Stefan, on the other hand…his eyes. Gods. If whatever emotion lurked there was sincere, that might be more frightening than anything.
I drew a deep breath, closing my eyes for a moment against the dizziness. When I opened them, both Stefan and Lord Benedict were watching me. The weight of their gazes felt like it pressed me down into the mattress.
“My father was Lord Ralf Hunziker,” I said at last, into a silence so absolute I could’ve drowned in it. “Duke Treviso executed him and his brother for treason. In the middle of his—when he was executing everyone. After…after, my mother took us to Piziano, down the coast, where she had a small estate that didn’t get taken by the duke. I went to an abbey when my magic showed. She thought I’d be safer there. But my little sister stayed with her.”
“I remember that.” Lord Benedict’s face had set into grim lines, his gray eyes stormy and distant. Whatever he was remembering, it wasn’t just this personal tragedy of mine. His magic bristled about him like the fur of an angry cat. “I didn’t know your father, but Ser Livio was a great swordsman. Put me in my place once when I was about your age, knocked me on my ass in front of a whole fencing studio. And you don’t need to argue their innocence to me. If there were any real traitors executed during those couple of years, they were made that way by watching Treviso beheading someone twice a week.”
My uncle had indeed been a great swordsman, and he’d worked hard to hide his disappointment that I didn’t seem toshare his talent. Fina had still been too young to pick up a sword, and Livio had never had children of his own. He’d been much younger than my father. Still young enough that a whole family could’ve been in his stolen future.
“Thank you,” I whispered, the tears starting to thicken my throat leaving me unable to say more.
Lord Benedict’s eyes sharpened and focused on me as he came back from wherever he’d gone. Were his memories as distressing as mine?
“Nothing to thank me for. I did little enough at the time,” he said, with a deep note of bitterness. “In any case, you have no reason to love Zettine. So explain, if you would, why you’re willing to do his bidding.”
That came out of his mouth with the weight of a general’s command, enhanced by the force of his magic pressing on mine, enclosing me.
“He claims my sister has written certain letters that have come into his possession.” I glanced back and forth between Stefan and Lord Benedict. Their expressions didn’t tell me much. “Letters that are—he didn’t specify what. He used the word sedition. But he didn’t give me any particulars. He made it sound like he’d have her arrested and executed, so there must be something there. But I don’t know what. And she’s only fifteen! I’d do anything to protect her. Even—”
I cut myself off, realizing almost too late that insulting Lord Benedict’s close friend might not win his sympathy.
But it didn’t matter. “Marry me,” Stefan said, his tone dry, but with his face so neutral it might as well have been carved from stone. “Even marry me. It’s all right. I’m aware that it’s a fate worse than death, but slightly better than the death of a younger relative. I have no illusions on that score.”
Lord Benedict frowned, and his glaze flicked over to Stefan. “Focus on the important matters to hand, not on yourself-flagellation,” he snapped, and I choked on a startled laugh. The urge to laugh died away completely as he added, “The blackmail aspect of this aside, if Zettine has evidence of a real plot against the throne, this becomes a much greater matter.”
Oh, gods. No! I popped up like I’d been on springs, so quickly that my body moved faster than my equilibrium. “Ohh,” I moaned, leaning over my lap, as Stefan cursed and suddenly appeared at my side, tugging on the blankets and crouching down to peer into my face.
“Remi! What’s wrong? If you’re ill again, Benedict will—”
“You can’t,” I gasped, lifting my head and meeting Lord Benedict’s eyes. I tried swatting Stefan away, but he stuck to me like a burr. “Edelfina’s fifteen. My lord, she’s no more a traitor than our father was, and she’s barely more than a ch—”
“Take a breath, Lord Remi,” Lord Benedict cut in. “Lucian doesn’t share either his father’s paranoia or his fondness for bloodshed. And unless my sword was the only thing between her and cutting Lucian’s throat, I wouldn’t hurt her, either. Fifteen-year-old girls don’t get beheaded in Lucian’s dukedom, they get referred to their mothers for discipline. Calm yourself.”
If I hadn’t been so busy sucking in that breath he’d recommended, I’d have told him where he could stick his adjuration to calm. But bloody hell. He meant it. I could tell he meant it. Fina might be safe—so long as her “sedition” didn’t rise to an actual threat to Duke Lucian’s life, at least.
“My concern isn’t her actions, necessarily, but those of whoever she’s associating with,” Lord Benedict went on. “Believe me, I know how ironic it would be if real treason against Lucian arose from hatred of his father, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take it seriously. Lord Remi—”
“He’s practically fainting, Ben. This has to wait,” Stefan put in, and this time, as he tried to ease me back onto the pillows,I didn’t resist. “Examine him and tell me what he needs for tonight. Everything else can wait until morning.”
“I’m going to pull the blanket down, then,” Lord Benedict said. “Only to your lower ribs, Lord Remi, calm yourself, Stefan,” he added. It made me feel slightly better that he used the same condescending words and tone on my husband that he had on me.
Stefan was right; I didn’t have much left in me. But I opened my eyes to slits to watch Lord Benedict work. Condescending and dangerous as he might be, he was also the only twilight mage I’d ever seen actually using his magic.
He reached out and laid his hand over my sternum. His eyes did that misty thing again as he looked at something no mundane eyes could see. I tried to see it too; I ought to have been able to, after all. But I caught only the faintest glimpses, as if the air became partially opaque for an instant at a time, and felt only a slight warmth under his hand. And that might have been from his hand itself, and not magic at all. A faint itchiness wriggled through me, spreading out from where he touched me and through my chest and down my limbs, and then it disappeared.
Finally he lifted his hand and nodded decisively, his eyes refocusing on my face. “You were definitely poisoned,” he said. “The traces are still there in your blood.”
My fists clenched in the bedding. “Definitely poisoned,” I repeated. “You already suspected it? And didn’t tell me?”
“You were asleep when we discussed it,” Stefan said. “But Benedict sent a trusted man to Lady Vienni’s to get hold of some of the wine. It must have been in all of it rather than just in your glass. There was no way to predict which you’d take.”
“The poison wasn’t the same that was used on me, luckily, but it brought your curse on early. And negated the effect of your potion,” Lord Benedict said to me. “The purpose could’vebeen to kill you from the effects of your curse. Or to cause an embarrassing scene at the ball. Or—”
“Or to ensure the consummation of our marriage,” Stefan said, his voice very grim.
Lord Benedict turned to look at Stefan, his eyebrows rising. “Ah. Interesting. If that’s your immediate conclusion, then…?”
Stefan bared his teeth in something completely unlike a smile. “It was my father, of course. The one who forced us into this farce of a marriage in the first place.”
