! Isn’t that enough? She didn’t love Pen and he didn’t love her, but she liked the way he looked without a shirt, and it seemed desperately important to prove that she wasn’t a child. She shouldn’t need a reason for wanting the same things as everyone else.
But she couldn’t say these things to Pen. They would only hurt him.
“I don’t know. I just do.”
Pen closed his eyes, his mouth twisting, and Kelsea recoiled, suddenly remembering the balance of power between them; did he think she was ordering him to sleep with her? Pen had principles, and as he had pointed out, he was a Queen’s Guard. Maybe it wasn’t enough that no one else would know; Pen would know, that was the problem.
“It’s entirely your choice, Pen,” she told him, placing a hand against his neck. “I’m not the Queen right now. I’m just—”
Pen kissed her.
It wasn’t anything like her books. Kelsea barely had time to decide what she was feeling; she was too busy trying not to be inept, trying to figure out where her tongue was supposed to go. A lot of work, she thought, slightly disappointed, but then Pen’s hand crept up to her breast and that was better, closer to the way she thought it was supposed to be. Kelsea wondered if she should take off her own dress or let Pen do it, and then realized that he was already far ahead of her, half of her buttons undone. The room was cold, but she was sweating, and when Pen’s mouth found her nipple, she jumped, stifling a moan. He pulled the rest of her dress off, then froze.
Kelsea looked down and saw what Pen saw: her arms and legs, crisscrossed with wounds in various stages of healing. They didn’t look as bad as they would have in the daylight, but even Kelsea, who was used to her own injuries, knew that her limbs were a ghastly sight.
“What have you done to yourself?”
Kelsea grabbed her dress, tugging the sleeves back on. She had botched this, just as she always seemed to ruin things when she tried so hard to behave like an adult.
Pen stopped her, taking her wrist in a light grip, his face unreadable. “You can’t talk about it?”
Kelsea shook her head, staring truculently at the ground. Pen ran a light thumb over the scar on her thigh, and Kelsea realized suddenly that she was sitting there nearly naked, a man looking over her body, and she wasn’t even blushing. Perhaps she was growing up a bit, after all.
“I see,” Pen said. “It’s not my business.”
Kelsea looked up, surprised.
“You live in a world none of us can see, Lady. I accept that. And your choices are your own.”
Kelsea gazed at him for a moment longer. Then she took his hand from her thigh and placed it, gently, between her legs. Pen kissed her, and she suddenly found her hands all over him, as though she couldn’t pull him close enough.
“This may hurt,” he whispered. “It does, your first time.”
Kelsea stared up at him, this man who had done nothing for months but guard her from danger, and realized that the vast majority of her books had been misleading. They painted love as an all-or-nothing proposition. What she felt for Pen wasn’t close to what she felt for the Fetch . . . but it was love, somehow, all the same, and she placed a hand against his cheek.
“You won’t hurt me, Pen. I’m tough.”
Pen grinned, his old grin, the one Kelsea hadn’t seen in weeks. When he pushed inside her, it did hurt, a stinging burn that made her want to close her legs, but Kelsea would not have let Pen know it for the world, and she pushed up against him, trying to match his movement. The pain deepened, but there was no going back now; Kelsea felt as though she had crossed a chasm, some bridge that lay broken behind her. The Mort were there, waiting . . . Kelsea shook her head, trying to shove the thought away. The invasion shouldn’t intrude here, not now. She tried to focus on Pen, her body, but found that she could not rid herself of the image: ahead, waiting, like an awful tide, the Mort.
Chapter 9
The Dark Thing
Oh, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side.
—Measure for Measure, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (pre-Crossing Angl.)
August dawned bright and burning. The city stank with the heat; whenever Kelsea went out on her balcony, she could smell sewage and the less pungent but still unpleasant smell of animal flesh left to rot in the sun. Without grazing fields, many of the animals that the evacuees had brought with them were beginning to die of starvation. After a quick consultation with Mace, Kelsea had ordered that all farm animals in and around the city, save for milking cows and goats, be immediately slaughtered and their meat cured for siege. This decree had earned her no points with the cattle farmers of the Almont, but their anger seemed preferable to the disease that would surely spread if animals died and rotted on the banks of the Caddell, contaminating
the city’s water supply.
