The Black Prince: Part II (29 page)

He’d feel better if he slept. He knew he would. Everything would seem normal again, and he could work through what had happened. Maybe even talk about it with…he didn’t know.

He laid his head down on the pillow. When he shut his eyes, the room spun less. That was a relief. His lips curved into a small smile. He didn’t even bother to pull the coverlet up, just focused on remaining still. On breathing in and out.

Slowly.

He felt sleep’s creeping fingers.

The stone was still in his pocket.

H
e sat up, rubbing at his eyes, and was shocked to see that dusk had fallen. How long had he been asleep? Hours, apparently, but it didn’t feel so. He could have just lain down.

He stretched. His muscles felt stiff. But his mind felt a little clearer. Raising his arms over his head, pulling them from side to side, felt good. He was still tired, though. He thought he might go back to sleep. At least for a little while.

The door opened. He started, like he’d been caught doing something naughty. It was Isla. She seemed surprised. But of course. He was in bed.

“Asher! You’re in bed.”

Dumb cunt. His mother was right: Isla was a master only of stating the obvious. And that not very well. Would she tell him to wash his hands, next?

“Are you well? I could have dinner sent in.”

“I’m fine.”

She recoiled a little at his tone. “Oh. Alright then. Your father and I are about to eat, if you’d care to join us. Just down the hall.”

In their private dining room, she meant. There were no guests to entertain, at the moment, and Tristan didn’t always feel like eating with his servants. He preferred things, on the whole, cheerless and dark. And Isla preferred whatever he preferred, because she had about as much spine as a bread pudding. Except…even as he thought these thoughts, part of him didn’t know where they came from. They felt like the most natural thoughts in the world but…not.

His scowl deepened. “Do I have a choice?”

“Of course, dear.”

Then I’ll eat outside on the lawn.
“Then I’ll be in, in a minute. Unless you’d like to stand here and watch me wash my hands? Inspect them for dirt, after?”

“I—of course.” Isla left.

Asher stared at the closed door for a long time.

He was angry, yes. And confused. More than confused. But at the same time, he didn’t understand his own reactions. He didn’t hate Isla, didn’t truly think of her as stupid. Just the other night he’d sat in this very spot, thinking about how brave she was. How compassionate. And yes, how intelligent. Isla might be quiet, and compliant after her own fashion, but that was a choice she made due to her own character. Not the result of weakness.

But everything had changed. Because of what he’d learned, from his mother? Because of the old confusions, the old resentments, her reappearance had awakened?

His gaze shifted, as he studied the familiar landmarks of his room. He felt calmer, again, now that he was alone. He hadn’t expected the surge of white hot—just rage—that had flowed through him when the door opened. And which was now gone, with equally as little explanation. Leaving him feeling like a round of bread that had been split open and scraped out, leaving only the crust.

This room had been his now for some time. Had been a place of comfort, and escape. His mark was all over. His books, stacked neatly at one end of the hearth bench. His boots, placed beneath them. Atop his dresser sat his boxwood comb, on a tray that had been a gift from Isla. His other assorted personal care items: his earscoop, with a dull blade on the reverse end that could be used to push the grime out from under his fingernails. His flint, steel, and tow, that his father—Tristan—had helped him make. His wax tablet, along with an assortment of styli and pens, covered the surface of his desk.

Callas had promised to help him create a first aid kit. Like Quentin, Callas practiced the art of healing. Asher had watched him mend the hurts of men and even animals, setting a horse’s leg so it wouldn’t have to be put down. Asher had thought, until that morning, that he wanted to be more like Callas. To help others, as he did.

Now he couldn’t help but recall all of Rowena’s accusations against the man and wonder if there was some truth to them.

He blinked. His room seemed…different somehow. Like each familiar object had been removed and replaced with a changeling.

He forced himself out of bed, and tucked his shirt in. He washed his hands, but quickly. The water was like ice. He wanted, suddenly, very much to be elsewhere. He felt like he’d wandered into a strange place. Into someone else’s home. And could sense, as one sometimes could in these situations, that he wasn’t wanted.

He dried his hands off on his breeches and headed for the door.

A few minutes later he arrived at dinner.

His father looked up from the dinner table. His expression was dark with the promise of anger, like thunderclouds rolling in. Isla still looked worried. Asher stood in the door, staring at them.

“So good,” his father hissed, in that peculiar manner of his, “of you to join us.”

Dinner appeared half over. But Isla had only come to him minutes ago—hadn’t she? He couldn’t remember. He surveyed the table: roast capon and what looked like mashed celery root, along with some sort of tart. All foods he normally loved. Especially the celery root.

He sat down at his usual place.

Isla served him, without comment.

Like he was a child, he thought, incapable of serving himself. And, deep within, a surge of his previous anger. Even as he also recognized that she was just being nice. She thought he was ill, was all. He was acting like he was. He’d certainly been rude enough to her earlier. And here she was, giving him extra celery root instead of telling him to sleep it off without dinner.

Because she was spineless, that was why.

There were spoons, for the celery root. Carved from horn. He picked his up and used it to push his food around his plate.

