Chapter 17

Strictly following the chain of causality, the mage’s creation of the cursed potion was the root of the assault in the first place. While Mailot stuttered desperately, struggling to assemble a diplomatic response, Lucien shouldered roughly past him.

The remaining military aides exchanged anxious glances as the flustered scholar hurried after the prince into the corridor.

Locked inside his sparse room, Kosha had spent hours merely existing, paralyzed by trauma. He had no clear sense of how long he had remained frozen in that state. He simply sat motionless on the narrow mattress, his mind devoid of coherent thought.

Perhaps his thoughts were not absent at all. Perhaps his brain had become so overwhelmed by panic that every thought canceled out the next, reducing his mind to a blank and meaningless canvas.

Knock, knock.

The sharp, measured sound against the heavy oak door shattered his shapeless reverie.

Kosha flinched violently. When he turned his head, he realized the door he had assumed was firmly locked now stood slightly ajar, as though someone had silently opened it moments earlier.

The monster himself stood in the threshold.

Lucien leaned lazily against the frame, one large hand resting flat against the wood as though he had been preparing to knock a third time. The terrifying breadth of his shoulders seemed to fill the entire doorway, catching the traumatized mage off guard all over again.

Paralyzed and unsure how one was expected to respond when one’s abuser politely knocked on an already open door, Kosha managed only a painful, dry swallow.

“May I come in?” the prince asked.

His voice was low and his pronunciation razor-sharp, carrying the characteristic, chilling politeness that made no distinction between kings and servants.

Only then did the towering figure resemble the sane Lucien Kosha remembered rather than the deranged and sexually savage brute from the night before. The tension locking Kosha’s muscles eased by a fraction, and he gave a stiff, jerking nod of permission.

It took Lucien fewer than three long strides to cross the cramped servant’s quarters. At such close range, the royal seemed even more terrifyingly enormous. The physical pressure radiating from him was substantial, yet the unnatural sensation of Kosha’s lungs being crushed, that suffocating magical aura from the previous night, was mercifully absent.

Pinned beneath blue-gray eyes that seemed capable of boring through his skull, Kosha scrambled internally for the correct protocol.

Should I stand? But if I stand, our bodies will be too close. His knees are practically touching the mattress already.

Tsk.

Kosha thought he heard the faint click of an irritated tongue before Lucien mercifully turned away.

Although luxurious by the standards of a servant’s quarters, the single-occupancy room remained inescapably narrow and bare. Lucien located the only other piece of furniture, dragged a wooden chair from the corner, and sat down, roughly aligning their eye levels so Kosha would not have to stare up at his chin.

Lucien’s cool, ash-blue eyes swept over the mage with the intensity of a military interrogator. The scrutiny felt like needles pressed into Kosha’s skin. Only after Kosha flinched and lowered his gaze did the prince break the oppressive silence.

“I apologize for my behavior last night.” Lucien spoke with slow, deliberate precision.

Kosha startled so violently that the words might as well have struck him.

The apology was so thoroughly unexpected that he could not immediately comprehend it.

“Although I assure you,” the prince continued in a chillingly smooth tone, “it occurred entirely outside my intentions.”

For a man supposedly apologizing for sexual assault, Lucien projected a remarkably arrogant and high-handed air. Then again, Kosha reasoned, perhaps his own lingering terror and unhealed trauma merely distorted his perception.

Flustered and trapped, he nodded desperately. What other choice did he possess?

Trying to read the oppressive atmosphere, Kosha cautiously supplied the lie he believed the prince wanted to hear. “I… I am quite all right, Your Highness.”

Despite half a day of silence and rest, his abused throat still rasped like dry sandpaper. Each word sent fresh needles of pain down his neck.

Lucien, who had been studying the mage’s battered face with cold attention, tilted his head.

“I am deeply pleased that we can communicate so reasonably.”

What a bizarre and pathetic creature, Lucien thought, concealing his disgust behind a placid expression. He does not seem to possess even a microscopic shred of dignity or self-respect.

