Kydona Read online

  Chapter 2

  Marcus’s roar echoed across the practice field as he swung his sword overhead, two-handed. It was a poorly executed move; his weight was too far forward, and the strength he put into the swing was too much. He knew even before the blow landed that he had overcommitted.

  Fortunately, the practice dummy was hard-pressed to fight back properly. The clot didn’t even try to dodge. The bastard sword sliced through the dummy’s sandbag head with ease—cut it straight in half—then through its leather tunic, finally embedding itself in the crossbeam that passed for its shoulder.

  Marcus stood there panting for a moment. This dummy had not been easily vanquished. The effort had left his face glistening and red. He felt sweat dripping down his back and legs. His sparring clothes, which had been white half an hour ago, were yellow with sweat and sand. It was the sixth set he had ruined this week. Tomorrow he would have none left.

  Maybe he would practice in these tomorrow regardless. The field emptied whenever he came by these days. It was a rare noble who would suffer his presence. Fine, then.

  “A mighty blow, my lord prince,” said the fieldmaster, sounding weary. He threw Marcus a towel. “May I request a less mighty one next bout?” The old man looked sadly over the sand practice courts, half of which were strewn with ruined sandbags and splintered wood.

  Marcus wiped his face and gestured for a waterskin, which the fieldmaster handed over. “I’ll send for a carpenter when I’m done.”

  “And sandbags, my lord prince?”

  “Aye, and sandbags, once you stop with the ‘my lord prince’ rubbish. I wreck your field and you’re still being polite?” He braced his foot against the dummy and wrenched the sword free with some effort.

  The man bowed. “Your kin do not take kindly when I do not address them by title, my… uh…”

  Marcus was about to reply when Vernon’s voice called, “Just shut up, mate, you’ll get the poor fellow a drubbing.” His friend jumped off the stands and strode over. Grinning, he clapped the fieldmaster on the back and shook Marcus’s hand. “The rest of us aren’t quite ready for your new take on life, eh, old man?”

  Another bow. “I suppose not, my lord.”

  “I see your point,” Vernon said, eying Marcus. “That is annoying.”

  Marcus chuckled. “You may go, fieldmaster.”

  Looking relieved, the old man bowed a last time and took his leave with some haste.

  Vernon looked at Marcus with mild reproach. “You said ‘tomorrow.’ It’s been two weeks.”

  “Has it, now?” Marcus examined his blade. Its edges were scratched and nicked to hell. It seemed he would have to ask the smith for a replacement.

  “Aye, you bloody git! And you know,” he took Marcus’s side as he walked off the field, “You’re the one who should be all upset. You know how crazy girls get after funerals?”

  “I don’t know but I’m betting you’re going to tell me.”

  “Absolutely, filthily, unconscionably crazy!” he near-bellowed, gesticulating madly in the air. “My God, they want it more than I do! I don’t even have to try!”

  Marcus snickered. “Vernon, you know the last time I saw you go without a girl for the night? You saw yourself in Aimee de Villiers’ mirror and you spent all night flirting with your reflection.”

  “Really?” Vernon stopped in his tracks and mused with a finger on his chin. He suddenly cackled. “Well I don’t remember but you know what that tells me, even I can’t resist me.”

  “No, you just can’t resist unwatered wine.”

  Vernon only stopped laughing and joking once they got to the edge of the field—and even then, it was only because Jaspar de Martine shut him up.

  He was a big lad—only a few inches taller than Marcus, but broader of shoulder and chest. He had straight dark-blond hair cropped to his ears, a mouth that was always parted so that you could see his two front teeth—like a rodent, almost—and light blue eyes that many girls found irresistible. He had a swagger that spoke of much more than simple cockiness.

  Marcus met his sneer with an even stare as they passed each other, contemptuous of the fact that this coward would not say anything even with his whole gang at his back. Poor characters they were—they stared straight ahead as if Marcus and Vernon weren’t even there.

  Nothing would have come of it, except one decided to show some false bravado to the pair’s turned backs. “No fucking quality, those two,” he practically muttered.

  The two of them stopped and exchanged raised eyebrows. Mutual decision made, they turned. “Oy! You just say something?”

  The lad who had spoken did not face back until the rest of his friends had. By then, Marcus had closed the distance. Marcus put his face nearly up against his. The coward swayed but held with obvious effort. And said nothing.

  “You ought to say it again,” spoke up Vernon.

  Marcus smiled dangerously. “Come on. A scar or two might make you look like something worth respecting.”

