by Kelly Hunter
‘There’s nothing wrong with cool calculation,’ he argued. It was what he’d been raised to believe. ‘Passion’s overrated.’
‘If you truly believe that, I pity you.’ Her hand snaked up to fist in his hair and he made no move to stop her. ‘You should have just thrown the glass.’
‘The world might have ended if I had.’
‘It wouldn’t have.’
The kiss, when she dragged his head down and lifted her lips to his, was searingly hot and decidedly angry. It brought him to full and throbbing hardness in the space of thirty seconds. If this was punishment for his refusal to accommodate her wishes, he’d take it. If it was a thirst she couldn’t control, he’d slake it. If this was her way of trying to make him change his mind, good luck with that.
She drew back all too soon as far as he was concerned, but he wasn’t the one running this little power play; she was. He’d figure out what that kiss meant soon enough.
‘You’re a good king, Augustus. No one can deny it.’ She let go of his hair, took a breath, stepped back. ‘I hope one day you get to be human too.’
He waited until she and her dragon and her rack full of courtesans’ clothing had left the room. He shut the door behind her and counted to ten, and then ten again, before striding across to the table and draining her wine glass.
He let anger, frustration for all the things he could not do, and aching desire for all the things he could not have fill him. He flung the wine glass at the fireplace, where it smashed into glittering pieces.
And the world did not end.
* * *
The following day didn’t begin well for Augustus of Arun. He’d slept poorly and risen with the sun. He’d gone to the kitchen to find his own breakfast, only to overhear two of his catering staff talking about how Sera’s guards had put on a fighting display with long sticks yesterday morning, apparently, and the hits had come thick and fast and left everyone who watched in awe. They fought in the covered stable area these days, not because he’d given his tacit approval but because of the sawdust on the ground and the space and relative privacy it afforded them. Augustus wondered if they fought there because any gathered crowd could melt away into the shadows fast if they were discovered.
He grabbed a bread roll straight from the oven, ripped it open and cut the end from a length of resting roast beef, and knew for a fact that he wouldn’t have got away with either action had he still been a child.
He cut through the back door and headed for the stables. He found the crowd easily enough and it looked like a regular martial arts lesson to him, with Ari leading and Tun and Sera helping the trainees with the movements. Sera still practised the forms with her guards on a daily basis, so he’d been informed, but she hadn’t sparred since that day he’d hauled her off the ground.
Two men standing in front of him sent him startled looks and shuffled to the side but he shook his head and gestured for them to stay where they were. He didn’t want to be noticed this morning. He just wanted to watch.
When Ari told the class they would be doing the form one last time from start to finish, Sera and Tun fell into step with him, making it look effortless. And when that was done and everyone had bowed and the class had been dismissed, Ari and Sera moved over to a canvas holdall and unzipped it and rolled it out along the ground—it was like no holdall he’d ever seen. More like a portable armoury.
Ari selected two wickedly curved short swords with black handle grips, while Sera selected similar, only her grips were red. They sat in her hands as if they’d been made for her. Maybe they had. The form they practised next had its origins in the one they’d practised in class, that much he could see, the lines of their bodies extended by glittering curved knives.
They made it look as if they’d been born holding knives and cutting patterns in the air.
And then Sera said something to Ari and he frowned, and she smiled back at him sharp and sure and broke from her pattern and moved to face him, not quite head-on, a little to one side. They bowed to each other, plenty of space between them. Tun came to stand between them as a referee would in a boxing ring. At his word he stepped back and they began to fight.
If anyone thought they’d hold back because of the lethal weapons in their hands, they thought wrong.
The fighting was fast and vicious, with Sera on the attack and Ari defending, and Augustus felt his breath lodge somewhere in his throat. Ari was bigger, stronger and his reach was longer and still Sera came at him, even when he began to strike back. The clash of swords rang in his ears, broken only by the occasional murmur from those watching.
He thought about stopping the fight. Demonstration. Whatever it was, he thought about stopping it, but there was no way he wanted to break their concentration. Absolute focus and unearthly skill was all that stood between them and a potentially fatal blow.
And then, between one moment and the next, Ari was on his back on the ground and Sera was on top of him, the curve of one blade at his neck and the other poised to take his upraised hand off at the wrist.
The man in front of Augustus swore silently beneath his breath, and Augustus knew that by lunchtime the palace would be buzzing with the news that the courtesan of the High Reaches was some kind of mystical warrior in addition to being the Devil’s temptress.
Surely she’d been sitting on the fallen sword master for far too long.
He watched her roll off and to her feet as if she’d heard him. Tun clapped once and she and Ari moved close for quick smiles and quiet conversation as they released their fighting grips on the blades and began to examine the edges of them. All in a day’s work. Nothing unusual about what they’d just demonstrated.
Who were these people?
She saw him out of the corner of her eye and started to walk towards him. People melted away as if sensing conflict. All except for her guards, who stayed right where they were, neither courting conflict nor avoiding it.
