“Of course,” he said simply, as if it were a foregone conclusion. “Where else would I be?”
“With your betrothed,” she said, and not without accompanying bitterness. “Where you belong.”
“I belong with you,” he countered.
How she wished it were true. But her wounding had changed nothing. She couldn’t stay here in Varros. As soon as she was well enough, she would go. She had to, for the sake of her own self-preservation.
“Surely there are more important duties awaiting the king,” she said quietly.
“We’ll discuss that later. For now, the doctor should see you.” He was frowning ferociously down at her, worry evident in his gaze and his tone.
“I don’t want to see the doctor,” she protested weakly, disliking the notion of being prodded and examined.
She felt as if she’d been at war, every part of her body aching in some strange new way. Surely an examination by the physician would only enhance her pain.
But Maxim remained impervious, his face a stern, impassive mask. “I’m not taking any risks with you, spitfire. You’re too precious to me.”
Before she could offer further objections, he stalked to a bell pull, calling for a servant.
It had takenone week of sheer, absolute hell for Tansy to fully fight off the infection that had claimed her in the wake of her wounding and regain her strength. And it had taken one week for Maxim’s men to find the bastard responsible for it.
He approached the prisoner who had been chained to the walls of the palace’s dungeon. The man was familiar, save the scar marring half his face and the patch he wore over one eye. He’d last seen that face covered in blood on the battlefield years ago.
Maxim had left him for dead.
“Rodrigo,” he spat in greeting, the name like a curse.
The other man sneered. “The bastard who pretends to be king.”
“I’m the rightful King of Varros,” he countered with a calm he didn’t feel. “It was your leader who was the pretender.”
Maxim would show Rodrigo no weakness.
Rodrigo released a bitter, mocking laugh. “You’ll never be the true king. You were born of a false union.”
Inside, his heart was galloping. The madness that was never far lurked at the edges of every moment. He kept his cool façade in place by sheer force of will.
“My father’s half brother was born of an annulled union, and he was disavowed,” he countered. “He seized control through bribery and other nefarious means, and he led a pack of brutal, ravening murderers in doing their damnedest to destroy this land.”
Mina’s soot-streaked, badly beaten face rose in his memory. And then he thought of Tansy falling into the water, blood everywhere. Rodrigo would pay for the pain he had inflicted upon those weaker than himself. He would pay dearly. Maxim would make certain this time that the villain could never harm anyone again.
“King Charles was the rightful heir to the throne.”
He smiled grimly. “And yet, I am the one who now occupies the throne whilst he rots in the dirt.”
“If my hand had been steadier, you’d be rotting with him,” Rodrigo growled, tugging at his restraints, to no avail.
He was secured to the ancient stone walls. Maxim had made damned certain that the hold the devil had been placed in was their most secure. There would be no escape.
“And if the assassins you sent after me in London had been trained half as well as my men, I wouldn’t be here now,” he acknowledged. “But none of them could do the job properly. Not any more than you and your men could win the war.”
Rodrigo’s glare was venomous. “We may not have won the war, but we did enjoy passing around your whore. Pity I couldn’t manage to kill the new one the same as I did the old.”
His blood went cold, rage making his shoulders tense and his fingers ball into fists at his sides. “You ordered the attack on the village that day.”
It wasn’t a question; Maxim already knew the answer. It was why he had faced Rodrigo in battle. Why he had done his best to slay him. His best hadn’t been sufficient. But this time would be different.
Rodrigo grinned. “It was a great pleasure to watch the torches set flame to the houses and burn the traitors to the ground.”