  “Might,” snarled Vernon.

  Jaspar’s arm forced itself between them and shoved his worthless minion back. He took his place and stared down his nose at Marcus. “Problem?”

  It occurred to Marcus that he was standing toe to toe with someone four inches taller and broader, who would be stronger than him even on a good day. He would know; they had wrestled often enough, back when they were friends. Now he was tired from hours of bouting, and had only one man to match Jaspar’s three. He pretended he was aware of none of this. “You should pick your friends better, de Martine. This one,” he tossed his chin, “thinks he’s got bones.”

  “You should find other things to be concerned with, de Pilars. Like your standing with your betters.”

  “I’ll be concerned with the opinions of people who matter, I thank you.”

  The two stared at each other in hatred, neither wavering. Nothing would have come of that, either, but Vernon made a bad call: he spit at the gang’s feet.

  Jaspar was too clever to start a brawl. His friends were not.

  They lunged for Vernon, who was already coming in with one fist back. Marcus dropped his sword and tackled him into the sand before the punch could connect. “No, Vernon!”

  Luckily, Jaspar had followed the same line of thought. He thrust himself in front of the gang and threw them aside with remarkable ease. “You fucking idiots, what are you doing?!” He kept on yelling as Marcus hauled Vernon upright. He picked out “high lord’s son” among the near-constant stream of obscenities.

  “Can you think something through for once?” Marcus hissed, leading Vernon by his collar through the gate. They found themselves on the palace walks, the paved path running around the palace’s grounds. The palace’s golden domes were visible over the garden’s orchards. Towering above them was the Keep, its near-ancient grey stone a testament to days where defense was preferable to comfort. The flitting of birds was just audible behind his friend’s angry response.

  “And here was me thinking we were on the same page!”

  “Since when,” Marcus released Vernon’s collar with the practice field out of sight, “has fist-fighting Lord de Martine’s son been on my page?”

  “Oh, and what was that two weeks back? Was that any better?”

  “Those were words, not fists.”

  “Aye, and those words turned half the court against you!”

  “That’s my problem, not yours.”

  At last, Vernon fell silent, if only to come up with a new argument.

  Marcus spoke before he did—quietly but firmly. “He deserves it more than anyone. I know. It was wrong, what he did to Estelle. But breaking his nose won’t fix that deed. It sure as hell won’t make me hate him any less. Oh, and we would have got beaten to shit, did you ever think of that?”

  “Alright. Alright, you win.”

  They walked on in silence. They crossed a small stone bridge over the artificial stream. The water gurgled pleasantly over the round blue rocks imported from wh
o-knew-where. The stream meandered in a winding circle—over two miles of infinitesimally-gradual slope that ultimately ended in a reservoir, from which it was pumped into a thirty-foot waterfall. Some called it an architectural wonder. Marcus would have thought so too, but he knew that behind that charming waterfall was a crew of two dozen men, whose only job was to man the water pumps in shifts, day and night. To him, that was more brutish than wondrous.

  Well then, so were many things about the supposed wonders of the world.

  Somewhat ironically, Vernon chose to stop him right before it. “Just a moment, mate.”

  Marcus glanced at the falls that lay just a stone’s throw away. Water cascaded down over a series of jutting rocks and into the lily-spotted water below. Orchids and ferns, foreign plants that could only survive now at the height of summer, lined the clear pool. Along the pathway were a series of carved stone benches, on one of which Vernon beckoned him to sit.

  Brows raised, Marcus obliged. “I thought we were done talking about this. And I don’t have to sit down to do it, either.”

  “This is about something else.” His friend had an unusual tone, so he shut up and listened. “Look, mate,” Vernon began edgily, “I’m not miffed about that day after… well, I’m not. I get it. I gave you some time. But no one’s talked to you for two weeks since, except that fieldmaster maybe. I know, I asked. Even asked Kaelyn. She only said, ‘Yes, you’re right,’ by the way. Not even a ‘hello, Vernon’, ‘goodbye, Vernon’, ‘go fuck yourself, Vernon’. That one sentence, that’s it.” He stretched his legs out, his boots scraping ugly furrows into the gravel. “Between you and her, I’ve got to say, I’m bloody incensed.”

  “You should have dropped a silver half-piece in her lap, then she might have said that last rude one, at least.”

  “Oh, aye? Huh.” He frowned. “Damned whores, eh?”

  “Damned whores.”

  “Well. Anyway. I gave you two weeks to get your own head straight. I’m pretty sure you spent those two weeks lopping the heads off practice dummies instead. So, mate, I’ve taken matters into my own hands.”

