23
Kylar peered through the glass inset in the balcony door. In the darkness of the queen’s bedchamber, a couple was writhing on the queen’s bed. From their frenetic pace, they were either very close to completion or very energetic. From habit, Kylar looked at the hinges of the balcony door, then realized they could squeal like a herd of pigs and never be noticed. He looked back through the window, suddenly shy. Still going.
A gentleman would wait. A wetboy would use the distraction. Kylar slipped inside.
The young man grunted and froze. Hands smacked loudly as the woman grabbed his buttocks and urged him to keep going. He thrust twice more, then wilted.
“F*ck!” Terah Graesin said, pushing him off her. “I thought I was going to make it this time.”
“Sorry, Sis,” Luc Graesin said.
Kylar felt suddenly lightheaded. The ka’kari whistled softly. ~I haven’t seen royal incest for a couple centuries, and that was in Ymmur, where it’s expected.~
Luc snuggled into Terah’s side and laid his head on her chest. Considering that he was substantially taller and bigger than his sister, it was oddly submissive. Kylar was struck by the difference in their ages. Luc was perhaps seventeen and looked younger; Terah was twenty-five and looked older. How long had this been going on?
Durzo had taught Kylar that when something surprised you on a job, only one question mattered: does this change what I have to do? The answer now was no, unless Luc stayed all night. Kylar put aside all the speculations about what this meant and refocused. There was nothing to do but wait, so Kylar moved behind a pillar in a quiet corner of the room.
Luc propped himself up on an elbow. “Sis, I wanted to talk to you about tomorrow morning. This morning, whatever.”
“You’re going to lead your first battle,” Terah said, pushing a lock of hair back behind his ear. “You’re going to be safe. I’ve given the Guard commands to keep you back from—”
“That’s just it, Ter.” Luc got out of bed and began dressing. “I didn’t fight at Pavvil’s Grove. I didn’t go on any raids. I didn’t fight highlanders at Screaming Winds—”
“Do not bring up Logan Gyre.”
“I’m the Lord Commander of the Royal Armies of Cenaria, and my experience of battle is limited to the fistfight I had with the pig keeper’s boy. I was ten. He was eight. I lost and you had him thrashed.”
“Generals fight with their brains. Your scouts were instrumental to our victory at Pavvil’s Grove,” Terah said.<?p h/p>
“How do you do that?” Luc asked, pausing in the act of lacing his tunic. “You fit two lies in one sentence. It wasn’t our victory. It was Logan’s. Why we rule now rather than having our heads on pikes, I don’t know. And I completely botched handling the scouts. Men wondered if I was trying to screw up. I was so bad they thought I was a traitor.”
“Who said that?” Terah asked, her eyes alight.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What do you want, Luc? I’ve given you everything.”
Luc threw his hands up. “That’s what I’m trying to say! You’ve given me everything that a man might earn after a lifetime of—”
“What do you want?” she interrupted.
“I think we should stop.”
“Stop?”
“You and me, Ter. Us. This.” He wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“Do you still love me?”
“Sis . . .”
“It’s a simple question.”
“Insanely,” Luc said. “But if people find out, they’ll install Logan in a second.”
“Logan won’t threaten us forever.”
“Sis, he’s a good man. A hero. You’re not going to kill him.”
She smiled dangerously. “Don’t tell me how to rule, Luc.”
“Terah,” he said.
“You listen to me. You’ll bitch and moan and fret, like always. And I’ll take care of it, like always. I take the risks, you take the rewards. So why don’t you and your conscience go f*ck all the maids, while I get called a slut.”
“You expect me to believe you didn’t sleep with all those lords?” Luc asked.
She slapped him. “You bastard. They never laid a hand on me.”
“So much can be accomplished without hands.”
She slapped him again.
“Don’t, don’t do that again,” Luc said.
She slapped him again. He did nothing.
“I let them call me a slut,” Terah said. “I let you f*ck other women. I wake up two hours before dawn on the nights you visit so a maid can change my sheets so that when my laundress—who’s a Sa’kagé spy—washes them there’s no evidence of us. Why? Because I love you. So I think I deserve a little gratitude.”
Luc held her stare for a few moments, then deflated. “I’m sorry, Ter. I’m just scared.”
“Go get some sleep. And come to me after your victory.” Her smile held a promise.
Luc’s eyes lit with boyish mischief. “How about I come to you now?”
“No,” she said. “Good night, Luc.”
“Please?”
“Good night, Luc.”
After Luc left and the queen had been asleep for half an hour, Kylar drew his bollock dagger. It was pitted and blunted from the corrosive powers of the Devourer.
~Sorry.~
He reached out to prod Terah. Stopped. There were things more menacing than a pitted dagger.
Kylar studied Terah Graesin as he’d learned to study his deaders. She was a woman whose bearing and reputation were a greater part of her appeal than nature’s gifts. In this unguarded, unrouged moment, she looked more like a skinny farm girl than a queen: her lips thin, cracked, colorless. Her eyebrows tiny lines. Her eyelashes short. Her nose slightly hooked. Her milky skin marred by several pimples. Her face obscured by strands of loose hair.
