The Sentinel Mage

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE





KAREL CHEWED HIS dinner slowly. Around him, men ate, talked, laughed. “I hear he makes her wear the crown when he tups her,” he heard someone say, beneath the din of half a hundred conversations.

Every muscle in his body froze. What?

“He ruts her breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” someone else said. “Can’t keep away from her.”

“Do you think she’s any good?”

Someone sniggered. “The duke certainly thinks so.”

Karel’s fingers tightened around his knife and fork. He stared down at his plate, at the slabs of coarse sausage, the mashed turnip, the potatoes. How can you laugh about such a thing?

But these were the same men who rutted bondservants, whether they were willing or not, who raped casually.

“You’d know, wouldn’t you, islander?” An elbow dug him in the ribs. “Is she any good?”

Someone leaned across the table. “Does the duke leave the door open? Let you watch?”

Anger flared inside him, so intense that for a moment he couldn’t breathe. Don’t let them bait you, boy. His uncle’s voice rang in his ears. They’ll try to make you fail. Don’t allow them to.

Karel swallowed his rage. He fixed a bored expression on his face, lifted his head, and glanced at the men looking at him. I will kill you if I get the chance. He committed their faces to memory and resumed eating.

“Stupid son of a whore,” he heard one of them mutter.

Karel cut a piece of sausage, lifted it to his mouth, chewed slowly. He’d spent years ignoring crude jibes, cruel taunts. They’d said worse things about his mother, about the island bondswomen they rutted each night. Why, now, did anger threaten to overwhelm him?

Don’t let them provoke you, he told himself. He had too much to lose: his own freedom, his family’s. Ignore them.