  Marcus grimaced. “You didn’t.”

  “But I did! Aye, not only have I bought enough wine to down a company of the Watch,” he reached into his pocket and took out an empty-looking coin purse, “we’ve got two lovely young ladies to drink it with!”

  “Were you not just complaining about damned whores?” Marcus demanded, completely aghast but somewhat entertained all the same.

  Vernon didn’t answer. He was busy doing some kind of ludicrous jig around the bench, singing loudly, “We’re going whoring, we’re going whoring, we’re—”

  “You can, I’m not.”

  The singing cut off mid-syllable. “But you have to!”

  Marcus chuckled. “Not exactly.”

  “No, I mean you literally have to.” He looked up to find Vernon grinning like a maniac. “I talked to your men-at-arms too, and they completely agree. You’ve got no choice, mate. So…” The jig began again. “We’re going whoring, we’re going whoring…”

  Marcus had his head in his hands, but he was smiling.

  †††

  The company that night was good, but then, they were paid to be. Marcus couldn’t be sure how much Vernon had paid to get him out of his dreary mood; it certainly could not have been cheap, if these girls’ looks were anything to go by. There were two of them: Emili, the slim blonde, and Janine, the curvy brunette. They had certainly dressed to please: slit skirts, daringly-low décolletages, translucent fabric that left shockingly little to the imagination.

  Marcus knew better than to stare, but Emili was making it difficult for him. She kept crossing and uncrossing her legs as she sat across from him, sipping from her wine glass and eyeing him over the rim. Her blue eyes were sparkling.

  Even with four present, there was plenty of room to spare in Marcus’s chambers. They sat on overstuffed leather couches in the center of the main room. The coffee table between was covered with recently-emptied bottles. Its surface, sticky with spilled wine, glinted by the light of a dozen or so mirrored candle lanterns, one of which would have cost a peasant half a year’s wages. But then, so would a night with either one of these girls. How Vernon had afforded them both, Marcus could only wonder.

  “So the Novitiate, that was a chore,” Vernon was saying. “Not that it was too tough, the training isn’t so bad once you’re used to it. Just ‘march here’, ‘march there’, ‘attention’, ‘stab this or that’, you know. The tough part—and Marcus will vouch for me here—is being without you ladies for a whole season.”

  Janine giggled and snuggled a bit closer to him.

  Marcus rolled his eyes at the ceiling. It was as if Vernon had forgotten that every able-bodied man had to endure the Novitiate after his eighteenth winter. These girls had heard this before; they were only pretending to be entertained. They were doing an admirably convincing job of it, too.

  Vernon took a long draught from the courtesan’s glass and went on, “A whole season! Not a female in sight! You know what that does to a man? Nothing goes on down here,” he made a circular motion around his groin, “the whole time! My God, when I realized I was waking up without a morning hard-on, I nearly cried.”

  “That’s true?” Emili asked Marcus.

  “Aye, a whole season. Not even a stirring.”

  “Hmm.” She smirked mischievously. “You’re certain it’s all in working order, then?”

  “I have a feeling you’re not just going to ask.”

  She giggled. “Oh, bold! I like that.” Taking his half-hearted flirting as an invitation, she stood and eased onto the couch next to him. She draped her legs over one of his and put one arm around his shoulders, staking her claim. “How do you feel, your highness?”

  He sipped his wine. Emili’s perfume was strong but pleasant. Her fingers were toying with his hair, her breath warm against his ear. “Not bad,” he said absently. Being wine-drunk was a strange feeling; it made him feel warm and lazy, as if he had been swimming in a hot spring for hours. “Drunk, probably.”

  “Drink as much as you like. I’ll take care of you tonight.”

  “I bet you will.” Marcus yawned. If Emili was insulted, she didn’t show it. It was for that very reason that he mistrusted courtesans: they would be anything you wanted, depending on the pay. For tonight, Emili would be his best friend—and a magnificent lover, for sure—but tomorrow she would be someone else’s. The pleasure of a courtesan’s company was, with few exceptions, intense but fleeting.

  Not to mention, Emili was much cleverer than she let on. All her kind were. She was watching everything he did, committing to memory everything he said, knowing that if any of it was important, someone else would be willing to pay to hear it.

  Fickle and dangerous.

