He continued his path without answering for so long that I didn’t think he would. “Because they cast away the night.”
I swallowed, then pulled him to me, connecting his lips to mine, but for something softer, gentler. “Will you tell me what happened? Before?”
He leaned back against the pillows, tugging me over so my cheek pressed to his chest, my eyes facing away from his. His chest rose, fell and rose again beneath me. “Yes. What do you want to know?”
“How did they—how did they get you involved?”
His finger traced a pattern along my back. “The attention was flattering at first. Odes have been written to the High Lady of Steelcrest and Nightshade’s hair.”
Luminous silk, and cascades of gold, woven by the heavens’ hand!
He lifted a lock of my own mousy brown between his fingers. Vines of unwatered moss spreading across the dead riverbed, maybe.
He brushed it against his lips. “I had some experience with women, though having the estate butler as a father was something of a noose. The maids found reasons to linger and doorways to haunt, but father was strict and didn’t condone relationships beneath the stairs.” His tone changed. “There was nothing he could do abovestairs, of course.”
I moved my cheek along his chest.
His fingers continued brushing my hair against his lips. “Melissande Nightshade started her venture in the same way I later did, I suppose. With a smile. She started with willing villagers, visiting men. But revenge, power, and control are hardly to be found with the willing.”
He drew a slow breath and gently smoothed the lock back into my hair. “She realized what she truly wanted when a boy engaged to a village girl rebuffed her advance. She wanted what wasn’t freely offered. She broke him, broke the girl, and moved on, voracious in her new quest. She wanted strong boys, ones she could trap, who had no choice just like she didn’t have a choice in her marriage. Under her complete power, the more subjugated and unhappy, the better.”
I pressed a kiss against his chest.
“She enlisted other women with similar interests, vain or vicious, and formed a little club.”
“And then you…”
His chest surged beneath my cheek twice. The clock ticked in the background, the only sound in the room for thirty ticks.
“My fate was sealed the day I denied her, though she later said she would have kept me regardless. She let me see it—wantedme to—the way she looked at Lucian, only eight at the time, staying with me while mother was seeking care. I told her not to touch him.” He laughed, an ugly laugh. “Naive. Father was traveling with Steelcrest to his various estates, mother was ill, and Melissande Nightshade made a…deal…with me.”
“Deal?”
“I would do whatever she wanted, she would pay the herbalist to give mother the most expensive treatments, and she would leave Lucian alone.”
I didn’t need him to say that the opposite was also implied—that the herbalist would not treat his mother with safe things at all.
“Mother would get better and Lucian would be safe. That is what mattered. Still is. I would do whatever it took to keep Lucian safe.”
“But you weren’t.”
“Three reasonably attractive women, two lauded among the gilded, one held as goddess above all the rest. Any boy or man’s dream.”
“No.”
A laugh shook his chest, short and cold. “Young bodies don’t always agree with the mind. And magic can do much to remove any will that remains—not every type of magic exchange has to be consensual—more’s the pity.”
I curled my fingers into a fist. “What made you finally decide to leave after…after being there for so long?”
“Allowing it for so long?”
I stiffened and tried to look at him, but his arm held me in place. “That is not what I said.”
“Mother died.” His voice thinned, so soft I could barely hear the words. “Lucian would be at the estate permanently. I couldn’t let that happen. And something was off with their...club. I never found out what, but they had gained anew intensity. A different madness worked their eyes. I let a few things slip to my father in a moment of rage. Mother was dead, out of their reach, and my father could fend for himself. I couldn’t risk Lucian.”
“Your father—”
“He figured it out quickly enough with what I said, with the oddities on the estate he had chosen to ignore. He found me packing and gave me everything he had on him, which unfortunately wasn’t much. Lucian and I left that night.”
