The courtesan smiled, revealing straight white teeth and a spark of bravery that he found distinctly appealing. “You didn’t answer my question, Your Highness.”
Lifting her up by the waist, Keris rolled, setting her gently on her feet next to the bed. Handing her the gown that she’d discarded on the floor earlier, he then located his trousers, the garment clinking as he lifted it. Keris pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket and gave them to her. “Given the odds of me surviving are low, it seems unkind to take a wife, never mind a whole harem of them. Paid girls don’t weep when their customers meet untimely ends.”
Her head cocked. “How interesting that you believe your wives would.”
Despite himself, Keris laughed. “Careful, girl. I might decide to keep you for another few hours if you’re not more sparing with your wit.”
She walked toward the door, retrieving one silk slipper and then another. Fingers resting on the handle, she turned to him, offering a slow smile full of promises. “My name’s Aileena, if you liked me enough to see me again, Your Highness.”
He did like her. But the second the thought crossed his mind, the room seemed to shadow and Raina’s dead eyes filled his vision, reminding him that the things he liked got broken. The people he liked got killed.
Never again.
“If I cared what your name was,” he said, “I would’ve asked.”
Aileena stared at him for a heartbeat, her eyes wide with hurt; then she was gone, the door slamming shut behind her.
Lying on his back, Keris pressed his forearm against his eyes, taking deep, measured breaths, trying to gain control of the miserable twisting guilt that filled his core. Guilt that had haunted him ever since that cursed night in Ithicana’s bridge.
Why hadn’t he seen it coming?
The door opened and shut, and a familiar voice said, “Well, Keris, just when I think you can’t stoop any lower, you prove me wrong. Just what did you say that was bad enough to make a whore cry?”
Not lifting his arm from his face, Keris said, “I told her I wasn’t interested in knowing her name.”
“You’re a prick, you know that? Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because I liked her.”
Keris could all but feel his younger brother roll his eyes, then Otis said, “This is why no one likes you, Keris. You’re an awful person.”
“You like me.”
“No, I do not. I am merely inured to your acid tongue. Now for the love of God, put some clothes on. I don’t need to see so much of you so soon after eating dinner.”
Groaning, Keris pulled on his trousers and then walked barefoot across the room to where Otis stood surveying the shithole that was Nerastis, the city clearly visible through the gaping hole in the tower’s domed upper floor. Younger than Keris by a matter of months, Otis was tall and broad, his brown hair slicked back in the current style, his beard trim and neat. Rubbing his own clean-shaven chin, Keris asked, “Father send you?”
“Yes. He’s heard that you are refusing to attend meetings of the war council to discuss strategy. That all you’re doing is alternating between burying your face in books and burying your face in the breasts of Nerastis women.”
Picking up a glass of wine that he’d abandoned at some point, Keris drank deeply. “Accurate.” Or at least, partially so. Ever since the attack on the bridge, he’d been unable to focus on his studies, ever reminded that the pursuit of them had seen Raina killed. A kingdom conquered.
Why didn’t I suspect his plan?
Otis rounded on him, his blue eyes filled with frustration. “Why are you behaving this way? This is your chance, Keris! Father’s giving you the opportunity to prove yourself worthy of the crown, and you’re throwing it away!”
“I’m not interested in proving myself to him.” Especially given that proving himself to his father meant becoming a killer like every other goddamned member of his family, women included. It was almost a shock that Veliant children weren’t born with their hands stained red.
“You’re going to get your own throat slit.” Otis’s face reddened in the way it always did when he was upset, his hand reflexively touching the pocket where Keris knew he kept love letters from his late wife. Her ship had been sunk by the Valcottans several months ago, and the letters were deeply precious to him. “You’re his son. He doesn’t want you dead, but Maridrina must come first…”
Keris shrugged, draining the glass and setting it aside.
“This isn’t still about you getting caught unaware with the Ithicana invasion, is it? God, Keris, let it go. It’s history.”
Keris stared into the darkness of the night, seeing the light fade from Raina’s eyes. Seeing Ithicanian blood pooling on the grey stone of the bridge. “History, is it? It seems like only yesterday that Father used me to start a war.”
Otis snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. The force you were with was but a small piece in a very large plan.”
“Lara’s plan.” And if only he’d allowed Raina to send his escorts back to Vencia, it might have failed. His cowardice, his selfishness, had been Ithicana’s doom as much as his conniving sister.
“Apparently.” Otis rolled his shoulders with obvious discomfort, not alone in his unease that their father had kept their sister in a compound in the Red Desert, allowing Serin to turn her into a fundamentalist warrior bent on Ithicana’s destruction. The revelation that she’d been responsible had come from the Ithicanians themselves, those who’d been captured spitting at Lara’s name, referring to her only as the traitor queen.
“Has Serin found her yet?”
Otis shook his head. “She’s either dead or disappeared into the wind.”
Given what she’d accomplished, Keris hoped it was the former. And that it had not been swift. “And the Ithicanian king?”
“Stubborn bastard is still fighting. There are orders to take him alive, if possible.”
“To what end?”
Leaning against the raw edge of the dome’s broken wall, Otis gave him a long look. “Never mind Ithicana, Keris. Never mind the bridge. Never mind Lara. You need to focus that mind of yours on the Valcottans and taking the southern half of Nerastis back under Maridrinian control. The ranking officers are meeting downstairs in an hour to discuss strategy. Join them.”
To take the rest of Nerastis would mean hundreds, if not thousands, of lives lost. And for what? To hold a larger piece of the rubble that was this city? Keris refused to be part of such an undertaking. “I wouldn’t have the slightest idea of where to begin. You go instead—everyone will be happier for it.”
“Likely. But I’m not in command. I’m not the heir.”
Keris slapped his younger brother on the shoulder. “Soon enough, Otis. Soon enough.”