  Marcus didn’t trust her worth a damn. More than likely she was listening for his take on what he had said two weeks back. The nobility would be keen to hear any hint of remorse, or continued defiance. He wasn’t going to give her a thing to tell them. So he tossed back his wine, having decided to water it for the rest of the night, lest his tongue grow too loose. He smiled at her.

  “You’ve a pretty face,” she remarked. “I’m not often in the company of men with looks. Not like yours, anyway.”

  “Well. You have one too.”

  The blonde glanced across the center table at Vernon and Janine, who were talking in low voices with their foreheads touching. “So, Marcus,” she whispered, leaning in, “they’re in an intimate mood. So am I.” Her glossed lips brushed his cheek. “What of you?”

  Trust her or not, she was awfully pretty. And that voice had set his nethers stirring. To hell with it. He pulled her in by the back of the neck and kissed her. She was rather good at it. Her tongue slithered between his lips while her hands worked around his neck, then slowly downward—

  —just as a knock came on the door.

  Marcus broke off the kiss, looked at the door. “Was the
re someone else, Vernon?”

  “No, just these two,” he said, his drunkenness amplifying his confusion. Janine twisted his head back around and they started kissing, their new visitor already forgotten.

  Grunting, Marcus pushed Emili off him and made for the door.

  “Hurry back,” she called, reclining indolently. She toyed with her skirt.

  He straightened his jacket before opening the door. “Yes?” It was dark in the hallway beyond—it was well past midnight—but he caught the flash of blue-green eyes.

  “I heard you had a soiree going,” said Kaelyn. “Do you have a spare bottle for a spare guest?” Marcus tried to think up a reason to say no, but she shoved her way in before one came to him.

  “I’m sure I could find one,” he said, amused, as she gazed around the room.

  “Kaelyn!” Vernon cried. He brandished a wine bottle. A decent amount slopped onto his shoulder. “What a damned pres—pleasure! You want wine?”

  She ignored him. “Hello Janine. Emili.”

  The three courtesans exchanged looks. Marcus saw the unspoken conversation in the flickering of their eyes, the subtle hand movements. Kaelyn and Emili’s eyes darted in his direction.

  He pretended not to notice. “A drink, to dull the tension?” He snatched the bottle away from Vernon to pour a full glass for Kaelyn. “There you are.”

  “Thank you. This being sober is killing me.” She downed it in two gulps.

  Vernon tried to snicker but it came out as a wheeze. “Did I ever tell you I’m in love with you?”

  “You really shouldn’t be, Vernon, it won’t end well between us. It’s tough enough not to murder you as it is.” It was difficult to tell the difference between sarcasm and truth whenever she talked to Vernon.

  “If it pleases you, m’love. What pleases you pleases me!”

  She rubbed her temples. She made for the balcony, muttering something about fresh air.

  Quizzically, Marcus followed her. As he passed the couches, Emili stood and sat down on Vernon’s other side. He looked positively delighted. “God, just kill me now! I’m all ready!” he said to the ceiling.

  Kaelyn stepped to one corner of the balcony once outside, out of view from the couches.

  “Why the act?” Marcus leaned against the railing beside her.

  She was hugging herself, though it wasn’t cold. “I don’t know why you agreed to this. The liaison.”

  “Well. Vernon thought it was for the best. And he went well out of his way—”

  “Since when has anything in that boy’s head been best? And what possesses you to think that bedding women is a step out of his way?”

  “There’s a point,” he admitted with a toast. Seeing the glass was empty, he filled it again with the bottle he still held, then Kaelyn’s. He added quietly as he poured, “But he’s my best mate all the same.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Sorry but agitated.

  “He thinks it’s time to start living again. I think he’s right. So what about you?”

  Kaelyn nodded but the frustrated look remained. “Yes, but not like this, Marcus, it doesn’t become you. Courtesans? Elessa’s tits!”

  “Why not? It’s not as if I haven’t lain with one before.” In fact, he had lost his virginity to one on his fifteenth birthday. Most every noble lad did. Better to pay a courtesan for her discretion than risk some girl blabbing to the court about her latest exploit.

  “You know this is different.”

  “I don’t. Educate me.”

  “Fine. Your mother dies and now you’re paying to sleep with a whore. And I mean that, Emili is a whore. It might be different if you bought someone with more experience but Emili? She’s nothing but a plaything.”

  “Every courtesan is a plaything,” scoffed Marcus.

  “There is a difference between adult games,” Kaelyn explained with strained patience, “and children’s games. It isn’t always about bedding. Often it’s a man without a partner for the Falltide Ball or Winterfall. Or soiree in need of a proper hostess. Sometimes they’ll hire you to sing.”