Javel, Dyer, and Galen left for Demesne on the second of August. They departed in the dark of night, quickly and quietly, so quietly that even Kelsea did not know until they were already gone. She was furious, but Mace merely pointed out to her, in his usual laconic manner, that she had put him in charge of the operation, and there was nothing Kelsea could say to that.
On the fourth of August Kelsea found Andalie alone in her chamber and closed the door, leaving Pen outside. She had spent days quietly working up the courage for this, but before Andalie’s questioning gaze, she nearly lost her nerve. She and Pen had slept together three more times, and while it had certainly gotten better, each time an unpleasant truth had been weighing more and more heavily on Kelsea’s mind.
“Andalie, can I ask you a favor?”
“Yes, Lady.”
“When you go to the market, do you . . . do you ever hear of black-market items being available down there?”
Andalie’s gaze sharpened. “What is it you’re seeking, Lady?”
“I want . . .” Kelsea peeked toward the door, making sure that Pen hadn’t somehow slunk back into the room. “I want contraception. I’ve heard it’s out there.”
If Andalie was surprised, she didn’t show it. “It is out there, Lady. The question is how to distinguish the true from the false. And the true is always very expensive.”
“I’ve got the money. Can you do it? I don’t want anyone to know.”
“I can do it, Lady. But I wonder if you’ve considered the consequences.”
Kelsea frowned. “You have moral objections?”
“God, no!” Andalie chuckled. “I would’ve taken the stuff myself, but we never had the money. It was all I could do to feed all of my children two meals a day. I do not condemn you, Majesty. I simply mean that even I have heard the tone of the city. The people want an heir. I don’t know what happens if you take a contraceptive and it is discovered.”
“Public opinion is the least of my concerns right now. I’m nineteen. This kingdom doesn’t own every part of me.”
“They will disagree with you on that. But regardless, I can get the syrup, if that’s what you want.”
“It is,” Kelsea replied firmly. “When do you go to market?”
“Thursday.”
“I’ll give you the gold. I appreciate this.”
“Be careful, Lady,” Andalie cautioned. “I know all about the wildness of youth, believe me. But regret has a terrible ability to follow you, long after youth has vanished.”
“Yes.” Kelsea had been looking down at her feet, but now she abruptly looked up at Andalie, nearly begging. “I only want to be able to have a life, that’s all. A life, just like any other girl my age would have. Is that so terrible?”
“Not terrible at all, Majesty,” Andalie replied. “But though you may wish for an ordinary life, you will not have it. You are the Queen of the Tearling. There are some things you cannot choose.”
A few days later, Kelsea finally got up the courage to run an errand she’d been putting off for nearly a month. Gathering up Mace, Pen, and Coryn, she left the Queen’s Wing, traveled up three flights of stairs, turned left, then right, then left again, and entered a large, windowless room on the twelfth floor of the Keep.
Elston stood up from an armchair just inside the doorway. For once, Kibb was not with him. Although Kibb appeared to have completely recovered in a physical sense, Mace was still wary, still testing Kibb to see if anything had changed.
“Enjoying yourself, Elston?”
“More than you can imagine, Lady.”
The room was lit by many torches, and at its center was a steel cage that stood almost to the ceiling. The bars were thin, but they looked to be extremely strong. In the center of the cage, Arlen Thorne sat in a simple wooden chair, his head tipped back, his gaze focused on the ceiling. The chair was the only furniture in the cage.
“He doesn’t even have a cot?” Kelsea asked Mace in an undertone.
“He can sleep just fine on the floor.”
“What about a blanket?”
Mace’s brow furrowed. “What is this sudden sympathy for Thorne, Lady?”
“Not sympathy, concern. Even worse criminals would deserve a blanket.”
“Have you come to gloat, Majesty?” Thorne called from the center of the room. “Or will you merely mumble to each other all day over there?”
“Ah, Arlen. How the mighty have fallen.” Kelsea moved to stand ten feet from the bars, and Pen followed, placing himself between Kelsea and the cage. For a moment, she was distracted by Pen’s lithe swordfighter’s form, which she now saw in an entirely new light; the sex was getting better, and it was difficult, these days, to keep from picturing him naked. But they had agreed to keep this thing in the dark, and in the dark it would stay. “Coryn, can you find me something to sit on, please?”
“Lady.”
“How goes the invasion, Majesty?” Thorne asked.
“Poorly,” Kelsea admitted. “The Mort are pushing inward from the border. My army won’t hold for long.”
Thorne shrugged. “The inevitable result.”
