by AJ Lancaster
“That’s not the— Gah!” Marius shook his head and sped up. Though I actually didn’t think he’d concede even that much. Is that progress? He gave a bitter laugh but refused to explain it at Rakken’s inquiring look.
They met the occasional other pedestrian—the gentlemen doffed their hats politely and the ladies smiled. These greetings were largely focused on Rakken, though they encompassed Marius also. At least that meant Marius looked like he belonged here. Self-consciousness briefly distracted him.
I do belong here—I’m a lord’s son. But dredging up his father’s authority didn’t help his nerves—rather the reverse. What did the earl want from him? Marius knew he ought to be focused on the implications for Stariel and Wyn and Hetta, but the loudest thought was a selfish one: Is the earl still with John? Will he be there today?
Why should John be there? Marius tried to reassure himself. This was official business—Chief Inquirer into Fae Misconduct and all that—not about personal matters. Surely the earl wouldn’t mix the two together, not when he was reporting to the queen.
“You know, if the earl’s worried about all these fae stories, you showing up with me probably won’t persuade the earl the Valstars aren’t still far too much under fae influence.”
“Perhaps you could tell him how very unsuccessful I have been at influencing you in my favour.” There was an emphasis to the words that made Marius shoot Rakken a sharp glance. Rakken chuckled. “I wouldn’t try to compel you, Marius Valstar. Even if I could.”
The words were oddly reassuring. Still, Marius sighed and added, “Please don’t flirt with the earl.”
“I am capable of other methods of communication.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
They reached the earl’s townhouse. Marius eyed the knocker grimly before ascending the front steps. His heart beat so fast he felt dizzy. Angrily, he tried to calm himself. How would it look if he fainted on the earl’s doorstep? Like I’m a coward and a weakling and fifty other things my father has already called me. What if his father had been right all along? He balled his hands into fists. Just fake confidence—Rakken does it easily enough. Why can’t you?
He thought of Hetta and Gregory and the dizziness subsided. He could fake confidence for their sake, if not his own.
A butler opened the door. Marius summoned his most supercilious expression and presented his card.
“My name is Marius Valstar. I have an appointment.”
The butler did not look surprised, but butlers rarely did, in Marius’s experience. Including our own, he thought, thinking of Wyn’s time serving in that capacity.
“May I inquire as to your companion’s identity, Mr Valstar?”
“I am Prince Rakken Tempestren of the Court of Ten Thousand Spires.”
The butler’s eyebrows shot up at that, but he said, steadily enough, “Follow me, sir, Your Highness.”
He led them into a drawing room to wait. “I shall inform the earl of your arrival.”
They waited. The drawing room was orderly to a fault, which matched Marius’s impression of the earl. Maybe that’s what had attracted John—John liked things neat. He’d had prettier manners than Marius, for all that Marius was the lord’s son and he the commoner. John used to tease him that—
I am not going to think about John.
But how was he supposed to not think about John when John was the reason he was here in the first place, if you followed the line of causality back to the start? If Marius hadn’t loved John, John would never have come to Stariel. And if John had never come to Stariel, Wyn would never have needed to compel him and John wouldn’t have been left with a bitter resentment of Stariel and fae both, wouldn’t have used his new lover to try to get revenge. So really, this entire thing is my fault for showing such bad judgement of character. Marius did not look at Rakken.
“I find I’m sorry I never had the opportunity to witness my brother serving in such a capacity,” Rakken said, gazing in the direction the butler had taken. “It would have been mildly entertaining to have him hold open doors for me.”
“You seem confident he wouldn’t have shut them in your face.”
Rakken grinned. “That would also have been entertaining.”
The butler returned.
“The earl would prefer to speak to Mr Valstar alone.”
Marius thought Rakken would argue, but instead he said, “I can wait until he concludes his interview.”
‘Can’, Marius thought. Not ‘will’. Hmmm.
The butler led him through the townhouse to the earl’s study. It was a large, airy room that reminded him of Hetta’s study at Stariel.
“Ah, Mr Valstar.” The earl rose to greet him, and Marius braced himself. Last time they’d met, he’d gotten the strong impression that the earl despised him—but there was nothing of that in his expression now. Instead, the earl was coolly evaluative. “May I offer you a brandy?”
Marius didn’t feel like drinking at this hour but accepted the offer because it seemed less awkward than refusing. The earl took a decanter atop a small cabinet at the far end of the room and gestured for Marius to seat himself. The silence pressed on Marius as the earl poured two glasses. The man had at least a decade on Marius, but he was one of those men that aged well. He still had to have married rather young to have a son Gregory’s age. Did his wife know about his predilections? Did the queen? Was John a rare anomaly for the earl, or did he frequently indulge in affairs?
Don’t speculate on the earl’s love life, Marius told himself sternly. This interview was already going to be sufficiently awkward without that. They were both adults; they could ignore the great thumping elephant in the room. John wasn’t why he was here.
“Thank you for coming. I am aware our last meeting was not…salubrious.”
“You mean when you tried to frame my future brother-in-law? Or when you had your newspapers publish various inflammatory columns about my sister?”
The earl had a disturbingly penetrating gaze. “Yes.”
