Page 43 of The King's Omega
He visited so often I wondered what his job at the castle was. When I asked, he said he could bring his work with him. “I’ll bring work… and a few things to fill your shabby nook. It’s so bare.”
I told him I had never known a man who cared about things like decorating. “Ah, little thief, the devil is always in the details.”
“I don’t think I want the devil in my sleeping chambers,” I joked.
“Too late,” he teased, and hung a small watercolor of a kitten by my pallet. He noticed my colorful rocks from Vilkurn and asked about them. I offered him one, and he refused, saying something about a king’s ransom. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but he fashioned a little chest to store the crystals in when I wasn’t admiring them in the sunlight.
Next, he brought me bedding, of all things. A stack of soft sheets, a pillowcase, and a few fluffy woven blankets. “For your nest,” he’d said. I’d asked why he thought I would build a nest, but he just twisted his fingers on his lips like he was locking a door. Maybe that was what fancy ladies called their bedrooms. I thanked him profusely. I loved having the bed linen, and it smelled slightly of Tarn: cedar wood and sage.
After that, he came back with book after book, and read them so fast the pages practically blurred, only stopping occasionally to stare at me as if I was some sort of alchemical experiment.
“What are you reading?” I ventured one day as we were eating a cheese roll for lunch. Well,threecheese rolls. Tarn was slightly obsessed with feeding me. It was like every bite of food I took was a personal victory.
Maybe he’d been hungry as a child. I didn’t mind; I liked my food. “Histories,” he said, not looking up, “of Rimholt, our rulers, and our social structures centuries ago.”
“Oh, like the book on Omegas Vilkurn read to me?”
Tarn startled, almost dropping his book into a basket of damp towels. “He read that book to you?”
“Um, yes.”
“All of it?”
I stopped to think. “I wouldn’t know. I can’t read.” I crossed my arms and frowned. “Why? Were there parts he wouldn’t want me to know?”
Tarn’s smiled crept over his face in that sly way he had, so unlike his twin’s open, easy expression. “Quite possibly. Not the part about nests, I’d reckon.”
No, he had definitely not read me anything about that. “Could you teach me to read, Tarn?” I asked, prepared for him to refuse. Reading was a skill for the upper classes, and I was only a servant from a whorehouse. So, I wasn’t surprised when he said no.
Then he explained, “I have to go on a quick mission to our eastern neighbors in Mirren, to see if I can drum up military support. Lorn failed, but I have… some other options. I’ll arrange a reading tutor for you while I’m gone, though. Would that suffice?”
“It would!”
“Do you promise that you’ll continue with the lessons, no matter how awful the teacher may be?”
I imagined some dried-up schoolmarm with a switch for slow pupils, or a wizardly tutor with bushy ear and nose hairs. “I swear by the Goddess, Tarn. I’ll take every lesson and learn all I can.” I let my own sly smile peek out. “Then I’ll sneak into the library like you’ve been teaching me and steal that book Vilkurn had. From your expression I can tell there’s something naughty in there.”
“There most certainly is, Peaches.” He laughed freely, looking more like Lorn than ever. “Be sure you’re ready to read those things. You’re innocent now, but…”
“I grew up in a brothel!”
He ruffled the curls on top of my head, then snatched his hand back as if scalded. “Sorry, forgot. Be careful while I’m gone. None of the other generals are here now.”
“The war could begin soon?”
“Any day. If I can use mypowers of persuasion”—he dropped one hand to the front of his trousers suggestively—“to convince the fine ladies of Mirren, and a few of the fine gentlemen, that Rimholt is merely a stopping point on Verdan’s way to their coastline? Well, then Verdan won’t outnumber us five to one. More like three to one.”
“It’s still not enough.” Guilt nibbled at me. “Tarn, the story about the King’s Omega. It wasn’t true, right? I mean, it was made up.”
Tarn stared at me. “Would it matter, Peaches? None of us would expect you to lie with the king now, possibly not even Rigol himself. Though he has seemed to be the old Rigol, recently, since the end of his rut—um, rather horrible behavior.” He coughed lightly and murmured, “But you would have to want him.”
When I glared at him to let him know what I thought about that, he tugged on one of my curls, closed his book, and gathered up Mischief. “I’ll arrange that tutor now. Be good while I’m gone. Don’t dump any more boxes of dye into the washing; Sorcha’s having a hard time explaining it. Although the turquoise sheets were lovely.”
“That was Mischief!” I protested, but he didn’t believe me. After he left, I spent an hour hanging the underwear of the nobility on the lines across the courtyard. It was funny; for all they acted superior to us commoners, the upper classes put their knickers on one leg at a time the same as us.
The idea of Tarn stripping the pants off highborn ladies and gentlemen in Mirren rankled a bit. But when I thought about it more, I wondered what it would be like to see him moving in a tangle of limbs with another man and a woman? Or two other men? I had seen glimpses of such things through keyholes, but rarely, and never with a man as well-formed as Tarn.
What would it be like to be in that tangle with him and Vilkurn and Lorn…? I rubbed against the laundry hanging near me, letting the damp fabric cool my heated flesh.
