Laurent was hardly abandoned. He was not speaking with his usual ease, and his breathing was shallow, but these were the only signs.
Damen realised, suddenly, that what he was witnessing was an exercise in sheer, iron-willed self-control.
‘It wears off,’ said Damen. Adding, because he was not above enjoying the truth as a form of minor sadism, ‘After a few hours.’
He could see in the look Laurent levelled at him that Laurent would rather have cut off his own arm than have anyone know about his condition; and further, that he was the last person that Laurent wished to know, or be left alone with. He was not above enjoying that fact either.
‘Think I’m going to take advantage of the situation?’ said Damen.
Because the one thing that emerged clearly from whatever tangled Veretian plot had unfolded this evening was the fact that he was free of restraints, free of obligations, and unguarded for the first time since his arrival in this country.
‘I am. It was good of you to clear your apartments,’ said Damen. ‘I thought I’d never have the chance to get out of here.’
He turned. Behind him, Laurent swore. Damen was halfway to the door before Laurent’s voice turned him back.
‘Wait,’ said Laurent, as though he forced the word out, and hated saying it. ‘It’s too dangerous. Leaving now would be seen as an admission of guilt. The Regent’s Guard wouldn’t hesitate to have you killed. I can’t . . . protect you, as I am now.’
‘Protect me,’ said Damen. Flat incredulity in his voice.
‘I am aware that you saved my life.’
Damen just stared at him.
Laurent said: ‘I dislike feeling indebted to you. Trust that, if you don’t trust me.’
‘Trust you?’ said Damen. ‘You flayed the skin from my back. I have seen you do nothing but cheat and lie to every person you’ve encountered. You use anything and anyone to further your own ends. You are the last person I would ever trust.’
Laurent’s head tipped backwards against the wall. His eyelids had dropped to half mast, so that he regarded Damen through two golden-lashed slits. Damen was half expecting a denial, or an argument. But Laurent’s only reply was a breath of laughter, which strangely showed more than anything else how close to the edge he was.
‘Go, then.’
Damen looked again at the door.
With the Regent’s men on heightened alert, there was real danger, but escape would always mean risking everything. If he hesitated now and waited for another chance . . . if he managed to find a way out of the perpetual restraints, if he killed his guard or got past them some other way . . .
Right now Laurent’s apartments were empty. He had a head start. He knew a way out of the palace. A chance like this one might not come again for weeks, or months, or at all.
Laurent would be left alone and vulnerable in the aftermath of an attempt on his life.
But the immediate danger was past, and Laurent had lived through it. Others had not. Damen had killed tonight, and witnessed killing. Damen set his jaw. Whatever debt was between them had been paid. He thought, I don’t owe him anything.
The door opened beneath his hand, and the corridor was empty.
He went.
CHAPTER 11
HE KNEW OF only one sure way out, and that was through the courtyard from the first floor training arena.
He forced himself to walk calmly and purposefully, like a servant who has been sent on an errand for his master. His mind was full of slit throats and close fighting and knives. He pushed all of that down and thought instead about his path through the palace. The passage was empty at first.
Passing his own room was strange. It had surprised him from the moment he’d been moved there how close his room was to Laurent’s, nestled inside Laurent’s own apartments. The doors were slightly ajar, as they had been left by the three men who now lay dead. It looked—empty and wrong. Out of some instinct, perhaps an instinct to hide the telltale signs of his own escape, Damen stopped to close them. When he turned, there was someone watching him.
Nicaise was standing in the middle of the passage, as though brought up short on his way to Laurent’s bedchamber.
Somewhere distant, the urge to laugh accompanied a spill of tight, ridiculous panic. If Nicaise reached it—if he sounded the alarm—