Page 4 of The Consort's Curse
The Lord Chancellor favored me with another sour smile, an acknowledgment of my transparent lies and my cowardice. I’d have preferred to think of it as a calculated and temporary retreat from hostilities, but I couldn’t even sell that lie to myself.
“Your sister Edelfina, like so many very young people, has made some poor decisions of late,” he said. “She has begun to associate with the wrong friends. Spoken rashly. Worse, written rashly. Letters that have been collected and sent to me by men whose job it is to ensure the duke’s safety and Calatria’s peace and prosperity. You ought to sit down, Remi.”
The sparkly black spots swimming across my eyes agreed with him. Through the haze, I saw a chair a few feet away, and I staggered to it, my knees giving out as I fell into it with a thump. My sister. Oh, gracious gods, my sister. Fifteen years old. Exactly the age at which I’d been burning with impotent rage over my father’s fate. If I’d been on the mainland, going to taverns and meeting other young firebrands, railing against injustice to a like-minded group rather than at the unhearing sky over the abbey’s quiet, windswept garden…
Propping my elbows on my knees and leaning down kept me from fainting, barely. My face had gone numb.
“You see my dilemma,” the Lord Chancellor said, sounding as indifferent and unsympathetic as the sky itself, with a thin, false veneer of solicitude painted over it. “It is my duty, as the highest non-royal official in Calatria, to ensure that no sedition is allowed to take root. And yet, one so young might deserve an opportunity to redeem herself. To change her opinions. Particularly when her elder brother will be married to my own son. Do you not agree?”
Fifteen was old enough to be convicted of treason and sent to the headsman, particularly when the accused had a good reason to hate her liege lords—such as the conviction and execution of her father. It didn’t matter if the letters were genuine, or if Fina’s “sedition” had been no more than a complaint about our family’s reduced circumstances. Duke Lucian might be less paranoid than his father, and require some proof before he pronounced guilt, but no ruler in history had ever been casual about treason amongst the nobility.
I couldn’t take the risk.
Trading my freedom, my body, and my self-respect for my sister’s life could only be considered cheap at the price. Even if I hadn’t loved her with all the force of my heart, I’d have done anything to spare my mother that fresh, redoubled horror and grief.
It took several tries before I could force words through the thickness in my throat. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I agree.” He didn’t speak. “To everything. Everything you ask of me.”
“Very good,” he said. “Very good, Remi. But I’ve already told you what’s required of you. Stefan has a brilliant future ahead of him with the guidance and assistance I can provide. Your task is to please him and ensure that he’s in a receptive frame of mind. And speaking of which…to that end, I’ve made sure he understands thatyouare in a receptive frame of mind, and of body. That you’re eager to leave your dull, religious exile and become the consort of a wealthy, powerful man, and that you’ve had some previous experience of other men, enough that he won’t need to take any particular care to cosset your sensibilities. He might not be inclined to press the issue with a completely innocent virgin.”
Lord Ettori grimaced, as if he could hardly believe his own son could be weak enough to show basic human decency. And instead, Lord Ettori wanted to ensure Lord Stefan wouldn’ttake any particular care to cosset my sensibilities…oh, gods, if he said one more word, I might throw up on his shoes the way I had on his secretary’s. I’d thought Abbot Junius’s way of discussing pleasing my husband-to-be had been revolting, but this! What kind of man encouraged his own son to use his new consort like a whore?
“He believes you’re entirely willing, as, of course, you will be,” Lord Ettori added, and his tone brooked no denial. “This will be a legal, consummated marriage. And you will say nothing to Stefan to contradict what I’ve told him, or your sister will face the consequences of my displeasure. Do you understand? Look at me, Remi, and tell me you understand.”
This kind of man, obviously. The kind of man who threatened the life of a fifteen-year-old girl to get his way.
You will do as you’re told, and you will keep your wits about you, and there’s nothing else for it.
“Yes.” I forced myself to raise my eyes from the carpet and meet his, even though I’d rather have gazed into the face of a venomous snake. “I understand.”
“Good. Then I’ll send you to freshen up after your long journey and ready yourself for the wedding. But I do have one more inquiry to make. How long has it been since you took your potion, and how long will it be before you would need relief from your…curse?”
My potion. The bottles had been in a small satchel inside my trunk, which I hadn’t seen since Ser Prendian had gotten his grasping claws on it.
The dread that had gathered in a hard, hot knot at the base of my skull grew into a painful throb.
“My last dose was yesterday morning, my lord. I’d need another…” My curse cycled fairly quickly, on an interval of slightly more than two days. “Tomorrow. Around midday.”
The Lord Chancellor didn’t do anything so crude as sigh with relief, but the lines around his mouth softened slightly. “Excellent. The wedding will be tomorrow, so you’ll no longer need your potion. You won’t require it once you’re married.”
You won’t require it.
Won’t require it.
The words rang and rang in my ears, setting up a humming resonance like running a finger around the mouth of a crystal goblet. My uncle had used to do that for me, to amuse me.
Before Duke Treviso, and this man who’d just taken away the very last semblance of my autonomy, had murdered him along with his only sibling. And now he’d forced me to his will by threatening mine.
The Lord Chancellor picked up a bell from his desk and gave it a quick shake. Ser Prendian opened the door so instantly that I suspected he’d had his ear pressed to the keyhole. “Take Remi to his rooms and see to it that he’s appropriately attended, and then return. Remi, I will see you at the wedding.”
And with that ominous promise, the Lord Chancellor dismissed me both literally and figuratively—he’d turned his attention to a document on his desk before Ser Prendian had even finished chivvying me out the courtyard door.
Chapter Two
Ser Prendian whisked me out of the office and away through the palace, through a blur of gleaming gilt and bright colors, vases and paintings and mosaics and open galleries offering tantalizing glimpses of verdant gardens.
It left me dazzled and overwhelmed, barely able to keep up. I hadn’t seen anything this ornate in six years. My mother had sent me to the abbey shortly after my family’s relocation to the country, when I’d begun to show signs of magic. She’d suspected I’d bear the daylight god Ennolu’s curse. Dromos, who ruled the darkness, had gifted mages with a small taste of godly power in defiance of his elder brother Ennolu’s will, and all humans who could use magic were born at night under Dromos’s aegis. But those of us unlucky enough to enter the world at dawn, as I had, or at dusk, fell partially under Ennolu’s influence—and in his anger at Dromos for defying him, he cursed any mages he could reach.
Dromos had given me power. But Ennolu had made certain that I couldn’t use it without giving another man power over me, his reminder of Dromos’s inferior position in the hierarchy of the gods. Ennolu’s curse would bring on pain, fever, and death if I didn’t take a lover inside me. The only other option, a potion that suppressed the curse, also suppressed my magic.
