‘You’re in a strange mood,’ said Damen. ‘Stranger than usual.’
‘I’d say I’m in a good mood.’
‘A good mood.’
‘Well, not as good a mood as Volo,’ said Laurent. ‘But the food’s decent, the fire’s warm, and no one’s tried to kill me in the last three hours. Why not?’
‘I thought you had more sophisticated tastes than that,’ said Damen.
‘Did you?’ said Laurent.
‘I’ve seen your court,’ Damen reminded him gently.
‘You’ve seen my uncle’s court,’ said Laurent.
Would yours be any different? He didn’t say it. Maybe he didn’t need to know the answer. The king that Laurent would be, he was becoming with every passing day, but the future was another life. Laurent would not then be leaning back on his hands, lazily drying his hair before an inn-room fire, or climbing in and out of brothel windows. Nor would Damen.
‘Tell me something,’ said Laurent.
He spoke after a long and surprisingly comfortable silence. Damen looked over at him.
‘What really happened to make Kastor send you here? I know it was not a lover’s quarrel,’ said Laurent.
As the comfortable warmth of the fire turned to chill, Damen knew that he had to lie. It was beyond dangerous to talk about this with Laurent. He knew that. He just didn’t know why the past felt so close. He swallowed down the words rising in his throat.
As he had swallowed everything, since that night.
I don’t know. I don’t know why.
I don’t know what I did to make him hate me as much as this. Why we couldn’t go as brothers to mourn—
—our father—
‘You were half right,’ he heard himself say, as though from a distance. ‘I had feelings for . . . There was a woman.’
‘Jokaste,’ said Laurent, amused.
Damen was silent. He felt the ache of the answer in his throat.
‘Not really? You fell for the King’s mistress?’
‘He was not the King then. And she was not his mistress. Or if she was, no one knew it,’ said Damen. Once the words started, they wouldn’t stop. ‘She was intelligent, accomplished, beautiful. She was everything I could have asked for in a woman. But she was a king maker. She wanted power. She must have thought her only path to the throne was through Kastor.’
‘My honourable barbarian. I wouldn’t have picked that as your type.’
‘Type?’
‘A pretty face, a devious mind and a ruthless nature.’
‘No. That isn’t—I didn’t know she was . . . I didn’t know what she was.’
‘Didn’t you?’ said Laurent.
‘Perhaps I . . . I knew she was ruled by her mind, not her heart. I knew she was ambitious, and, yes, at times ruthless. I admit there w
as something . . . attractive about it. But I never guessed that she would betray me for Kastor. That I learned too late.’
‘Auguste was like you,’ said Laurent. ‘He had no instinct for deception; it meant he couldn’t recognise it in other people.’