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They were to be a gift from the new King of Akielos to the Regent of Vere—a highly generous gift.
What’s a death but easy, quick. It’s supposed to haunt you forever that the one time he beat you was the one time that mattered.”
Laurent had stopped dead the moment he had seen Damen, his face turning white, as though in reaction to a slap or an insult.
“I speak your language better than you speak mine, sweetheart.”
“So the country will be ruled by a bastard and a whore,” said Laurent. “How appropriate.”
“Think what that’d be like, getting a leg over the Prince.” I imagine it would be a lot like lying down with a poisonous snake, thought Damen, but he kept the thought to himself.
It struck him how ridiculous it was to collar a slave with gold.
“No,” said Laurent, with satisfaction. “Crawl.”
The only reason Damen had that language was because his father had insisted that, for a prince, learning the words of an enemy was as important as learning the words of a friend.
His blue eyes were as innocent as the sky; only if you looked carefully could you see something genuine in them. Such as dislike.
Damen would have attributed it to spite—that Laurent intended to make him pay for having overheard the exchange last night with his uncle. But the truth was Laurent had looked at him like that from the first moment he had laid eyes on him.
He was worse sober.
Laurent might talk like he’d been raised on the floor of a brothel, but he had a Veretian courtier’s mind, used to deception and double-dealing.
The methodical ritual of unlacing made Damen wonder, scornfully, if Veretian lovers suspended their passion for a half hour in order to disrobe.
You have a scar, Laurent had said.
And what did it mean, to be a prince, if he did not strive to protect those weaker than himself?
“When someone doesn’t like you very much, it isn’t a good idea to let them know that you care about something,” said Laurent.
“I can end this any time I like?” said Laurent. “I haven’t even begun.”
Damen found that the necessity of winning Laurent over to his cause was giving way to the sobering realisation that he had put the fate of the others into the hands of a volatile, malicious man he did not trust and could not predict, nor understand.
He was not inclined to believe that cruelty delivered with one hand was redeemed by a caress from the other,
“Is there anyone at this court who isn’t my enemy?” “Not if I can help it,” Laurent said.
“Shall I make a face at the ones you don’t like, or is it enough to just look like a barbarian?” “Shut up,” said Laurent, calmly.
Laurent was a nest of scorpions in the body of one person. Torveld looked at him and saw a buttercup.
It was like watching a man smile as he surrendered himself to drown in deep water.
In the stretched-out moment that followed, Damen thought explicitly about killing him.
“Torveld’s servant is better supplied than you are,” was all Laurent said. “I don’t have sleeves to carry handkerchiefs in,” said Damen. “I wouldn’t mind being given a knife.” “Or a fork?”
It was wasteful of nature to have bestowed those looks on one whose character was so unpleasant. Laurent’s fair skin and blue eyes were a combination that was rare in Patras, rarer in Akielos, and a particular weakness of Damen’s. The golden hair made it worse.
Damen had never before seen half a dozen soldiers reduced to compliant housekeeping by the sheer force of one man’s personal arrogance. It was almost instructive.
“Yes, apparently I have fucked my enemy, conspired against my future interests, and colluded in my own murder. I can’t wait to see what feats I will perform next.”
“I meant it when I said I disliked feeling indebted to you.” And then: “You had far less reason to help me than I did to help you.”
“I’m a coward, remember?” Damen thought about that. “Are you? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you shy away from a fight. More like the opposite.” The apostrophe deepened. “True.”
Damen felt a certain amount of empathy with the man: Laurent could inspire homicidal tendencies simply by breathing.
A golden prince was easy to love if you did not have to watch him picking wings off flies.