‘Is that your way of blowing off steam?’ he asked.
‘It works.’
He’d been thinking about her words from last night. Her scorn for his cool calculation and his need to control what he could. ‘You want to know what I see when you’re out there passionately blowing off steam?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Absolute control.’ His gaze skipped towards Ari. ‘And lives utterly dedicated to the quest for it.’
‘Why are you here?’ she asked next.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said last night and all the things I didn’t say. The personal things that might have helped you understand my reluctance to have you reach out to a bunch of brothels.’
She waited for him to speak, and he didn’t want to, he really didn’t, but she’d shown him her heart last night and her passion and maybe they would understand each other a little better if she knew his.
‘When I was fifteen I had my first kiss. She was a stable girl, several years older than me, and she’d been lobbying for that kiss for at least three years. It was pretty chaste, as far as kisses went, but she sold her story to the papers that afternoon and we all read about it at breakfast the following morning.’
The lecture his father had given him still had the power to make him wince.
‘The woman I finally lost my virginity to was an older woman as well—a woman with enough money and power and sheer front to withstand the hounding of the press for months. Just long enough for me to feel safe in her arms. And then she turned around and finally granted that press interview and laid me bare.
‘She called me an accomplished lover—and I was by then—and then added that I could also be a little too passionately intense for some tastes. She told them she envied me my brilliant mind and in the same breath warned of sweeping social and economic reforms once I took the throne. I’d made the mistake of talking to her about the causes I was passionate about, you see. I’d talked big bold plans that didn’t have
a hope of seeing the light of day—not then. Not without years of careful planning. The press called me an ignorant, idealistic fool and I was—I was a fool to think I could confide in her or trust her. She praised my protective nature, especially when it came to those I consider family, and then casually mentioned how rigidly impenetrable I could be when it came to letting other people in.’
None of it true. All of it true.
‘Which was quite the complaint because, as far as I was concerned, I had let her in. Like a fool.’
Sera opened her mouth to speak but he put his hand up to stop her.
‘And now you, a courtesan sent here specifically to serve me, wants to go into the brothels and talk job descriptions, and they’re going to have questions art curators and librarians would never dare ask you. Questions about me and what I want and need and think and who’s to say you won’t expose me?’
‘I would never do that.’ She drew herself up and still didn’t manage to reach his shoulder. Bare feet. A face flushed with exercise. ‘I am a courtesan of the High Reaches. Confidentiality is the key to our existence, and beyond that...’ She shook her head. ‘Augustus, I will never betray your confidences. Not sexual, emotional or intellectual. You have my word. My oath. That’s what you get when you get me. A safe space in which to simply be human.’
‘I want to believe you.’ He looked away from those earnest grey eyes. Experience suggested he shouldn’t.
‘I can’t make that decision for you,’ she offered quietly.
He nodded. He’d think on it. ‘There was another reason I came out here this morning,’ he said, while in the distance a stablehand worked on a horse’s hoof with a file.
‘What is it?’
He couldn’t even bring himself to look at her while he was saying it. ‘I love the way you move.’ It was as simple and as complicated as that. ‘I envy the fierce blend of passion and control you bring to everything you do and it’s never more evident than when you’re out there, facing an opponent. It’s beautiful.’
It was the first thought he’d shared in years without analysing the pros and cons of doing so.
And it was met with complete and utter silence.
He glanced back, just in time to see a softly startled smile cross her face.
‘I...thank you,’ she said.
And the world did not end.
* * *
‘What do you want done with the costume tour proposal?’ Augustus’s secretary asked him two hours later.
Augustus ran a hand across his face and memories flashed before him. Sera with a blade in each hand and total concentration on her face. Sera with a dragon on her back and her face alight with pleasure. Sera, who never failed to stand out, no matter what kind of company she was in, and who had yet to set a foot wrong in public.
Sera as a child, with a plate full of food in front of her that she could not eat. A plate that was only there in the first place because someone had seen her plight rather than turn away from an outcast child struggling for existence.
Sera’s proposal to reach out to her sisters in service had healthcare and educational elements, but first and foremost it was about acknowledging their existence.
She could have been one of them. Was one of them, for all her finery and expensive education, and he’d never met a woman more accomplished.
Her mother had been one of them. A broken one.
This was no soulless, rudderless outreach programme. Sera had this one covered. He could trust her not to make this all about him. Couldn’t he?
He dropped his hand and searched his heart and not his head.
‘Green-light it,’ he said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE INAUGURAL COURTESAN costumes tour, starting at a seedy but legal downtown brothel and finishing at the National Art gallery of Arun, received some of the best press Augustus had ever seen. It brought together six health and education outreach programmes already in place and cemented Arun’s reputation as a progressive nation with the welfare and education of all its people at heart. Far from damaging his personal reputation, he was being hailed as a saviour. A man that any woman, courtesan or not, would be proud to have in their corner. He’d even accompanied Sera on one of the tours, to watch her in action and lend his support, and there’d been not one single, solitary crack about him partaking of her sexual services.
