Kings Rising (Captive Prince, #3)

by C.S. Pacat

‘I mean that we hold the centre. We hold everything from Acquitart to Sicyon. Can we not call it a kingdom and rule it together? Am I such a poorer prospect than a Patran princess, or a daughter of the Empire?’

‘How can you trust me, after what your own brother did to you?’ ‘Because he was false,’ said Damen, ‘and you are true. I have never known a truer man.’ He said, into the stillness, ‘I think if I gave you my heart, you would treat it tenderly.’

‘When you make love to me like that, I can’t think.’ ‘Don’t think,’ said Damen. Damen saw the flickering change, the tension, as the words provoked an internal battle. Damen said, ‘Don’t think.’

‘Don’t,’ said Laurent, ‘toy with me. I—have not the means to—defend against this.’

‘I don’t toy with you.’ ‘I—’ ‘Don’t think,’ said Damen. ‘Kiss me,’ said Laurent. And then flushed, a rich colour. Don’t think, Damen had said, but Laurent couldn’t do that. Even to sit there after w...

Laurent’s wariness was not, at this moment, the high walls of the defended citadel. It was that of a man with a portion of his guard down, who was desperately unused to it.

‘There has only been one other person.’

‘It wasn’t right. You were just a boy. You didn’t deserve what happened to you.’

The inches of air between them were nothing, and everything.

Don’t think, he’d said, because it was easier than saying, Take me for who I am.

The kiss was like a wound, as if to do it Laurent was impaling himself on that knife. There was an edge of desperation to it, Laurent kissing like he needed it, his fingers clutching, his body unsteady.

He was only half aware that he was speaking words unchecked and in his own language.

They were caught in each other, and when their eyes met Laurent said, ‘Damen,’ again, like it meant everything, and as if Damen’s identity was enough,

dream. The intimacy of last night might have been too much for either or both of them.

The kiss happened because they couldn’t help it, and it was so sweet and so right that Damen felt a kind of ache.

‘The King knows whether or not it has been consummated!’ Horrified.

‘You wrestled him without any clothes on.’

That's it. That's the quote.

Laurent wandered in and outlined a plan so outrageous that Damen had said yes with the feeling that his mind was splitting apart.

Brief visions of strangling Laurent weren’t helpful.

Nikandros had the slightly stupefied look that Damen remembered from several of his own adventures with Laurent.

They came face to face with Charls the Veretian cloth merchant.

‘That’s right. He is Charls. I am Charls. We are cousins,’ said Charls, gamely, ‘named after our grandfather. Charls.’

‘Don’t touch me,’ said Laurent. And dropped to his knees on the floor of the inn.

When you see a panther opening its jaws you don’t get your dick out.

‘I always thought that I’d have to face my uncle alone.’

‘You get used to it,’ said Damen, with a little wellspring of joy inside him, because that wasn’t really true.

To be here, so close to the end of his own plans. So close to the end, really, of everything.

All bad things were done in the dark.

‘I know you felt something for him. If you are going to be sick, do it quickly. We have to

‘You will hear me,’ said Damen. ‘You will hear me, and if when you have heard me you still find him guilty, then I will meet my fate alongside him. Or does the Council fear the truth?’

But he had asked himself the question in Ravenel, and now he knew the answer. A kingdom, or this.

‘I was a fool, blinded by prejudice. I didn’t understand that he was fighting alone, that he had been fighting alone for a very long time.

Laurent looked at the boy, and in his eyes was the knowledge that some things couldn’t be fixed.

‘And unchain the King of Akielos.’

and he tried to understand that these things had not been done by another person, but by this one, his brother.

loved you, but you wanted a throne more than you wanted a brother.

Death and life; past and future; Akielos and Vere.

‘It was one kingdom, once.’