Chapter 9

“Your Highness, it is Gosrick,” he announced, presenting the attendant with the insignia engraved upon his blade. Formal as ever, he waited while the heavy oak door swung open in a slow, smooth arc.

Lucien’s closest aides and staff officers had already assembled inside the chamber. At its center stood a man with brilliant golden hair, his back turned entirely toward the entrance. Broad-shouldered and rigidly straight, his imposing height alone commanded absolute attention. Even dressed in filthy rags, the prince would have dominated the room.

To think that beneath such a magnificent exterior lurked such a monster.

The thought left a bitter, sour taste in Gosrick’s mouth.

“That fellow.”

Lucien turned toward the entrance as though he possessed eyes in the back of his head. He had always been unnervingly perceptive.

Gosrick bent at the waist in a crisp, disciplined bow. “I returned him as ordered.”

“Is that so?” Barely acknowledging the report, Lucien returned his attention to the documents in his hands. He finished reviewing the page, turned to the next, and only then addressed Gosrick again. “How did you arrange the deployment?”

“I placed Malone and Eydric in ambush.”

Lucien nodded, appearing to weigh the tactical decision.

Both men were seasoned veterans with considerable experience fighting mages. Gosrick possessed similar expertise, naturally, but their target had already seen his face. Any further direct involvement on his part would have been thoroughly impractical.

What to do with the mage had sparked a heated debate among the staff.

The most popular proposal had been to eliminate him before he could cause further trouble. The logical counterargument was that killing him would be unwise while they understood so little about the mechanism behind the antidote he had produced. Some had advocated permanent imprisonment, while others insisted on torturing him until he revealed the identities of his shadowy backers. Someone had even weakly suggested offering the mage a reward and recruiting him, though the notion had been dismissed almost immediately.

“What if we simply let him go?”

Gosrick’s suggestion had arisen from a basic sense of human decency, or perhaps from something that only faintly resembled a conscience.

“Let him go?”

The moment Lucien repeated the question, Gosrick regretted opening his mouth. He forced himself to continue anyway, affecting a carefully nonchalant air.

“We release him for now and keep him under observation. There is no reason to provoke a mage’s hostility through unnecessary torture.”

Yes, Gosrick still possessed a conscience.

The chilling blue-gray eyes studying him as though calculating his precise monetary value likely harbored no such thing. Besides, the poor bastard had done his job well enough. Subjecting him to barbaric torture afterward simply felt wrong.

It was not an entirely unsound argument, either.

A mage’s resentment could become a troublesome and enduring curse. Rumor claimed that certain hexes persisted long after the mage who cast them had rotted in the ground. One could never exercise too much caution in such matters, even if this particular mage had seemed somewhat incompetent.

“Once Your Highness returns to public view, there is a strong possibility that whoever orchestrated this incident will approach him again. Would it not be wiser to wait for that opportunity?”

“Aha. An opportunity.”

The biting sarcasm in Lucien’s voice made the muscles along Gosrick’s neck tighten.

“Osterbeek is only a stone’s throw from here. If necessary, we can detain him again without much difficulty.”

Lucien studied him for several long moments before surprising everyone in the room with a nod of effortless agreement. Gosrick, who had been bracing himself for a torrent of cutting insults, found that easy acceptance distinctly unsettling.

“Sir Gosrick.”

Gosrick remained perfectly still.

“Non-humans have always found it easy to bewitch humans. Isn’t it about time you learned that?”

Thump.

A large hand descended upon Gosrick’s shoulder.

The touch seemed deceptively light, yet the sheer strength behind Lucien’s grip was formidable enough to make a prominent vein twitch in Gosrick’s forehead.

Bewitched? The mage was far too young for anything of the sort. He had looked more like a half-starved, mangy dog.

“I have not been bewitched,” Gosrick replied.

“Is that so?” Lucien responded with airy indifference, as though the matter held no real consequence. His grip relaxed, and he patted Gosrick’s shoulder twice in a mocking parody of encouragement. “Do as you please, then.”

Consent had been granted with baffling ease.

That was how Gosrick had come to return Kosha to the desolate outskirts of Osterbeek.

Mage or not, Gosrick had no earthly idea how the boy had become entangled in such a treacherous political web. He could only hope Kosha would keep his wits about him and spend the rest of his life quietly, cautiously, and inconspicuously, scurrying like a mouse beneath the floorboards.

Before long, Lucien dismissed the remaining officers with a casual sweep of his hand.

Only the familiar faces remained.

Gosrick stood alongside the longest-serving aides, those who had followed Lucien since his bloody days in Carlot. Mailot was responsible for strategy, Felon commanded the prince’s personal guard, and Gosrick handled whatever else required handling.

There were only three of them.

