“I answer to He before you.”
The air thickened.
Othrik turned, waving a young priestess over. “Escort the Vaich upstairs and ensure that he does hisduty. When he has finished, take his spend out for the crops.”
“I’m not—” Skyre burst, but Othrik held up a gnarled hand.
“You would not wish all of Cullach to think you impotent?”
Skyre glared.
“Of course not. Now, go upstairs andfinish the task. A Vaich’s seed mustdrench the land, for by its grace our fields are made fertile.”
The Vaich’s throat was dry. He wanted Othrik hauled off. He wanted him beaten bare on a stage. Then maybe… maybe he would know what it felt like to be a king.
The thought drove Skyre from the room, not in defeat, but shame. It wasn’t Othrik he hated. It wasn’t that he’d been defied. It was the fact thatstrips of his skin were being sheared away, and he felt raw and bloody with every breath.
“My Vaich?”
He turned, seeing the priestess shadowing him, expectant eyes hidden behind her veil. That’s how they all saw him—through bars of silk. A caged animal on parade.
“Shall I aid you?”
“No,” he growled. “I’m perfectly capable—”
He stopped before his apartment door. The druid was within, still resting. He could not face him again. Instead, he glanced down the corridor. He wanted someplace private. Not so simple in a fortress full of drunks.
But if the druid was inhisroom, then…
“You stay here,” he muttered to the priestess. “I’ll bring it to the Thrys myself.”
He made his way to the southwest wing.
Skyre had never been in the druid’s chambers—never seen the place in which he’d forced the wildling to reside. To its credit, the room was comfortable and rivaled the Vaich’s in size.
It was empty. The hearth was cold. And the curtains had been pulled closed. Narrow ribbons of golden sunlight streaked between them. It was a beautiful day outside Rhyd-hal’s undented armor. But within was a screaming silence.
Skyre stepped softly, afraid of being noticed by the quiet. He took in the rumpled blankets, the discarded clothes. A bowl of half-dried silver paint sat on the table. The same paint he had scrubbed from the druid’s skin.
On the nightstand was a melted chamberstick and an empty pewter cup that smelled faintly of flowers. The druid always smelled of flowers. Skyre couldn’t name a single one, but thought his scent was always sweet, as if the druid spent mornings wading in fields of fresh blooms.
It wasn’t true, of course.
Every morning, he woke up there. In that very bed.
Skyre’s fingers grazed the linen sheets. He brought them to his nose. It smelled of him; that same floral note. Unknowable. Undeniable.
He could see the druid’s face. Every inch of his ghostlike complexion like the suds upon the sea. Those spectral eyes spoke all the words the druid refused to say. He wished, just once, he could see them smile.
The wine had long thinned in the Vaich’s blood, but the thought of the druid was enough to make him ache.
Skyre had slept with maybe a hundred women, and his knuckles whitened as he forced their memory to his mind. But no matter how many times he tried, he couldn’t remember any of them. Their faces were blurs, the nights he’d spent with them like overheard stories—unremarkable things that had happened to someone else.
But the memory of the druid was relentless.
He could still see him upon the altar, pinned and offered like a sacrament, and nausea curled in his belly alongside something else.
Something far more cruel.
