TWENTY-EIGHT
“Your cousin is getting mated.”
As Saxton was led through the doors of his father’s study, that was the greeting he received.
Here we go, he thought. And next time they talked, no doubt it was going to be about said cousin having a perfectly healthy baby boy who was going to grow up normal. Guess this was his birthday “gift”—a report on some relation living the right sort of life, with subtitles that he was a shame to the bloodline and a great waste of DNA for his father.
Actually, the happy little updates had started up soon after his father had learned that he was gay, and he remembered every single statement, arranging them like ugly figurines on the mantel of his mind. His absolute, bar-none favorite? The newsflash a couple of months ago about a gay male who had gone out with another gay male of the species, and ended up beaten in an alley by a group of humans.
His father had had no idea he was talking about his own son on that one.
The hate crime had been the capper on his first date with Blay, and he had nearly died from the injuries: There had been no going for medical help—Havers, the only physician in the race, was a devoted traditionalist, and was in the practice of turning away known homosexuals from treatment. And going to a human doctor had been a no-go. Yes, there were twenty-four-hour clinics open in the city, but it had taken all the energy he’d had left to drag himself home—and he’d been too ashamed to call anyone for help.
But Blay had shown up—and everything had changed for them.
For a while, at least.
“Did you hear what I said,” his father demanded.
“How wonderful for him—which cousin is it?”
“Enoch’s son. It was arranged. The families are going to have an eventing weekend to celebrate.”
“At their estate here or in South Carolina?”
“Here. It is time for the race to reestablish proper traditions in Caldwell. Without tradition, we are nothing.”
Read: You are worthless unless you get with the program.
Although naturally his father would couch the directive in much more scholarly terms.
Saxton frowned as he finally looked at the male. Sitting behind his desk, Tyhm had always been thin, an Ichabod Crane figure in suits that hung like funeral draping from his bony shoulders. Compared to their last visit, he appeared to have lost weight, his sharp features holding up his facial skin like supports under a pitched tent.
Saxton didn’t look anything like his sire, that dark hair and those dark eyes, that pale skin and lanky body not what the genetic lottery had dealt him. Instead, his mother and he had been pea-and-pod in disposition and decoration, fair and gray eyed with a healthy glow to their skin.
His father had often remarked on how similar he was to his mahmen—and looking back on it, he wasn’t sure that had been a compliment.
“So what are you doing for work,” his father muttered as he drummed his fingers on the leather blotter.
Over the male’s head, the portrait of his own father loomed with identical disapproval.
As Saxton was pegged with two sets of narrowed eyes, there was an almost irresistible urge to answer that question honestly: Saxton was, in fact, First Counsel to the King. And even in these times, when regard for the monarchy was at an all-time low, that was still impressive.
Especially to someone who revered the law like his father.
But no, Saxton thought. He was going to keep that to himself.
“I’m where I was,” he murmured.
“Trusts and estates is rather a complicated field. I was surprised you chose it. Who are some of your more recent clients?”
“You know I can’t divulge that information.”
His father brushed that aside. “It would not be anyone I know, surely.”
“No. Probably not.” Saxton tried to smile a little. “And you?”
That demeanor changed instantly, the subtle distaste ebbing out and being replaced by a mask that had all the revelatory quality of a slab of slate. “There are always things to command my attention.”
“Of course.”
As both of them continued speaking in a volley, the conversation remained stilted and irrelevant, and Saxton passed the time by putting his hand in his pocket and fitting his iPhone to his palm. He had planned his departure, and wondered when he could take his cue.
And then it came.
The phone on the desk, the one that had been made to appear “old-fashioned,” rang with an electronic bell that sounded as close to real as anything not actually brass could get.
“I’ll leave you,” Saxton said, taking a step back.
His father stared at the carefully hidden digital display … and appeared to forget how to answer the thing.
“Goodbye, F—” Saxton stopped himself. Ever since his orientation had been revealed, that was an f-word worse than fuck—at least when used by him.
As his father just waved him off, he had a passing relief. Usually, the worst part of any in-person visit was the departure: As he’d leave, and his father confronted yet another failed attempt to bring his son around, it was the walk of shame all over again.
Saxton hadn’t come out to his family. He’d never intended his father to know.
But someone had blabbed and he was fairly sure he knew who.
So every time he left, he relived getting kicked out of this very house about a week after his mother had died: He’d been booted with his clothes on his back, no money, and nowhere to stay as dawn approached.
He’d learned later that all of his things had been ritually burned in the woods out behind the manor house.
One more handy use for all the acreage.
“Shut the door behind you,” his father snapped.
He was more than happy to obey that one: Closing things silently, for once he didn’t waste a moment on all the pain. Looking left and right, he listened.
Silence.
Moving quickly, he went back to the parlor and through into the library, pulling the doors shut behind him. Taking out his phone, he started snapping pictures, his heart beating as fast as he was tapping. He didn’t bother to arrange angles or do anything sequentially—the only thing he cared about was that the focus and the lighting were good and that he didn’t move—
The rumbling of doors opening directly behind him had him spinning around.
His father seemed confused as he stood in the doorway that led out of his study. “Whate’er are you doing?”
“Nothing. I was just looking at your volumes. They’re quite impressive.”
Tyhm glanced at the doors Saxton had shut behind himself—as if wondering why they were closed. “You should not have come in here.”
“I’m sorry.” Surreptitiously, he slipped the phone into his pocket, tilting his torso to the side as if to nod at the books. “It’s just … I wanted to marvel over your collection. Mine are cloth covered.”
“You have a set of the Old Laws?”
“I do. I bought them from an estate.”
His father went forward and touched the pages of the closest volume open on the round table. The loving way with which he stroked those words, that paper, that inanimate object … suggested that maybe Saxton wasn’t the biggest heartbreak in his life.
If the law let him down? That would break him.
“What is this all about?” Saxton said softly. “I heard the King was shot, and now … this is all about the succession.”
When there was no reply, he began to think he needed to leave in a hurry: There was a high probability his father was in with the Band of Bastards, and it would be folly to think Tyhm would hesitate for even a second in turning his gay son over to the enemy.