In that moment, he couldn’t help but respect Terah Graesin. She’d been born into one of the great families of Cenaria, but her spirit was indomitable. She had risen past men who despised her for her youth, her sex, her reputation. Terah Graesin hadn’t become queen by accident. But here, Terah Graesin was just a woman alone, about to be woken by a nightmare.
Sometimes, Kylar couldn’t help but pity the bastards. Durzo had taught Kylar that the best wetboy understood his deader better than the deader understood himself. Kylar believed it, but every time he did something calculated to inspire terror, he wondered if he was trading away his humanity. It was one thing to terrify goons. Was it different to terrify a young woman in the intimacy of her bedchamber?
But Terah Graesin wasn’t merely a woman. She was a queen. Her idiocy would kill thousands—and she planned to kill Logan, the rightful king. Act now. Doubt later.
Kylar went to the other side of Terah’s bed and pulled back the covers to give himself space to sit. With the patience of a wetboy, he eased his weight onto the mattress by degrees. Finally, he sat, legs folded, hands draped on his knees, back straight, the face of judgment angry.
The young queen was sleeping on her side, with her hands tucked under her pillow, so it was easy to grab the thick down blanket and pull it down. Caught between the necessity for patience—any rapid change would wake her—and the coldness of the room which would have Terah reaching for blankets even in sleep, Kylar pulled back the sheet to uncover her nakedness.
Kylar didn’t look. If anything, he was disgusted. He wanted her off-balance, vulnerable. She stirred. He schooled himself to stillness, sitting upright once more, and began to glow a cool blue, gradually brightening.
This was the shaky part: a deader’s startle response was involuntary. Scaring a screamer and telling them not to scream was futile. He could wake her with a hand across her mouth, but that wouldn’t give the flavor of terror he was looking for.
Terah Graesin woke slowly, as he hoped. Squinted, then opened her eyes slow3d hg fly. Blinked, once, twice as if against the dawn light that usually came in her windows. Focused closer, closer. Then, all in a rush, the Night Angel came into focus, eyes burning with blue flame, puffs of fire escaping his lips with every breath, body alternately invisible, wispy as black smoke, and gleaming hard iridescent black metal muscle. Her breath caught, and a squeak came out. Not loud, thank the God.
Her legs spasmed and kicked and she grabbed for the covers. Flailing, she scooted toward the edge of the bed. Kylar sat motionless as a god and reached out only with his Talent. He was still clumsy with this, but he made a lucky grab and caught Terah’s throat with his first try. The hand of Talent pinned her to the bed.
Drawing up a rigid hand in a striking position called a knife hand, Kylar made it literal by forming the ka’kari into a leaf-shaped blade over his hand. He whispered, “A scream would be a mistake, Terah. Understood?” He used her name to make it more familiar, more creepy when she remembered it.
Eyes wide, she nodded.
“Cover yourself, whore. You reek of your brother’s seed,” he said. He released her throat and drew the ka’kari back from his hand. With jerky motions, she pulled up the sheets and held them in white-knuckled fists, drawing her knees up, trembling.
The Night Angel said. “While you rule my city, I demand you rule well.”
“Who are you?” she asked, voice tight, still off balance.
“You will call off this attack. Garuwashi has no food. He can not hold this siege.”
“You’re here to help me save Cenaria?” she asked, incredulous.
“I will save Cenaria, with you or from you. Give me two days. Garuwashi doesn’t know how bad it is in the city. He will negotiate.”
Terah Graesin was already recovering. “He’s refused me. He swore never to negotiate with a woman.” That was news to Kylar. Why wouldn’t Garuwashi negotiate?
“Not with you then,” Kylar said. “With Gyre.”
Her eyes lit with fury. “Gyre? You’re Logan’s creature? You were the one who saved us in the garden during the coup! All you cared about was him. You saved him, didn’t you? You saved him and now you want him to get the glory. After all I’ve done to get here, you expect me to let Logan win? I’d rather die!” She stood haughtily and grabbed her robe from a chair. “Now I suggest—”
Kylar was on her. Before she could even think to scream, he slammed her onto the bed, straddled her, punched her solar plexus to knock the wind from her and clamped a hand over her face. He grabbed a hairpin from her bedside table and drove it through the meat of her arm. He let her gasp in a breath and then filled her mouth with the ka’kari to keep her from screaming.
Unable to expel her scream from her mouth, air gushed from her nose and blew snot all over his hand. He ground the hairpin back and forth, then grabbed another.
She bucked and kicked and tried to scream through her nose, so he blocked her nose with the ka’kari too.
Her eyes bulged and the veins on her neck stood out as she struggled in vain to breathe. She tried to flail, but Kylar had her arms pinned with his knees. He brought the hairpin into her view and touched the point to her forehead.
Though her throat was still working convulsively, Terah Graesin stilled. Kylar traced the point of the hairpin down her forehead, between her eyes, then across the delicate skin of one eyelid.
For a moment, he couldn’t help but wonder what Elene would think if she saw him here, doing this. The queen’s terror sickened him, and yet he held the cruel smile on his face. He lifted the hairpin away from her eye so she could see Judgment. “You’d rather die?” the Night Angel asked. “Really?”