The prince’s calculating gaze traveled over his victim.

Kosha’s excessively long hair, damp and plastered across his tear-streaked face the previous night, had finally dried. Each strand was thin and coarse, and the natural curls had expanded into an untidy, frizzed halo. The mage kept his head bowed, attempting to conceal the unidentified grime and dried fluids smeared across his pale skin.

Altogether, he looked thoroughly and revoltingly filthy.

He had been swallowed by a loose linen tunic of uncertain origin, undoubtedly some cheap servant’s garment scavenged by Mailot. Kosha was the absolute antithesis of aristocratic neatness.

Besides, why in the hell would a grown man allow his hair to become such a tangled mess?

Lucien possessed an extreme, nearly phobic aversion to anything unkempt, and the sight of the shivering mage offended him on a visceral level. Yet as he examined the trembling line of Kosha’s jaw, he had to concede that beneath the filth, the man’s face was genuinely and undeniably handsome.

Yes, Lucien had snapped viciously at Mailot in the corridor and denied wanting what had occurred the previous night. But was that not the most disturbing and inconvenient aspect of this twisted love potion? It compelled Lucien to act upon whatever impulses he pleased.

The magic stripped away his iron self-control, leaving him physically incapable of sparing a thought for morality, sovereign law, social convention, or the judgment of others.

Which meant that somewhere in the most secret and despicable corner of his mind, the brutal sexual act he had committed the previous night was something he had fundamentally wanted.

Mailot, sharp as ever, had undoubtedly reached the same horrifying conclusion. That was why the aging scholar had been scurrying through the castle like a rat with its tail aflame, constantly peeking and prying into Lucien’s state of mind.

But how is that even possible? Lucien wondered, staring at the sniffling wreck before him. He is only a man. A pathetic, unwashed man.

For one fleeting moment, the prince wondered whether he might feel any inclination to repeat the act in the cold light of day. The spark of lust, however, was entirely absent.

The mage looked far too filthy, and Lucien felt no desire whatsoever to inspect the trembling creature more closely.

The potion’s toxins must have bewitched him profoundly. It had been the middle of the night, his nerves had been frayed by Bastian’s treason, his sanity had fractured, and the bedchamber had been romantically dim. Together, those circumstances had formed the perfect storm for breeding such an unnatural impulse.

“Since we appear to be communicating so exceptionally well,” Lucien purred, his expression melting into a gentle and terrifying smile as he abruptly changed the subject, “allow me to ask you something. Your face appears to have healed perfectly, does it not? I distinctly remember you being severely injured when I left.”

It was an unfathomably brazen question from the very monster who had inflicted those injuries, yet Lucien remained entirely unruffled.

The mage Lucien remembered from the depths of his madness had resembled a discarded mop dragged through a pigsty. Kosha’s face had been hideously swollen, bloated by tears and bruising. It was only natural that Lucien had failed to recognize him once he appeared relatively clean that morning.

Indeed, if someone desperately needed a scapegoat for the assault, was the mage’s unexpectedly pleasant face not the true culprit?

“How did you heal yourself overnight?” Lucien demanded. “Magic?”

“Yes, Your Highness. I suppose so,” Kosha stammered, flinching beneath the weight of his stare.

“You suppose?” Lucien’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Then tell me, are you deliberately leaving that particular mark there merely to spite me?”

He raised one elegant finger and tapped the corner of his own unblemished mouth.

Confused, Kosha mimicked the gesture. His trembling fingertips brushed the corner of his lips, and a sharp sting flashed through his nerves. A fresh scab marked the wound left by the previous night.

The purpling bruises from being violently backhanded across the face had miraculously faded, but the delicate corner of his mouth had torn when he was forced to accommodate the prince’s monstrous size.

Heat flooded Kosha’s cheeks. “No, Your Highness. Well, that is… I do not usually use magic for such things.”

“You do not usually use it?”