Even counting those currently absent on assignment added no more than a handful to their number. Compared with the rival royals who gathered followers around themselves like storm clouds, Lucien was extraordinarily meticulous about whom he admitted into his confidence.

Lucien poured clear liquor into a pewter cup.

Mailot frowned immediately. “Isn’t that too strong? How long has it been since you recovered? Are you truly certain you’re well?”

He was exactly the same age as Lucien, but the premature thinning of his hair made him appear nearly a generation older, more like an anxious uncle than a peer. After enduring more than ten grueling days while his liege was violently tormented by the effects of the so-called love potion, Mailot had become understandably sensitive. Then again, he had probably shouldered most of the gruesome work involved in cleaning up after Lucien’s unhinged rampage.

A Lucien without restraint was a terrifying prospect.

“It might be too strong for you.”

As always, their liege had absolutely no intention of cooperating. In truth, Lucien was frequently cited as the primary cause of the tragedy that had befallen Mailot’s hairline at such a young age.

“I am in such excellent health that it is almost astonishing. There is no need to make that sour face.” Lucien smiled mildly. “You are hardly a pleasant sight yourself, so the least you could do is relax that rigid expression.”

Judging by his melodic tone alone, one might easily have mistaken the cruel remark for genuine praise or encouragement.

Mailot gave a hollow laugh, entirely devoid of amusement. “It truly is astonishing how perfectly healthy you look. Do whatever you please.”

After draining the liquor from the small antique cup, Lucien perched casually on the edge of the heavy desk. His gaze traveled across his loyal retainers, examining each weathered face in turn, before finally settling on Gosrick.

That blue-gray gaze was as dry and indifferent as it had been ever since Lucien came of age.

The savage, feral intensity that had clouded his eyes for the past ten days had vanished completely, fading like the remnants of a forgotten nightmare.

Lucien poured himself another drink and tilted his head. “So, Sir Gosrick.”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“You appear rather flush with money these days. Perhaps the salary I provide is far too generous.”

Gosrick clenched his hands tightly at his sides, violently resisting the urge to rub his aching forehead. He was paid appropriately for the weight of his responsibilities and could hardly claim poverty, but the accusation still stung.

“Were you having me watched?”

“Watched?” Lucien gave a brief, brittle laugh. “I was merely concerned that my loyal subordinate might be stabbed in the back by some treacherous demi-human.” He extended the glass with effortless grace. “Would you care for a drink?”

His smile was so impossibly soft and tender that it almost looked sincere.

Treacherous demi-human.

Gosrick sighed heavily and shook his head. Admittedly, giving the captive mage hush money had been his own unilateral decision.

“He didn’t strike me as someone capable of that.”

The young man had looked incredibly pitiful after being beaten nearly senseless.

Gosrick had also entertained the faint, lingering hope that, if Kosha had been lured into the assassination plot by unsavory people offering gold, perhaps receiving enough coin to live on would prevent him from repeating that catastrophic mistake.

“Regardless, he did create the antidote, didn’t he?”

The mage could simply have chosen not to help.

After all, mages were notoriously reclusive, and their arcane magic belonged to a realm fundamentally alien to ordinary humans. Even the esteemed royal mage who had first diagnosed Lucien’s poisoning had performed only the bare minimum before fleeing into the night, despite owing the royal family a considerable lifelong debt. Such supreme indifference was typical of their kind.

Kosha could easily have pretended to prepare an antidote while secretly brewing a concoction intended to kill Lucien once and for all. No one had expected the dire situation to resolve so easily, least of all through the battered mage crawling at Lucien’s boots and willingly offering up the cure.

“That is true,” Mailot conceded reluctantly. “In any case, are you certain it was authentic? Are you truly all right?”

He continued questioning Lucien with obsessive, almost paranoid insistence, studying him closely for any lingering sign of abnormality.

Lucien merely shrugged his broad shoulders.

Even without a verbal answer, Gosrick already knew the truth.

If the antidote had failed, the mage would either have been dead by now or lingering in agony at death’s threshold. Furthermore, Lucien’s sugary, nauseating phrases, such as “I am in your debt” and “thank you,” had undoubtedly been calculated tests. They were certainly not sentiments the abnormal, uninhibited Lucien would ever have deigned to express sincerely.

Gosrick released another long, silent sigh.

What essential part of Lucien’s personality had that absurd substance, that so-called love potion, stripped away during those ten chaotic days?

There were many possible clinical names for it, but the simplest definition was a facade. The glorious Lucien known and adored by the public was little more than an elaborate patchwork of intricately woven falsehoods.

A kind and gentle knight? The fairest and most righteous of the King’s children? A noble, selfless prince who cared deeply for the weak and could never turn away from the suffering of his people?

Every single bit of it was a pack of bloody lies.