  “I’ll bet you have a wondrous voice,” Marcus said sarcastically.

  “I do, in fact,” snapped Kaelyn. “And I play the mandolin passingly well. You just never cared to ask.”

  It was Marcus’s turn to be exasperated. Kaelyn had a special talent for touching his nerves. He ran a hand through his hair. “So what of Emili?”

  “When people hire her, they only want one thing. She doesn’t sing or dance or do anything but fuck. Do you know what will happen to her? She’ll fuck the years away until the first wrinkles arrive, then her head mistress will move her out to Demarre or Beltonne or someplace, and she’ll fuck there until her tits start to sag and her eyes have bags the makeup won’t cover. Then she’ll retire and live in a cheap apartment in some village no one cares about because you know what fucking gets you? Nothing!” Worn out, Kaelyn planted her rump on the railing beside Marcus’s.

  “So I suppose you don’t want me fucking her, then.” He had hoped to perk her up again because all of a sudden, she looked very sad. It was discomfiting, seeing Kaelyn without the fire that had always defined her. He wanted to apologize but couldn’t. His father and his Novitiary Sergeants had beaten the word ‘sorry’ out of him—because why say sorry if it never fixed a thing?

  “I don’t. It’s not you.”

  Marcus nodded. She was right. It seemed in bad taste, spending a night with some whore when he still couldn’t even sleep properly. Not when he could still smell his mother’s scent whenever he passed her room.

  “It shouldn’t be Emili.”

  Then he started to realize why she had come here tonight. “Kaelyn…” But at the same time, the notion wasn’t unappealing either…

  She was facing him now. “I was talking to a courtesan the other day. I won’t tell you her name. But she had an assignation one night with an older man. They ate dinner together and she said it was very romantic—sweepingly romantic, I think she said. And when he brought her to bed he just took her in his arms and slept soundly all night. She said it was the anniversary of his wedding. He was lonely, that’s all.”

  It felt so wrong with her this close to him—Kaelyn, whom he had known since his fifth winter, whose mother had been his father’s lover, destroying what little love was left between King Audric and Queen Geneva. Marcus’s relationship with her had always been a strange one. It seemed it would become even stranger tonight whether he wanted it or not.

  “I think you’re like that man.” She was close now, perilously so. Their faces almost touched. Her hand was on his elbow; her other was hovering beside his cheek. “But Vernon’s right.” Her fingertips caressed his jaw. Her parted lips were so close that he could feel her breath on his mouth. He stared into her half-closed eyes, dreading and wanting it all at once.

  What was it he had heard once? It’s impossible to be a woman’s friend without somehow wanting her.

  All too true.

  She whispered, “He’s just right in the wrong way, that’s all.” And her lips met his. Soon as that happened, all his doubts were forgotten. This was something he had wanted all along, even if he hadn’t realized it, even if it was wrong. Now she wasn’t Kaelyn anymore. Not even a courtesan he was paying for the pleasure. Just a girl.

  His hands were on her waist. He was kissing back. It was good, even better than Emili—maybe the best he had ever had. No girl had ever poured so much heart into it before. He gripped her waist and pushed her back against the wall, just hard enough to make her grunt. He pinned her wrists above her head—he’d never met a girl who didn’t like that one—breathing hard against her face. She squirmed her hips against him, arousal taking hold.

  This was getting very intense very fast. Marcus broke away. Still pinning her arms, “Want to…?” He tossed his head at the door.

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  He let her go. He brushed the chalk dust off his ass, smoothed the wrinkles from his clothes—and K
aelyn threw her still-full glass of wine all over his front.

  “Agh! What the—”

  “Be drunk.” She took his hand.

  “What?”

  “Be drunk!” She tugged him through the door. He took her cue just in time and adopted a morose look.

  Vernon and his rented girls were still on the couches, all getting drunkenly intimate. “There you are!” roared Vernon. His face fell as Marcus tripped over his own feet and bumped into Kaelyn. “Whoa. You alright, mate?” He stood with a concerned look. Janine covered her mouth but didn’t bother with her exposed breasts. Emili raised her pale brows.

  “I don’t know what you gave him,” Kaelyn steadied Marcus by the shoulders, “but it was too much. Great work, you ass.”

  Vernon looked a bit ashamed of himself. He put down his wine glass, suddenly much soberer, and started toward them. “Here, let’s get him to bed.”

  “You,” Kaelyn fumed, slapping his hand away, “have done quite enough.”

