Page 4 of The Traitor's Curse
And before I could muster a response to that, he’d strodeout of the room and shut the door behind him with enough force to rattle the painting of my grandfather that hung on the wall beside it. The old man glared at me out of his gilt frame, as if the door slamming had been my fault.
Benedict’s footsteps faded away down the hall.
Later that afternoon, my equerry braved the grim, stuffy silence of my father’s—my—study to usher in a nervous servant in Zettine’s livery. The man stammered through the information that Lord Zettine wished me to know that Lord General Rathenas had departed Calatria.
“What do you mean, departed?” I demanded, startled into being unable to hide the sudden, heavy sense of dismay that started to creep up from my gut to my tingling scalp. Benedict had left? He commanded my army. He wouldn’t simplyleave. Where the hell would he go? “How do you know he’s left Calatria, and not just the palace?”
“Lord Zettine wished me to tell you that he had a note from the Lord General, Your Grace. Lord General Rathenas has resigned his post as the commander of the Calatrian army, and has departed. He did not leave any word of his intended movements, Your Grace.” The man swallowed hard, and sweat trickled down his temple. He bowed jerkily. “Forgive me, Your Grace, I don’t have any more knowledge than that. Please excuse me, Your Grace.”
Oh, he ought to sweat. Coming to me with a message like that—Zettine had gone too far, overstepping his authority, sending me some lackey as if I were his subordinate rather than his master. I’d dispatch a party of armed guards after Benedict, haul him back by his toes, have them all—
Looks like you bid fair to follow in your father’s footsteps, Lucian.
A wave of dizziness had me gripping tightly to the arms of my chair, the world tilting around me and making me feel as if Imight topple onto the floor.
“Get out,” I rasped, and the servant bowed again and fled without another word, probably with a few more gray hairs than he’d had when he came into the room.
I dropped my arms onto the desk and rested my clammy forehead on them, sucking in air.
No, if Benedict wanted to leave, he could leave. He couldn’t usurp my throne if he wasn’t here, could he? So why did it feel like the most profound betrayal, as if I’d been unconsciously leaning on a support that’d been kicked out from under me?
Maybe he was right about you after all.
Benedict hadn’t bothered to explain his meaning, of course, and now I wouldn’t have the chance to ask. Right about me? It didn’t make any sense. My father had seemed to think me unfit for the throne, too weak to hold it. But what Benedict had said first, that I was like my father, suggested my father had also seen a resemblance between us. And if hehadthought me like him, he’d have considered me fit. Wouldn’t he?
My head throbbed.
Maybe Benedict would be back tomorrow, or in a week, and things would be…awful.
But he wasn’t. And two years passed without my hearing so much as a single word of him.
Chapter Two
Benedict had left Calatria for parts unknown on a gloomy March day, riding into the cold and damp and hopefully catching a devil of a grippe in the process, damn him.
He returned with just as little warning two years, one month, and a week or so later, on a bright, crisp morning in April. Even the weather cooperated to make his grand entrance to the palace as joyful and as striking as possible, with a light breeze stirring his black hair in a romantic manner and the sun glinting off of his sword hilt and the ruby in his ear and the polished tack of his horse.
I had a perfect view of the entire revolting spectacle from my study window. The dukes of Calatria had many flaws, as a dynasty and as individuals, including paranoia, bloodlust, and plain old lust for people who weren’t their spouses.
But we’d always had a well-deserved reputation as rulers who kept our fingers on the pulse of the duchy—leading from the front, as Benedict put it, and damn him for the way I couldn’t seem to forget him no matter how long it’d been since his dereliction of duty.
And so my study, previously my father’s study, and his father’s study, and so on into a long and checkered past, overlooked the main courtyard of the palace. State visitors didn’t go through it, there being a much more formal entrance on the other side of the east wing. But all of the palace’s actual business went through there, and the guard barracks occupied one cornerof it.
And, of course, Benedict chose that courtyard as the venue for his triumphant return.
My first warning that something had gone amiss came in the form of cheers and shouts from the main gate, a roar of laughter, another round of whooping.
I lifted my head from the trade agreement I’d been squinting at, an overly complicated arrangement with Surbino, our neighbor to the south. Why were the tariffs structured like that? It didn’t make much sense to me. It should have. I’d been raised for this, and lacking any great military talent, I’d turned to diplomacy and the law to prove my worth as a future, and current, duke of Calatria.
Someone had some explaining to do, whether our ambassador or my increasingly insolent council or both, but in the meantime I couldn’t possibly concentrate with all that racket.
When I walked over to the open window, I expected to see a particularly attractive woman, possibly several. Or an unusually ugly horse.
Instead, there he was, somehow seeming to saunter even on horseback. Had he trained his stallion to saunter? Absurd. Of course he hadn’t.
And yet as he nodded and smiled, threw his head back and laughed with that ridiculous ruby bobbing and glinting and his hair flowing glossy around his shoulders, it certainly seemed like that stupid horse was preening too. Like beastly master, like nasty beast.
Benedict. Home.