He and his father were supposed to be leaving on the morrow. So he was discussing that. Asher wasn’t listening. He didn’t even care. His father? He didn’t even know if Tristan
was
his father. Not after this morning. Nor, in truth, if he wanted the man to be. He was a murderer and, even worse, he was a bore. Who
cared
about tariff disputes. Certainly not anyone around here.

“Why not just cut off their heads?”

One of his father’s dark brows arched slightly. A signal of surprise equivalent to another man’s keeling over from shock. “Child?”

Don’t call me that
. “Well that’s what you do, isn’t it? Kill people who disagree with you?”

His father put down his eating knife. A precise, deliberate gesture. “Explain yourself.”

He poured himself some wine, without asking permission. Not watered, but from the carafe his father had. He sipped. And then putting down his cup, made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just nauseated by hypocrisy.” His eyes met his father’s. “You talk a good game about the king’s writ, when it suits you. Forgetting, or at least expecting the rest of us to, that when I was born
you
were the upstart. Your acts, and your brother’s acts, were treason under that same writ.”

Isla gasped.

“All that changed was who was king.”

Asher didn’t even know where these thoughts were coming from. But they felt true. And moreover, he couldn’t hold them in.

“You depend, for your survival, on that very set of rights you’d kill Maeve for asserting. The right of kings do do what they want. And,” he added, “speaking of that right, I have to ask: are there
any
vows you hold sacred? Certainly not your marriage vows. I’d speculate that you killed your wives to save yourself from the stain of adultery but the entire castle knows that there isn’t a dairy maid you haven’t fucked.”

Isla dropped her cup. It rolled across the table, leaving a fan of spilled wine, and fell to the floor. The wine, in the candlelight, looked like blood. Her round moon face was a complete blank. Wine had spattered the bodice of her dress. What a cow. What a stupid, stupid cow. Her mouth hanging open just
like
a cow’s. His mother had been right: Isla was breeding stock and nothing more. He wondered, his eyes on hers, how he ever could have thought she was pretty.

“I have never so much as touched a woman but save your mother—”

“She’s not my mother.”

There was silence.

And then, “I see.”

Asher’s eyes narrowed. “And you’re not my father, are you.”

It wasn’t a question.

He glared at the older man, ignoring the cow entirely. His mind was so filled in that moment, and with such ugly thoughts that, there was no room left to question them. The voice from earlier had been silenced. The voice that had asked him
why
he was so angry. Well, he knew why he was so angry. He was angry because he was being held captive by a sadistic monster and his latest bed warmer, who’d lied to him about his mother’s intentions—his true mother’s intentions—as part of their greater ploy to dupe him into serving their ends.

“Desist this at once.” The duke’s voice was low. Cold.

Isla was sniffing into her napkin.

“It seems we have a great deal to discuss, child,” he continued, his words measured. There was anger there, but it was restrained. Like fire, banked down to coals. Asher could see that fire in the duke’s eyes.

“But not in this manner.” He waited, letting the moment stretch. “Bring yourself under control,” he said, “and apologize. Or prepare to receive the whipping of your life.”

“Because violence solves everything.”

“Where reason fails.”

The rage was like a black curtain, obscuring his vision. The words leaving his mouth didn’t even feel like his, but of course they were. “How many times a night do you fuck her, trying to get an heir? Or can’t you get it up, and that’s why you adopted me? To cover up the fact?”

His father rose. He loomed over Asher like an avenging spirit from one of Isla’s tales. His very silence, his very restraint, was what made him so terrifying. Tristan never blustered, like some other men. Never lost his temper. He just…acted.

Asher stood up, too, pushing his chair back. The room was spinning again. Tristan seemed to grow and grow, towering above him now like the shadows. Shadows that climbed up the corners of the room and folded over on themselves, obliterating the carved ceiling. They appeared to be moving, too. Undulating like swamp grass. Reaching for him….

His heart was thumping like it was attempting to escape his chest. He put a hand to his throat. And then he fell backward, hitting his head on the edge of the chair before collapsing prone on the floor.

The voices around him were just droning, now. He couldn’t make out individual words. He could barely hear anything over the blood rushing in his ears. It was growing louder, as his coughs turned to choking. He couldn’t have been poisoned, the part of him that clung to consciousness thought. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.

One of the shadows dropped from the ceiling, materializing into his father. A cool hand felt his brow. And a voice, his voice, cut through the rest. “Tell me, child.”

Asher’s mouth worked. At first, no sound came forth. Only a high-pitched whistling as he fought against whatever had taken up residence inside him. But then, in a supreme act of will, he summed himself up and forced the word. He didn’t know where it came from. He’d had no intention of telling his father—anyone—until that moment. Even during that moment, he fought against himself. To hold the word back.

His throat felt parched. His lips were cracked. “Maeve.”

H
is father’s voice remained calm, but now contained a force. A pressure to respond, that would not be denied.
Could
not be denied, even by whatever had closed Asher’s mouth. Although it fought hard and Asher, trapped inside his own unresponsive form, felt like he was being ripped in two.

“Did she touch you? Give you something?”

He didn’t ask how Maeve had gotten onto the island. Didn’t waste time with anything that wasn’t relevant. That she had was obvious, at this point. The question now was to save him from whatever she’d done. And Asher couldn’t explain; both because he couldn’t speak and because, even if he could have, he didn’t know. But at that last question, he nodded.