  “S’alright,” slurred Marcus, swaying. He felt vaguely bad for his friend but mostly embarrassed by the tent in his trousers.

  Vernon cursed. “Sorry mate. All my fault. You sleep it all off, alright?”

  Marcus nodded and allowed Kaelyn to steer him toward his room. Behind him he heard Vernon yell, “More for me! Let the foul games begin!” Women’s giggling. The door shut, and he was alone in the room with Kaelyn. She was on him again so quickly, it was as if their act had never existed.

  “You,” he muttered against her face, “are some kind of actress.”

  “Shut… up.” She tried to haul off his coat but its sleeves snagged on his wrists, inside-out. She tripped him onto the bed, finally succeeding in yanking off the sleeves. A moment more and she had skillfully undone his shirt. She had, inexplicably, done the same to his trousers, and shortly began a trail of kisses down his chest.

  Marcus had never been one for foreplay; Kaelyn forced him to reevaluate that opinion as she began her work. He groaned, grabbed a fistful of her crimson hair. A pillow got in his way and he hurled it across the room. Something shattered on his dresser.

  “What broke?” She stopped and glanced around.

  “I don’t know, something expensive. To hell with it.”

  “Right.” Kaelyn stood and for an instant, Marcus thought she was leaving. But then she shrugged off her straps and wriggled out of the dress. He eyed her with unconcealed hunger as it dropped to the floor. She really did have a form worth dying for—all wide hips and small waist, smooth pale skin, firm breasts and pale nipples puckered with excitement. He wanted to plunder it all.

  Her movements were slow and unbearably sensuous as she crawled onto the bed. “You should get undressed now. After you stop drooling.”

  “I’ll stop when I feel like it,” he said, grinning as he threw off his shirt and trousers. He stretched out on his back and she straddled him, kissing his lips, her pubis brushing his thighs.

  It hurt, he wanted her so badly.

  She sat straight up, brushed her hair out of her eyes, one hand behind her backside as she positioned him for entry. She lowered onto him, sighing with him as he slid into her. With that, the moment of crisis was past.

  Marcus could not recall losing himself in a woman before—neither his first time nor the many since. It had always been simple mechanical motion to him. Nothing to it, really. Just fucking. There was something more to being with Kaelyn. This was as close to making love as he had ever been. Was that love in her green eyes as she rocked on top of him? The way she pressed her face against his, eyelids trembling? Was there more to her quiet sighs and moans than mere pleasure?

  But he was young, just past his twentieth year, and she, only eighteen. They didn’t know what love was. The line between that and lust was thin and blurred.

  Those were distant thoughts at the moment. Most presently, he was enthralled by the way his newest lover moved—in and out, giving his skin the briefest taste of her hot interior, gyrating her hips gently, drawing him back out again. Whoever had taught her had done spectacular work.

  Then it was over. He squeezed her ass instinctively as he climaxed. In his loins there was a feeling of intense heat, then a rushing wave of pleasure as he spilled his seed inside her. It had been embarrassingly quick but there was no trace of disappointment in her kisses. They stayed there entangled for a long moment as Marcus gradually grew limp inside her.

  The euphoria was suddenly gone—as if someone had cut a taught string. The snare that held him in the moment, intoxicated, was undone. A vague feeling of shame started to take hold. Just a moment ago this had felt so good, so right. Now he just felt repulsed. I’m a fool, he thought, gazing up at Kaelyn.

  She was still smiling. Nothing had changed for her—or it had changed for the better. She slid off him at last and settled alongside him, bare breasts pressing against his side. She draped one arm across his chest, humming contently. “It wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “No,” he lied. Tomorrow, he thought, she would take a dose of Succor with her breakfast. She would take on a fever and lie bed-ridden for a day and a night, bleeding between her legs. The seed of life in her womb would die, unmourned.

  It made Marcus think of his mother. The child that had unknowingly killed her—the midwife had taken the small corpse and quietly cremated it. There could be no ceremony for a stillborn babe that had never lived, yet taken a life.

  Now he was just wishing Kaelyn would go away. He didn’t say it aloud. He stared up at the ceiling and let her hold him, now entertaining only her own fancies.

  “I missed this,” she whispered. “Lying here with you.”

  “It was an innocent thing, back then.”

  She kissed his ear. “I don’t mind.”

  Marcus didn’t want to tell her otherwise. There was no reason to hurt her. She had only wanted to help. So he just lay there, feeling her body relaxing as she drifted to sleep.

  Trying not to resent her.