“My consort tires,” he told Carice, putting himself between her and me. “You will take your leave now, Lady.”
She sent Chryos with another request for the ashes later that evening, and when I declined, she sent an appeal to be there when I sprinkled them. I sent Zev to personally give her my reply. When he returned, he told me she was going to take her petition to the king, entreat him to her cause, and he was surprised when I wasn’t concerned.
“The king is a capricious man, and she is beautiful.”
And gave him a son, I was going to add, but kept that secret, as it wasn’t mine to share.
Zev was stunned that the king dismissed the request out of hand.
“How did you know?”
I glanced at Zev. “I discovered that Gideon killed the king’s mother; he’ll give me anything I want.”
His nod told me he agreed.
“Are you ready to take the ashes wherever they’re supposed to go?” he asked me.
But I wasn’t, not yet.
Thursday night, Zev and I went to the dungeon so I could see Gideon for the last time before he died the next morning. I had seen Varic only in passing the entire week, and though I understood why, it hurt that I seemed to be the one who remembered that our wedding day had originally been scheduled for what would now be Gideon’s execution day.
It was strange to see him in a cell, but somehow, without his usual dark robes, his beard and mustache shaved, in pale blue drawstring linen pants, silk slippers, and a long-sleeved white shirt that was barely buttoned, he looked like he wasn’t much older than me. It was as though, without the pressure of all his plotting and machinations weighing him down, he was suddenly lighter, freer, and younger. For a moment, I froze there, staring at him.
“I’m sorry you won’t be married tomorrow,” he told me, and of course, the madman was the only one who remembered. “I bet you’re ready to go home.”
And I was, but I was stuck there, alone, because I’d promised Varic.
Everyone was involved with discovering how big and tangled Gideon’s web really was. Because yes, he’d plotted to kill me, but he’d also been moving other pieces around on the chessboard, edging the king slowly, inexorably, out to make room for his son. There had to be others engaged in the coup, and without Gideon’s help, it was up to Varic to discover who those vampyrs were. It was why I had seen Tiago and Hadrian even less than Varic; they were engaged in ferreting out the traitors to the crown. The queen was using her own vast spy network to help as well, and she and the king, finally on the same page, working together, had become, again, much to the delight of the populace, close.
“I understand the king is sending his courtesans to their residences, turning his grotto and the concubine quarters into an extension of the library, and giving the concubines the choice of entering the service of others or returning to their homes.”
“Yes. Zev told me that as well.”
He nodded. “You haven’t heard it from the prince or any of your… friends?”
I knew what he was trying to do. Driving wedges between people was his specialty, though, in this case, hardly necessary. Varic and I had only known each other a very short time, and without feeding, without the constant contact, we could each retreat into our own lives and begin down another path.
It could all be put down to being sad. My friend was dead, I was still grieving her, and that was all.
“Will you tell me about that night?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he agreed, and I saw the artifice fall away as he smiled at me. Handsome man, dark eyes with the deep laugh lines in the corners, and dimples now visible without his beard.
I had a thought. “Gideon, is there someone to—I mean, you’re going to die tomorrow. Is there anyone who I––”
“You really are far too softhearted to be the consort of a prince.”
I heard that a lot.
He cleared his throat. “I thought I was safe,” he said, crossing his arms, speaking conversationally, as though we were friends. “I thought Zev was dead––” There was a sudden catch in his voice. “––so without his usual interference, I could slip back into the palace unseen.” He tipped his head at my champion. “The moment I was discovered, I knew the reports of his demise were greatly exaggerated.”
“As you suspected from the start,” Zev chimed in.
He nodded.
“You did?” I snapped, because he’d told me my champion was dead with such conviction. “You thought Zev was alive the whole time?”
Quick shrug. “It didn’t seem likely that his demise had happened how it was reported. It was far too easy.”
I moved to the bars that separated us, wrapping my hands around them. “Your guards thought he was dead.”
“They did.”
“But not you, even though they told you they saw him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“They said they found his headless body.”
“But?” I prodded him.
“Where did his head go?” He was staring at Zev, and I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Anger, pain, respect—he was hard to read. “Why wouldn’t it be near his body?”
“And did they report seeing the collar I gave him?” I asked Gideon as he walked over to me, his hands gripping the bars as well, just one space over from mine.
“No one knew,” Gideon replied, shaking his head. “A fortune in diamonds wrapped around a stray dog’s throat and no one noticed. It’s astounding to me.”
“Step back, my consort,” Zev directed, sounding almost bored, hand on my bicep easing me away from the bars, out of reach. “I would not have you hurt.”
“Please,” Gideon hissed at him, the censure in his voice easy to hear. “What you still fail to grasp, even after all this time, is that I did all I did to ensure that the sitting monarch thrived.”
“No.”
“Yes!” he raged at Zev, and the heat in his retort seemed out of place. I had to wonder if all of their interactions had been like this because, if so, how could the king have so misread the two men? Gideon seemed unhinged and Zev so calm. How was that ever read as Zev being the one in the wrong? “Magnus was a great king because I rid him of what made him weak.”
“And Messina, our king,” Zev baited him, “he loved the queen, but not like Magnus loved Livia, not how Varic loves Jason. All you had to do was provide diversions to peel them apart, but you ended up providing too many.”
“He’s mediocre, always has been. His weakness isn’t external.”
Zev didn’t reply.
Gideon chuckled. “As usual, you can offer no argument to that.”
Zev shook his head. “I will miss trading banter with you.”
I turned from Gideon to look at Zev.
“And yet, you were off to—where is it—New Orleans?”
“It was time for a change.”
“You would have left your precious king unprotected,” Gideon snapped at him, clearly annoyed and almost… hurt? What the hell was going on?
“I have raged against you for so long that the king considered me unhinged and useless,” Zev told him. “You maligned me perfectly. I was utterly usurped in his eyes. He had no faith in me at all, rajan. Well done.”