“Oh, sister. How could you?”
Sister? Bane shot a glance over his shoulder.
Tamas glared at him, his face an angry red ruby set beneath his gold crown. Standing beside him were Phaira’s king and queen, staring at the bed in abject horror. And with them was—
Sapphira. In her white silk gown and diamond hair pins.
But…?
Bane’s head whipped back around. The same face as Sapphira’s…except for her eyes, which had narrowed as she looked at Tamas. The same full lips as Sapphira’s, but smashing into a tight line before twisting into a snarl.
Her gaze blazed back to Bane’s. “If he’s the king, then who the fuck are you?”
3
Echo
He was General Bane.
The hero of Gocea and Phaira.
When Echo had heard someone shouting Bane’s name, she’d thought a guard was yelling for the general to come to the king’s chambers. Perhaps to skewer her with his sword. But the general had already skewered her with his big cock.
And he’d utterly fucked all her plans.
He hadn’t even left the bed yet, but her parents were thanking him for foiling her evil schemes. He told them they had nothing to thank him for but they didn’t relent. As if they truly believed he’d discovered what Echo was up to.
But she’d seen his shock and dismay. He hadn’t known. Instead, the general had made a plan of his own.
No question what it was. He was a good man. The best of men. And what had he said?
You have already made a fool of me.
General Bane was in love with her milk-blooded twin sister. Drawn to Sapphira’s sweetness, no doubt, and he couldn’t bear to see her marry his peacock of a brother.
Who was wearing padding. Echo was certain of it.
She glanced up as Bane wrapped a sheet around her shoulders, tenderly tucking in the edges. He hadn’t even covered himself yet. Or wiped clean her blood from his massive cock. And she was still sitting in the middle of the bed. Why bother to ever move again? Her every hope was gone. And worse, he saw her like this. The one man she’d always admired, though she’d never met him before. And now he tended to her, only proving his goodness. He tended to her, even after what she’d done—even after she’d destroyed his hopes.
She might have celebrated if he’d married Sapphira. Especially if Sapphira succumbed to a fatal fright or was trampled to death by pigs not long thereafter. The people of Phaira deserved a man such as Bane as their king, and they deserved a better queen than her sister would be.
For her part, Echo would have been content ruling Gocea. She probably would have killed Tamas, eventually. But she’d have been content for a while, at least, especially after the surprising pleasure she’d discovered in this bed. But she hadn’t been with Tamas.
Instead she’d deceived the best of men, who must have risked everything for the woman he loved.
And he’d lost.
So Echo avoided his gaze. She glared instead at her mother, who was telling King Tamas, “Our apologies, dear friend, to you and to your brother. We believed that we’d brought enough guards to contain her—”
“The guards!” Sapphira gasped, clutching her hand to her breast. “Echo, what have you done to them?”
A drop of potion here, a spray of poison there. Some would randomly bleat like goats for a year, but a kingdom had been at stake.
And she’d failed anyway.
“They’ll live,” she answered sullenly.
King Tamas frowned at them. “If you believed your daughter to be a threat, why bring her to Gocea, where she might endanger the people here?”
Her mother and father exchanged a glance.
“If we left her at home, Tamas,” her mother said, “she’d have likely stolen the throne while we were gone and begun to rule in our stead.”
Echo scoffed. Fear that she’d steal the kingdom was only the half of it. “And on Your Majesty’s wedding night, they hoped to drug me and place me in the marriage bed, so you would think your bride still had a maidenhead.”
Sapphira gasped in outrage. “Never have I—”
“She is quite pure—”
“It is only that she rides astride, Tamas,” her father’s voice broke through the noise of her mother and sister’s denials. “I do worry there will be little evidence of her chastity.”
Echo snorted. “Because the last stallion that Sapphira rode astride was a footman named Bowen.”
Not that Echo cared. Let Sapphira fuck anyone she liked. King Tamas certainly did. They would come to the marriage bed equal. It was only their hypocrisy she despised.
Echo knew her virginity would have value, or she might have indulged in liaisons, too. But if her fate was to end up in Tamas’s bed, she would go with her eyes open instead of drugged—and she would spend that value on herself instead of her sister.
Instead…she’d wasted her maidenhead.
Her chest tightened painfully. It hadn’t seemed like a waste. Not at the time. She’d been stunned, thrilled, that in this bed, they’d seemed in such accord. That Tamas hadn’t been the selfish, dissolute royal that she’d thought him to be.