For the reasonable price of one sapphire necklace.
And after the boy gave up his only protection?
Darzin smiled to himself. It would be nice to kill the boy in front of his father. He’d enjoy the look on Therin’s face—just before Therin too saw the bloody end of Darzin’s sword.
He was still smiling when he turned the key in the lock and walked into Kihrin’s room, unannounced.
Then he stopped smiling.
For a moment, he forgot where he was. He forgot who he was. Most importantly though, he forgot who she was. For the span of a few seconds, not more than a few hammered, pounding heartbeats, Darzin looked at the scene with the eyes of any man who had just discovered his wife in the arms of another.
Those few seconds were nearly enough to ruin everything.
Darzin had entered the room quietly from force of habit. He found his “son” still asleep in that preposterous bed, but the boy wasn’t alone. Alshena lay next to him, the sheet partly covering her naked body. Her red hair spread out in ripples over the boy’s chest. One arm draped possessively over his abdomen.
A discarded bottle of wine lay next to the bed, along with clothes—Alshena’s agolé and undergarments, the boy’s boots, kef, and shirt. The boy’s necklace, that damned sapphire, rested uncovered in the hollow of his throat. There was no doubt, could be no doubt, of what had happened here.
The brat had bedded his wife.
Only when he redoubled the pressure of his clenched fist did he realize he had, unknowingly, drawn his sword. Darzin stepped forward, and raised his arm to strike down the appalling little bastard who would dare do something like this to him.
Then he saw the bruises on Alshena.
Her body was marked by the signs of a violent infidelity: scratch marks down her back, bruises on her thighs, even bite marks. These two had not made love, but battled, and Kihrin had proved a merciless opponent. Perhaps that explained why a ripped piece of embroidered blue silk had been used to tie one of the boy’s hands to a tree trunk, where it was still trapped, even in sleep.
But Talon can’t bruise …
And it was only then the Lord Heir remembered that it was not his wife in bed with the boy, and never had been. The real Alshena D’Mon had been dead for months now, her body and brain devoured by the ever-hungry mimic who had taken her place, her soul sacrificed to summon Xaltorath. The very same Xaltorath Darzin had used to track down the Stone of Shackles—and also its bearer.
Darzin knew Talon was skilled at improvisation. If she had seen an opportunity, she wouldn’t have waited for permission to take it. All the anger drained away as Darzin understood her intention: Talon was giving him a gift.
The mimic raised her head to look up at him. She smiled, those green eyes shining, large and luminous in the soft morning light. She nodded: Do it.
Darzin didn’t think he’d ever seen Talon look so beautiful.
He steeled himself and took a deep breath. Then he grabbed a fistful of her lovely red hair, and dragged her, screaming, out of the bed.
“HOW DARE YOU? YOU WHORE!” Darzin raged as he backhanded her across the face and sent her stumbling away from him. “You would cuckold me with my OWN SON?” He hit her again, hard enough to split her lip and splatter red blood across delicate skin.
Kihrin woke. “Leave her alone!” his “son” shouted.
“Please, darling, please, I can explain—” his “wife” sobbed.
Darzin hit her a third time, a punch to the face that bloodied his own knuckles and would have likely broken her jaw if she had been any mortal woman. Alshena fell to the floor, sobbing and gasping for breath. She pleaded, cried, begged for forgiveness.
Her performance was flawless.
“Stop it!” Kihrin screamed. “You want to hurt someone, hurt me. You like that well enough!” The boy twisted at the silk holding his wrist, but his anger and struggling bound the silk into a tighter, stronger twisted vine. The more he pulled, the harder the knot resisted.
“Time for your next lesson, son,” Darzin hissed. “No one takes what is mine. I’ll kill her before I see her in the arms of another man.” He raised his sword and hoped Kihrin would call his bluff. He could pretend to kill Talon easily enough, but he wasn’t ready.
“NO!” Kihrin screamed. “Please Father. It’s not her fault. It’s mine. I did this! I raped her.”
Darzin paused.
Kihrin repeated, “I raped her. I was drunk and I … got carried away.”
There was a long silence as both men focused on Kihrin’s wrist, still tied to the trunk of one of the trees. The Lord Heir raised an eyebrow and pointedly stared at Kihrin.
The room was quiet, even the sound of Alshena’s crying muffled by her hands.
Kihrin stared at his wrist and sighed. “That, uh … that would have gone better if I wasn’t still tied up, wouldn’t it?”
Darzin smiled. “Yes. Yes, probably.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought too.”
“As bloodied as she is, there’s a good chance I would have believed you,” Darzin pointed out.
“Ah. Well, good to know if I ever feel like framing myself for rape.” The young man’s eyes were filled with self-loathing and pleading desperation. “Please don’t kill her, Father. I’ll do anything you want.”
Darzin stared at his so-called son. He contemplated asking for the necklace right there. It’s possible the boy might agree, just to save Alshena’s life. An even more delicious irony, since the boy was only here because of the real Alshena’s sacrifice to Xaltorath. But what was a one-night affair to a youth who had drunk deep from the cup of decadence? The boy had been so rough on her. His tastes were not those of a novice, but of the hardened libertine.
Kihrin was, like Darzin himself, hard on his toys.
He could not take the chance. When Darzin made his move, there could be no doubt and no options for Kihrin—no way out.
Darzin knelt over Alshena, who cringed away from him. “Get back to our rooms, bitch. If I ever catch you doing this again, or if anyone ever finds out about this, I’ll have my men sew shut that greedy cunt of yours for good.” He slapped her one more time to make sure she understood.
Alshena nodded her blood-smeared face and crawled to the door like an injured animal, whimpering and leaving bloody tracks in her wake. Darzin watched her for a moment, a slight smile on his lips, before he turned back to Kihrin. The boy was trying to untie the taut silk knot around his wrist.
“I used to know a nobleman who had the legs of his wife amputated. Said it was like clipping the wings from a parrot—it kept her from flying away.” Darzin walked over to the table and poured himself a glass of water. “Said she didn’t need to walk for what he wanted her for anyway.”
“That’s sick,” Kihrin hissed.