It was a God-given miracle.
Suffice to say, the fund-raising dinner he was currently attending suffered a little in comparison, even if Sera had organised it. The dinner helped raise funds for cancer research and had been on his social calendar for the past seven years running. He was seated next to Katerina DeLitt at his request and the lady was well aware of it. To her credit, she was socially adept and inclusive of the others around them. She had a charming smile and the kind of effortless poise he was used to. She had yet to hold his attention for long but maybe that was his fault for having Sera oversee the event.
Sera, with her tailored black suit and sky-high stilettos. Sera, with her hair coiled tightly into a bun at the nape of her neck and a face practically devoid of make-up. She didn’t need make-up. She was quite beautiful enough.
He’d corner her afterwards for a crowd report and she’d tell him whom was currently at war with whom and other minor matters of interest. Her powers of observation kept his sharp too. Being able to one-up her in the observation stakes was wholly satisfying. Not to mention hard to do.
‘She’s very beautiful,’ said Katerina DeLitt from somewhere beside him.
‘Excuse me?’
Could be his attention had been somewhere it shouldn’t be, but he trusted Katerina DeLitt’s manners to prevail and doubted she would repeat such a confronting statement.
‘Lady Sera Boreas. She’s very beautiful.’
‘Ah.’ Guess he was wrong. He eyed the woman seated to his left with renewed interest. She smiled wryly, diamond earrings dangling as she tilted her head the better to observe him.
‘And talented too, assuming even half the things I hear about her are true,’ she said next.
He knew full well he should steer the conversation elsewhere. Hard to court one woman when seemingly fixated on another. He could talk about the weather. The charity. Or horses—he had a fleeting memory of Katerina talking animatedly about horses.
Or he could succumb to curiosity. ‘What kind of things do you hear?’
Katerina shrugged. ‘She has great skill with knives, she can dance like a dream. She has a mind trained towards observation and is bound to you in ways no one can quite explain. You were forced by ancient laws to open your home to her. You can’t get rid of her until you find a future wife and take steps to secure the throne. Even then, you might not let her go.’
‘Sounds about right.’ Katerina’s information was good. ‘Although I will let her go.’
‘They say she has your ear, among other things. That she is your muse.’
Augustus frowned.
‘Your Majesty, if I may be bold—and that does seem to be the best way to deal with you—what is it you want from me, when your attention is so obviously elsewhere?’
He appreciated her bluntness and returned it in full. ‘I need a wife who will give me children and occupy the role of Queen Consort with all due diligence. Your name came up and I enjoy your company. I’m getting to know you.’
‘I see. And what of love?’ Katerina asked drily.
‘Love can grow.’
‘Your Ma—’
‘Call me Augustus,’ he interrupted.
‘Augustus.’ She said it nicely but not the way Sera did. ‘Your Majesty, I know it’s not fashionable, but let us be even more frank. As honoured as I am to have your attention, I’m in no hurry to put my heart on the line for you, knowing what else is available to you at any given time.’
‘Meaning?’
She inclined her head towards Sera.
‘That is not an option,’ he grated. ‘Sera will leave once the terms of the accord have been satisfied. She may well leave before that if I can find a workaround.’
‘But will your chosen Queen Consort ever be able to take her place? I have my doubts. Ask yourself this, my King in need of a Queen. When you walked in here this evening, who was the first person you looked for? Who did you keep looking for until she appeared?’ Katerina smiled again, and it was a gentle smile, without malice. ‘Be honest. Because it surely wasn’t me.’
* * *
Another event, another debrief afterwards. That was the routine Sera and Augustus fell into over the weeks that followed. Sometimes they talked in his office and sometimes they used a small parlour in the west wing that he favoured, and sometimes, if he’d been held up after the event, he came to her quarters and sat within her sofa circle, always requesting a strategy session. Sera didn’t mind it. She took quiet satisfaction in her ability to be of use to him, and if he kept his hands and his kisses carefully to himself while in her presence, so be it.
She didn’t want to think about her growing need for his attention. The way her body craved his touch and her mind constantly circled back to him and what he was doing, how he was feeling. Whether he’d ever touch her again with the sole purpose of giving and taking pleasure.
She didn’t want to admit she might be falling for him.
Nothing good had ever come of a courtesan falling for a king.
Tonight, Augustus’s behaviour was different in that he stood staring at the request wheel at his feet for a good long while before turning to look at her. She’d been expecting him—maybe—and had changed out of her workwear into casual trousers and her customary tunic top. Nothing too sheer or revealing. No jewellery or make-up embellishment. The only concession she’d made to vanity was to let her hair down after she’d showered and not put it back up before opening her door to him. She liked the way he looked at it. The way he jammed his hands in his pockets as if to stop himself from reaching out to touch it.