‘I should make you watch,’ said Laurent, ‘while he’s stripped down for every man in the troop to have him.’
Damen stepped forward. ‘You don’t mean this. You need him as a hostage.’
‘I don’t need him continent,’ said Laurent.
Laurent’s face was perfectly smooth, his blue eyes cool and untouchable. Damen felt himself recoil slightly from that callous look, the surprise of it. He realised that he had fallen out of step with Laurent at some crucial point. He wanted to send everyone away, so that he could find his way back.
And yet this must be dealt with. The situation here was spiralling into something unpleasant.
He said, ‘If there’s to be justice for Aimeric, then let it be justice, reasonably decided, publicly applied, not the men taking matters into their own hands.’
‘Then by all means,’ said Laurent, ‘let us have justice. Since you’re both so eager for it. Drag Aimeric away from his admirers. Bring him to me in the south tower. Let us have everything out in the open.’
‘Yes, Your Highness.’
Damen found himself stepping forward as Guymar bowed briefly and left, and the others followed him, making for the south tower. He wanted to reach out, if not with a hand, then with his voice.
‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘When I said there should be justice for Aimeric, I meant later, not now, when you’re . . .’ He searched Laurent’s face. ‘When we . . .’
He hit a look like a wall, and the uncaring lift of golden brows.
Laurent said, ‘If Jord wants to get down on his knees for Aimeric, he should know exactly who he’s crawling for.’
* * *
The south tower was crowned by a platform and a parapet pierced through not with useful rectangular slits but with slim, pointed arches, because this was Vere and there must always be some flourish. Below the platform was the room where Damen, Laurent and Jord gathered, a small round space connected to the parapet by straight stone stairs. During a fight—during any attack on the fort—the room would be an assembling point for archers and swordsmen, but now it functioned as an informal guards’ room, with a stout wooden table, and three chairs. The men who would usually be on watch, both here and above, had cleared out at Damen’s orders.
Laurent, supremely puissant, ordered that not only Aimeric should be brought, but also refreshments. The food arrived first. Servants battled up to the tower laden with plates of meats, and bread, and pitchers of wine and of water. The goblets they brought were gold, and carved with an image of a deer, mid-hunt. Laurent sat in the high-backed wooden chair by the table and crossed his legs. Damen hardly supposed that Laurent was going to sit across from Aimeric with his legs crossed and make small talk. Or perhaps he was.
He knew that expression. His sense of danger, highly attuned to Laurent’s moods, told him that Aimeric was better off downstairs with a half dozen men than he was up here with Laurent. Laurent’s lids were smooth over a cool gaze, his posture straight-backed, his fingers poised on the rim of the goblet.
I kissed him, thought Damen, the idea unreal here in this small circular stone room. The warm, sweet kiss had been broken in a moment of promise: the first slight parting of lips, the hint that Laurent had been on the cusp of allowing the kiss to deepen, though his body had been singing with tension.
When he closed his eyes, he felt how it might have happened: slowly, Laurent’s mouth opening, Laurent’s hands lifting hesitantly to touch his body. He would have been careful, so careful.
Aimeric was dragged in by two guards. He resisted, his hands lashed behind his back, his arms gripped by his guards. He had been stripped of his armour; his undershirt was streaked with dirt and sweat and it hung partially open in a mess of laces. His curls looked more pulped than polished, and there was a cut across his left cheek.
His eyes retained their defiance. There was an intrinsic antagonism in Aimeric’s nature, Damen knew. He liked a fight.
When he saw Jord, he turned white. And said, ‘No.’ His guard shoved him inside.
‘The loving reunion,’ said Laurent.
When Aimeric heard that, he gathered his defiance to himself. The guards took up their hold again, roughly. Though his face was still white, Aimeric lifted his chin.
‘Have you brought me here to gloat? I’m glad I did what I did. I did it for my family, and for the south. I’d do it again.’
‘That was pretty,’ said Laurent. ‘Now the truth.’
‘That was the truth,’ said Aimeric. ‘I’m not afraid of you. My father’s going to crush you.’
‘Your father has ridden to Fortaine with his tail between his legs.’
‘To regroup. My father would never turn his back on his family. Not like you. Spreading for your brother isn’t the same thing as family loyalty.’ Aimeric’s breathing was shallow.
‘That reminds me,’ said Laurent.
He stood, the goblet hanging casually from his fingertips. He regarded Aimeric a moment. Then he changed his grip on the goblet, lifted it, and brought it with calm brutality in a backhanded blow across Aimeric’s face.