“I’ll have no more talk of the mountains or the frontier, do you hear?” King Julius boomed on. “They are godforsaken places that have no significance for the kingdom. I want nothing more to do with any of it, and I will cast whoever speaks of these things out of the palace. I’ll hand you over to the mob, do you hear me?”
I couldn’t breathe, let alone get up from where I’d spilled to the floor. Within the space of a few moments, I’d learned more about my home and my chances of getting back there, back to Dushka and the Sons, than I’d heard since the trip to Aktau.
A slight shuffle and a faint sound of a clearing throat pulled my attention to Mara. She wore a wide-eyed look, as though she was telling me something. Something significant. It was enough to make me wonder if this was her reason for bringing me to the palace. Had she known about the state of the mountain pass and the king’s attitude toward the frontier the whole time, or had she hoped my presence would draw it out?
“Uncle, Conrad and I need to return to the college,” Mara said softly, moving casually to the bed to repack my healer’s kit. “We have afternoon classes, and if we do not return to the college before they shut and lock the gates, we’ll be trapped in the city overnight.”
“I don’t want that,” King Julius said, turning from a tyrant to an uncle in no time at all. “Go on, then, but return as soon as you can. You’re one of the only people I trust.”
He shot a look around the room at his courtiers that hinted he despised all of them, and that he would snap his fingers and have any one of them murdered in a heartbeat.
I finally pulled myself to a standing position, bowing and scraping and not caring how big of a sycophant it made me look like. As soon as the king waved me away, I grabbed my healer’s kit and made for the door with Mara at my side.
“Dear God, Mara,” I hissed once we were in the hallway. “This place is a viper’s nest, but after what was just said about the frontier—”
Mara held up a hand and made a sound to silence me. It was a good thing too, because as we rounded a corner, picking up speed as if we were fleeing the palace, the red-haired woman from the harvest festival turned the corner and nearly ran into us.
My eyes went wide at the sight of her. She was dressed as any other noblewoman would have dressed now instead of in leather, and her hair was caught up in a braided style, but it was definitely her.
She gaped at me the same as I stared at her and said, “Mara, who is your charming friend?”
My already sour stomach flopped dangerously in my gut as Mara answered, “Mother, this is Conrad Kettering, a fellow student at the college.”
I nearly fell over again. This woman, the one who had dressed so provocatively and who hadn’t batted an eyelash at the way Lady Heloise had been violated was Mara’s mother? Magnus’s sister?
No wonder Magnus had fled for the frontier.
“Conrad,” the woman said, her eyes heating and her face flushing slightly as she eyed me up and down. “I remember you. You never did answer my question about your pleasure.”
“Mother,” Mara hissed, as though the woman were embarrassing her. It was such an ordinary daughter’s reaction that I nearly laughed.
“Men,” I answered quickly, even though it was a tiny lie, not wanting to encourage her. “I take my pleasure in men.”
Mara’s mother laughed low in her throat and reached out to touch her fingertips to my lips. She then drew her hand down the front of my healer’s tunic and grasped my cock and balls. “Liar,” she said, sparks in her eyes.
I cursed my body for reacting, but it was as panicked about everything going on around me as the rest of me.
“Mother, he really does like men,” Mara said, grabbing my arm and tugging me away from her mother. “He’s fucked half the other students in the college, and he hardly ever makes it out of the bathhouse without sucking someone’s cock after he’s bathed.”
I whipped my head to Mara, ready to protest that I wasn’tthatbad. Although….
“Anyone can be turned,” Mara’s mother said as Mara dragged me along, taking me away from her. “Come back soon, Conrad Kettering, and I’ll prove it to you.”
Mara made a frustrated sound—one that reminded me of Lucius from before his brother died, and of Anton. “She’s impossible,” she muttered as she pulled me on toward the courtyard at the front of the palace. “It’s a wonder anyone knows who my father is.”
Part of me wanted to come up with some kind of joke, but I was beyond the powers of speech. I let Mara take me out through the courtyard and beyond the gate—where she was leered at by the head guard—and back into the city.
The snow had picked up, and I turned up the collar of my coat—which I’d never had a chance to take off while treating the king—as we dashed back through the city in the waning afternoon light.
It wasn’t until we made it back through the college gates, just as they were closing them, that everything else rushed back at me.
“King Julius has given up on the frontier,” I said, putting too much excitement into those words.
Mara made a sound and pinched her face. “He’s given up on the frontierfor now, because the campaign of the new army was a disaster and people want him removed from the throne or killed,” she said. “He might change his mind about it in the spring, once the anger dies down.”
“Will the anger die down?” I asked as we marched back through the college grounds to our dormitory house.
“I don’t know,” Mara sighed. “They’ve kept you and the others busy on purpose, so you won’t have time to go out into the city to hear what people are saying, but for obvious reasons, they haven’t been as strict with me.”