“I’ll give you this, Arlen: at least you don’t feign remorse.”
“What is there to be remorseful about? I played the hand I was dealt as well as I could. Bad luck is bad luck.” Thorne leaned forward, his bright blue eyes piercing in the dim room. “How did you find out about my special shipment, Lady? I have always wondered. Did someone talk?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know?”
“Magic.”
“Ah, well.” Thorne sat back. “I have seen magic worked, once or twice.”
“Don’t you care about anything, Arlen?”
“Care is a liability, Majesty.”
Coryn reappeared with a chair, and Kelsea sat down in front of the cage. “What of Brenna? Surely you care for her. Or have I been misinformed?”
“Brenna is a useful tool, and she enjoys being used.”
Kelsea’s mouth twisted in distaste, but then she remembered the spitting, raging woman down in the dungeon. Perhaps there was something in what Thorne said.
“How did Brenna come to be what she is?”
“Environment, Majesty. My Brenna and I grew up in the worst hell imaginable.” Thorne tipped his head toward Mace, his mouth twisting with malice. “You know what I’m talking about. I saw you there.”
“You are mistaken,” Mace replied tonelessly.
Thorne smiled. “Oh no, Captain of Guard, I am sure it was you.”
In the next instant the mace lashed against the bars, a deafening clatter of steel on steel in the confined space.
“Keep talking, Thorne,” Mace said in a low voice, “and I will end you.”
“What do I care for that, Captain? You or the rope, it makes no difference to me.”
“And what about when I send that pet of yours to Mortmesne, to Lafitte?” Mace grasped the bars, pressing against the cage, and Kelsea was suddenly glad that she could not see his face. Mace never allowed himself to be rattled so easily; Thorne must have touched a very deep nerve. “Albinos are a curiosity, you know. Such women will always draw customers.”
“You have no reason to harm Brenna.”
“But I will do it, Thorne, if you drive me there. Keep your mouth shut.”
Thorne raised his eyebrows. “You support this, Majesty?”
Kelsea was uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation, but she nodded firmly. “I support whatever Lazarus chooses to do.”
“See, I knew it. Kelsea the virtuous. Kelsea the selfless.” Thorne shook his head, chuckling. “Those poor deluded bastards out there have worked themselves into a frenzy over you, Majesty. They think you’ll save them from the Mort. A clever act, yours, but I always knew you were no better than the rest of us.”
“I never claimed to be virtuous or selfless,” Kelsea snapped back. “And I hardly know how you can claim any sort of high ground.”
&n
bsp; “But I make no secret of what I am, Kelsea Raleigh—I suppose it’s Glynn now, isn’t it? These delusions the rest of you suffer . . . so much work and architecture to convince yourself that you’re better, more pure. We all want what we want, and there’s very little we won’t do to get it. Call yourself whatever you like, Queen Kelsea, but you’re a Raleigh through and through. No altruists in that line.”
“I don’t want to die, Arlen, but I would lay down my life for any of these men, or they for me. That’s a real thing, sacrifice, but you will never understand it.”
“Oh, but I do understand it. I have a piece of information that Your Majesty would find valuable, so valuable that I have thought, many times, that I could likely trade it for my own life. But I will not do that.”
“What information?”
“First, my price: the life and welfare of Brenna.”
Mace began to bark, but Kelsea cut him off. “Define welfare.”
“Brenna is known as my charge. When I’m gone, many people will seek to unleash their wrath on her as well. She needs protection.”
“Don’t try to paint your albino as an innocent, Thorne. She’s a dangerous creature.”
“She has been unfortunate, Majesty. Brenna and I were raised as animals. But for luck, even your Mace might have turned out just like us.”
Mace lunged toward the bars, his big hands grasping for Thorne. Thorne didn’t flinch; even Mace’s long arms couldn’t reach far enough through the bars.
“What?” Thorne asked. “Don’t want to reminisce with me? Not even about the ring?”
“Elston.” Mace turned, snarling. “Keys.”
“Elston, don’t you dare.”
“Let us have him, Lady!” Elston replied eagerly, moving forward and pulling the keys from his belt. “Please, I beg you!”
“Sit down, Elston! And you, Lazarus, enough. This man will die in front of the people he’s wronged. Not you.”
Mace had started forward again, but now he stopped. “You will execute him?”
“Yes. I’ve decided. Next Sunday, in the circus.”