Page 48 of The Traitor's Curse
That thought left me bereft and cold in ways I didn’t want to acknowledge and that no armchair, fire, and glass of brandy could possibly alleviate.
Just in case, I went down the corridor and opened the door to Benedict’s rooms, but they were utterly dark and chilly and abandoned.
That didn’t mean more than the obvious, that he hadn’t returned. He didn’t have servants come in his rooms much; a mage could light his own candles without any fuss.
But he hadn’t returned.
I shuddered, shut the door quickly like a child afraid of monsters, and breathed a sigh of relief as I shut my own door behind me a moment later.
At least I could blame my unmanly shivers on the draft. The candle flames dipped and stretched as another breezy gust swept through the room, odd since I’d already closed the door. Someone must have left a window open while cleaning up earlier.
Except…I went still like a rabbit scenting a predator, all the hair rising on the back of my neck as a tingle swept over my scalp. What had set off my instincts? There. The dressing room door stood open, nothing unusual there. But the edge of my bed canopy closest to the dressing room fluttered again as I stood with my eyes wide open, alert for any oddity.
The dressing room had a window, but it stuck and was rarely opened even in good weather. Had one of the footmen forced it open and then been unable to close it?
The only other explanation was impossible, because if my father’s ghost haunted the palace, surely he’d find something better to do than muck about with secret passages in dressing rooms, and no one but my father and I had known about that door.
Impossible.
But all too probable.
I spun, wrenched at the door, opened my mouth to shout for the guards—and quick, heavy footsteps gave me one second’s warning before a burly arm wrapped around my middle and a hand slapped down over the lower half of my face.
“It’s only me, Lucian, leave off!” Tavius, and I redoubled my struggles, kicking out at the door and thrashing my head back in an attempt to break his nose. But he was too tall, and he cursed as I smacked my skull against his clavicle, but he didn’t let go. “I’m not going to hurt you! That bastard Rathenas is the one who’s betrayed you, and those are his men out there, so you can’t summon them. You know I’d never hurt you, so leave off!”
I could hardly see, blinded by rage and fear and the sudden overwhelming shock that had gone through all my nerves, and I shouted behind his hand but it came out a muffled grunt.
My foot connected at last, with a crack and a rattle of the door in its frame, and Tavius dragged me back, stumbling sideways into the wall with a thump.
“If I’m not back soon to instruct my men on what to do, your precious fucking Benedict’s a dead man,” Tavius snarled, raw and furious, in a tone I’d never heard from him. “And if you don’t stop fighting, or you call out for your guards, I’ll fucking hurt you after all.”
Benedict. He had Benedict.
And I went still except for my heaving chest.
“Quiet, or else,” Tavius warned me again, and then he took his hand away from my mouth and pushed me out of his hold.
I turned and found him glowering at me, nothing but malice in those blue eyes I’d always known as open and friendly and full of humor.
He could have been my father’s furious, paranoid, hostile ghost after all.
I staggered back a step.
Tavius. Not my father.
But the bizarre resemblance that had struck me earlier was back so forcefully that I couldn’t clear the vision.
“Don’t look at me like you’ve seen a ghost,” Tavius said, and I let out a crack of laughter that probably made me sound like a madman. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
That only made me laugh all the more, but I sucked in air and forced myself to stop, fists clenched. I couldn’t fight Tavius. He might not be Benedict’s match—few men were—but he had several inches and forty pounds on me, much of it muscle, though his life of drinking and carousing had begun to show in his belly and chest.
Anyway, he could snap me like a twig before the guards came even if I shouted my head off.
And he claimed to have Benedict. I didn’t believe him. How in the world could he have taken Benedict captive, for the gods’ sakes? With his skill with a sword, his strength, his powerful magic?
But Benedict wasn’t here, where he’d promised me he’d be.
No message, via magic or a page sent with a note, no word at all.
