Petur couldn’t ask for more, for fear of jinxing what he had.
Chapter fourteen
Deyvid
In the wake of his return, Deyvid could tell that Petur was leaning hard into his love for his sister’s children. The next few months at court were positively transformational, with Prince Petur methodically seeking out every opportunity possible to do two things: first, to show off his individual prowess when it came to shifting, which was immense, and two, to make it very clear to everyone present that Delainie was well loved and even more well protected. There were a few rumbles about girls being tattletales that died quickly after Givencie herself, in kitten form naturally, slashed hems, clawed faces, and generally made such an incredible nuisance of herself that people avoided her out of sheer self-interest. They couldn’t avoid the heir apparent the same way, but when Givencie couldn’t be there, Petur was.
These interventions, plus Deyvid spending a solid month on his niece’s swordsmanship skills, led to a distinct improvement in her status at court. Whether or not her parents saw it, Deyvid couldn’t say. He had assumed they would care, but to be honest, he hadn’t seen a lot of caring out of Tania or Jemallately. They were consumed with preparing for the convocation, a bi-annual meeting of the rulers of the Seven Nations of the Southlands, where they hacked and hewed at territory disputes, tax disagreements, and proposals for alliances until everyone was, if not perfectly satisfied, at least not about to declare war.
Preparations for the convocation naturally meant that Petur’s time was dearer than ever. In addition to ensuring that his nieces could walk through their own court without being snickered at, and protecting Deyvid from direct confrontations with Tania, he was reviewing security protocols seemingly night and day, both for what would be maintained in their absence and what they would enact on the road. This year’s convocation was to be held in Deloth, just to the south of Mersaighe. It was a long and dangerous road to travel under the best of circumstances, which these certainly weren’t.
Deyvid wanted to be able to tell Petur to slow down, to take it easy. He wanted to be able to tell Petur that he didn’t have to work so hard. Now that Deyvid was back, he could take more of the burden of protecting the family on.
“You can’t, though,” Petur said bluntly to him one night a few days after his return. “I know you want to, and believe me, I appreciate that, but there’s no way I’m going to put you in Tania’s line of sight right now.”
“This is the sort of work I’m good at,” Deyvid insisted. “This is what I trained foryearsto do.”
“Exactly,” Petur replied. “All the more reason for you not to remind her of the fact that you used to be a very successful assassin, don’t you think?”
Deyvid hated that he could see Petur’s point. “At least leave me the freedom to work with the members of the Shifter Corps who will make up our escort,” he said. “Let me design practice scenarios for them, ways to ensure our safety on the road. Allow me to handle that much.”
Petur grinned a little crookedly at him. “You’re very determined to keep us all alive.”
“Obviously,” Deyvid said with a bit of exasperation, “but more than that, I’m determined to keep you from working yourself into an early grave.”
“Says the man who spent months skulking through forests and dodging squads of killers in his quest for intelligence.”
“Exactly,” Deyvid agreed. “That’s how you know I know what I’m talking about.”
“So smug,” Petur said, clasping his hands around Deyvid’s head and drawing him in close until he was just a breath away from a kiss. “Lucky for you, I like smug.”
“Lucky foryou,” Deyvid scoffed.
Whatever he would have said next was cut off by the press of Petur’s mouth against his. Deyvid relaxed into the kiss, looping his arms around Petur’s neck and drawing him in closer, tighter. Gods, it felt like they could never hold on tight enough these days. Their reunion had been tender and satisfying, but the time allotted for it was gone all too soon. They didn’t even have a full day in each other’s company before the necessities of their positions had them haring off in opposite directions once more.
Actually, being able to spend a night together now was almost as hard as it had been when Deyvid was five hundred miles north. Petur kissed him one more time, gently, then stepped back. “I need to go see to the girls’ coverage,” he said.
Deyvid licked across his swollen lips. “I should, ah, I should go put together recommendations for whom we should take with us as protection on the road.”
“I agree,” Petur said immediately. “Nice choices, well done. Couldn’t have done it better, now just don’t fuck it up.”
Deyvid rolled his eyes. “Why do I even bother thinking for myself when you’re right here having all the thoughts I need for me?”
“I’m glad you acknowledged my intellectual superiority, darling. It’s very big of you.” Petur patted him on the chest. “Understanding is the first step in accepting.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
Petur left with a laugh, and Deyvid congratulated himself on being able to do something to make his lover smile after what seemed like an eternity of frowns.
In the month of time that remained between Deyvid’s return and the royal family leaving for the convocation, there were three more assassination attempts. It was a staggeringly large number so close together—a ridiculous amount, to be honest—and two of them were so juvenile and crude that they couldn’t be taken seriously.
The most harrowing thing about them, Deyvid decided, was the fact that they were now targetingPetur. Not the queen, not her consort, not her children. Her brother. It was clear that whoever was behind this and however many of them there were, they had honed in on the stumbling block when it came to accomplishing the rest of their goal: Petur. He was keeping his family alive through dint of sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness and skill. If they managed to take him out, the rest of the family would be easy pickings.
Deyvid hadn’t been certain after the first attempt whether the assassin was targeting Petur or not. After all, it was a poisoning, and those tended to get messy. In this case, it could have been fatal for an entire company of the Corps, with two fronds’ worth of spotted glineas slipped into the communal pot in the barracks kitchen while Petur and Deyvid were spending the night there. Spotted glineas was pungent and bitter, but if the scent could be masked enough, it only took a single bite to kill an adult.
Fortunately for them, one of the Corps members was the son of an herbalist, who had learned at a young age to identify tainted food when his absent-minded father didn’t wash hishands well enough before heading into the kitchen and trying to feed the rest of them. The poisoned food was identified and thrown out, but the poisoner remained at large.
The next attempt was another uncomfortably widespread attack, this time in a training ground ten miles out of the city, in a town that had been abandoned after a particularly harsh hurricane ten years previously. It was an ideal place for the shifters to practice urban warfare, but many of the timbers of the bedraggled buildings were old and rotting.
