Damen stared at him, suddenly aware that if he asked, ‘Do you think you can juggle attempts on your life, military command, and your uncle’s tricks and traps by yourself?’ the answer was going to be: Yes.
‘I would have thought,’ said Laurent, ‘that a soldier like you would be quite happy to see Kastor dethroned, after all he’s done to you. Why not side with the Regency against him—and against me? I’m sure my uncle has approached you to spy for him, on very generous terms.’
‘He has.’ Remembering the banquet: ‘He asked me to bed you, then report back to him.’ Damen was forthright. ‘Not in those words.’
‘And your answer?’
That, unreasonably, annoyed him. ‘If I’d bedded you, you’d know it.’
There was a dangerous, narrow-eyed pause. Eventually: ‘Yes. Your style of grabbing your partner and kicking their legs open does stand out in the memory.’
‘That isn’t—’ Damen set his jaw, in no mood to get drawn into one of Laurent’s infuriating exchanges. ‘I’m an asset. I know the region. I will do whatever it takes to stop your uncle.’ He looked into the impersonal blue gaze. ‘I’ve helped you before. I can again. Use me however you will. Just—take me with you.’
‘You’re hot to help me? The fact that we ride towards Akielos factors in your request not at all?’
Damen flushed. ‘You will have one more person standing between you and your uncle. Isn’t that what you want?’
‘My dear brute,’ said Laurent, ‘I want you to rot here.’
Damen heard the metallic sound of the chain links before he realised that he had jerked against his restraints. They were Laurent’s parting words, spoken with relish. Laurent had turned for the door.
‘You can’t leave me here while you ride off into your uncle’s trap. There’s more than your life at stake.’ The words were harsh with frustration.
They had no effect; he could not prevent Laurent leaving. Damen swore.
‘Are you that sure of yourself?’ Damen called after him. ‘I think if you could beat your uncle on your own, you would have done it already.’
Laurent stopped in the doorway. Damen saw the cupped yellow of his head, the straight line of his back and shoulders. But Laurent didn’t turn back to face him; the hesitation only lasted for a moment before he continued out the door.
Damen was left to jerk once more, painfully, at the chains, alone.
Laurent’s apartments filled with the sounds of preparation, the hallways busy, men tramping to and fro in the delicate garden below. It was no small task to arrange an armed expedition in two days. Everywhere, there was activity.
Everywhere except here, in Damen’s rooms, where the only knowledge of the mission came from the sounds outside.
Laurent was leaving tomorrow. Laurent, infuriating, intolerable Laurent, was pursuing the worst possible course, and there was nothing Damen could do to stop him.
The Regent’s plans were impossible to guess. Damen had frankly no idea why he had waited as long as he had to move against his nephew. Was Laurent simply lucky that the Regent’s ambitions spanned two kingdoms? The Regent could have dispensed with his nephew years ago, with little fuss. It was easier to blame the death of a boy on mischance than that of a young man about to ascend to the throne. Damen could see no reason why boy-Laurent should have escaped that fate. Perhaps familial loyalty had held the Regent back . . . until Laurent had blossomed into poisonous maturity, sly-natured and unfit to rule. If
that was the case, Damen felt a certain amount of empathy with the man: Laurent could inspire homicidal tendencies simply by breathing.
It was a family of vipers. Kastor, he thought, had no idea what lay across the border. Kastor had embraced an alliance with Vere. He was vulnerable, ill-equipped to fight a war, the bonds within his own country showing cracks to which a foreign power had only to apply pressure.
The Regent must be stopped, Akielos must be rallied, and for that, Laurent must survive. It was impossible. Stuck here, Damen was powerless to act. And whatever cunning Laurent possessed was neutralised by the arrogance that prevented him from grasping how completely his uncle had him outmatched, once he left the capital to go traipsing across the countryside.
Did Laurent really believe he could do this alone? Laurent would need every weapon at his disposal in order to navigate this course alive. Yet Damen had not been able to persuade him of that. He was aware, not for the first time, of a fundamental inability to communicate with Laurent. It was not only that he was navigating a foreign language. It was as though Laurent was an entirely other species of animal. He had nothing but the stupid hope that somehow Laurent would change his mind.
The sun slid slowly across the sky outside, and in Damen’s locked chamber the shadows cast by the furniture moved in a dawdling semi-circle.
It happened in the hours before dawn the next morning. He woke to find servants in his room, and Radel, the overseer who never slept.
‘What is it? Is there some word from the Prince?’
He pushed himself up, one arm braced among the cushions, hand fisting in silk. He felt himself being manhandled before he was fully upright, the hands of the servants on him, and instinct almost shrugged them off, until he realised they were unlocking his restraints. The chain ends fell with a muffled chink into the cushions.
‘Yes. Change,’ said Radel, and dropped a bundle unceremoniously down onto the floor beside him, much as he had done the night before.
Damen felt the thudding of his heart as he looked down at it.