“Your Majesty, I will confess to any crime you name, but my brother is innocent.” “You’ve already confessed to attempted regicide,” said the king. “What else could you confess?” He looked up from where he had been carefully smoothing the embroidered cover, and seeing his face, Costis felt the shock like a physical blow. If Attolia could look like a queen, Eugenides was like a god revealed, transformed into something wholly unfamiliar, surrounded by the cloth-of-gold bedcover like a deity on an altar, passionless and calculating. “Do you think I intend to leave your father an heir?”
