Damen said, ‘You haven’t told him.’
‘You don’t even deny it?’ said Jord. A harsh laugh, when Damen was silent. ‘You hated us so much, all this time? It wasn’t enough to invade, to take our land? You had to play this—sick game as well?’
Damen said, ‘If you tell him, I can’t serve him.’
‘Tell him?’ said Jord. ‘Tell him the man he trusts has lied, and lied again, has deceived him into the worst humiliation?’
‘I wouldn’t hurt him,’ said Damen, and heard the words drop like lead.
‘You killed his brother, then got him under you in bed.’
Put like that, it was monstrous. It’s not that way between us, he ought to have said, and didn’t, couldn’t. He felt hot, then cold. He thought of Laurent’s delicate, needling talk that froze into icy rebuff if Damen pushed at it, but if he didn’t—if he matched himself to its subtle pulses and undercurrents—continued, sweetly deepening, until he could only wonder if he knew, if they both knew, what they were doing.
‘I’m going to leave,’ he said. ‘I was always going to leave. I stayed only because—’
‘That’s right, you’ll leave. I won’t allow you to wreck us. You’ll command us to Ravenel, you’ll say nothing to him, and when the fort is won, you’ll get on a horse and go. He’ll mourn your loss, and never know.’
It was what he had planned. It was what, from the beginning, he had planned. In his chest, the beats of his heart were like sword thrusts.
‘In the morning,’ said Damen. ‘I’ll give him the fort, and leave him in the morning. It’s what I promised.’
‘You’re gone by the time the sun hits the middle of the sky, or I tell him,’ said Jord. ‘And what he did to you in the palace will seem like a lover’s kiss compared with what will happen to you then.’
Jord was loyal. Damen had always liked that about him, the steadfast nature that reminded him of home. Strewn around them was the end of the battle, victory marked by silence and churned grass.
‘He’ll know,’ Damen heard himself say. ‘When word of my return to Akielos reaches him. He’ll know. I wish you would tell him then that I—’
‘You fill me with horror,’ said Jord. His hands were tight on his knife. Both his hands, now.
‘Captain,’ a voice called. ‘Captain!’
Damen’s eyes were on Jord’s face.
‘That’s you,’ Jord said.
CHAPTER 17
Hand hard on Enguerran’s arm, Damen dragged the injured Captain of Ravenel’s troops into one of the round Patran tents on the edge of the battlefield, where they waited for Laurent.
If Damen was rougher than he needed to be, it was because he didn’t approve of this plan. Hearing it described, he’d felt as though his body was under a weight, a hard pressure. Now he released Enguerran in the tent and watched him get to his feet without helping him. Enguerran had a wound in his side that still leaked blood.
Laurent, entering the tent, pulled off his helm, and Damen saw what Enguerran saw: a golden prince with his armour covered in blood, his hair sweat-dampened, his eyes unsparing. The wound in Enguerran’s side had come from Laurent’s blade; the blood on Laurent’s armour was Enguerran’s.
Laurent said, ‘Get on your knees.’
Enguerran fell to his knees in a clank of armour.
‘Your Highness,’ he said.
‘You address me as your Prince?’ said Laurent.
Nothing had changed. Laurent was no different than he’d always been. The mildest comments were the most dangerous. Enguerran seemed to realise it. He stayed on his knees, his cape pooling around him; a muscle moved in his jaw, but he didn’t lift his eyes.
‘My loyalty was to Lord Touars. I served him for ten years. And Guion had the authority of his office, and of your uncle.’
‘Guion does not have the authority to remove me from the succession. Nor, it transpires, does he have the means.’ Laurent’s eyes passed over Enguerran, his bowed head, his injury, his Veretian armour with its ornate shoulderpiece. ‘We are riding for Ravenel. You are alive because I want your loyalty. When the scales fall from your eyes about my uncle, I will expect it.’
Enguerran looked up at Damen. The last time they had faced one another, Enguerran had been trying to bar Damen from Touars’s hall. An Akielon has no place in the company of men.
He felt himself harden. He wanted no part of what was about to unfold. Enguerran returned a hostile gaze.
Laurent said, ‘I remember. You don’t like him. And, of course, he out-captained you on the field. I imagine you like that even less.’
‘You’ll never get inside Ravenel,’ Enguerran said, flatly. ‘Guion made it through your lines with his retinue. He’s riding for Ravenel right now, to warn them you are coming.’
‘I don’t think he is. I think he’s riding to Fortaine, so he can lick his wounds in private, without my uncle and I forcing him to make any uncomfortable choices.’