“You left John.” Knowledge tumbled into him with painful certainty, and his headache flared to life again. “You left John.” Of all the possibilities, that one hadn’t occurred to him. Sudden, unexpected jealousy rose, not of John but of the fact that the earl had been the one to end the relationship. How Marius wished the same had been true for him.
The earl started. “Yes,” he repeated, more grimly. His fingers flexed on his glass.
Marius abruptly realised the other reason he felt unsettled. There were, after all, such an abundance of reasons to choose from, but this particular one flared into his mind in a burst of crimson embarrassment. How had he overlooked it earlier? And why did he have to be realising it now when he would much prefer never to realise it?
It wasn’t only that the earl liked men and knew that Marius did as well—it was that he and the earl had shared the same lover. The weight of that knowledge expanded between them, an awkward intimacy Marius would rather not have experienced. They both knew the shape of the same man, the heat of skin on—Don’t think about it, don’t think about it. But Marius had been cursed with a vivid imagination, and certain memories were hard to forget.
Marius willed himself not to flush, but it was a losing battle—he could feel the heat in his cheeks as he met the earl’s eyes and knew, he just knew, the earl was having the exact same thought.
“We were both taken in by the same pretty face, it seems.” The earl tipped his glass in ironic salute and drank.
Oh, Marius did not want to be here. He wanted to be ten thousand million miles away and not hearing this. Could you actually pass out from sheer mortification? He took a sip of the brandy, the burn in his throat nearly as intense as that in his cheeks.
And yet—and yet, there was a queer comfort, beneath the embarrassment. The earl had spoken with dry resignation, but there was a bitter hurt in him that resonated with Marius’s own. The earl understood this particular heartache, understood as no one else possibly
could.
Marius hunched his shoulders up, unwilling to admit anything. His head throbbed. You’re being ridiculous—he already knows about you and John. You’re not keeping anything secret. And he can hardly condemn you without condemning himself.
“Yes,” he said eventually, the word fighting its way through his teeth. What had happened between the earl and John? He couldn’t ask but he wanted to. No, he didn’t. Why had Marius even raised the subject in the first place? He didn’t want to talk about it! “Why did you ask me here today?”
The earl, thank Mighty Pyrania, accepted the rebuff and didn’t try to pursue the subject. He twisted his glass so that the amber liquid swirled. “Her Majesty has charged me with investigating the implications of this fae invasion for the Crown.” He read Marius’s expression correctly and sighed. “I regret that I allowed myself to become…emotionally compromised in my previous dealings with Stariel. I have assured Her Majesty it will not happen again.”
“Queen Matilda gave you a second chance.”
Again, that cool gaze assessed him. “Yes, she did. Are you always so blunt?”
“If you want a silver-tongued diplomat, you can invite Prince Rakken in, the man currently occupying your drawing room. I’m just a botanist.”
The earl put his glass down. “A botanist with a royal bodyguard. A botanist Prince Hallowyn was prepared to both use compulsive magic for and lie to Her Majesty about in order to protect—no, don’t correct me. I know perfectly well the fae cannot speak untruths and yet are simultaneously adept at misdirection.”
Wyn had managed to slide around admitting his use of compulsion to Queen Matilda with his usual side-stepping, and Marius wasn’t about to undo his friend’s hard work.
“If you broke things off with John, then you know he’s a liar. Whatever he said—”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt his framing of context was entirely false. But he has a personal and powerful hatred of Prince Hallowyn that rings true.”
There was a long silence. Marius knew the earl wanted to know what had really happened at Stariel, not only for personal reasons but political ones. His head throbbed. How far could fae be trusted? Was Wyn truly as committed to peace as he’d said? How should the Crown respond to the potential threat?
Marius let out a long breath. “My sister is going to marry him, my lord. Whatever John told you, Wyn’s one of the best men I know. I’d trust him with my life. With my sister’s life.” Which he was trying very hard to remember with every day that passed with no word from Hetta and Wyn.
“And yet if you are so anxious to protect fae interests, why are you experimenting with plants known for affecting fae?”
Marius flinched. “Are you spying on me?”
The earl’s gaze was hard. “Spying is an unpleasant term. The Crown merely…keeps track of interesting individuals.”
Marius didn’t have an answer to this, or at least, not one he was prepared to give the earl. How could he tell the earl he thought the fae were dangerous without betraying Hetta and Wyn? The fae were dangerous, even the ones on their side, and the more than six feet of wing, muscle, and compulsive magic currently waiting in the earl’s drawing room was just one example of how.
“Can you tell me you aren’t concerned about the fae, Mr Valstar?”
“They’re not…simple,” Marius said. “You can’t just slice them into either bad or good—gods, you can’t slice most things into that.”
“Then what would you advise me to tell Her Majesty? You must have seen the increasing public anxiety in the papers. The incident between Prince Hallowyn and his sister at the train station was highly visible and deeply concerning for the public. Public meetings have been held, pamphlets distributed, that sort of thing. Protests will be next. And the compulsive ability John spoke of—that is concerning indeed, even if it hasn’t yet reached the public awareness.”
“Yes, and you’ve done such a good job of keeping anti-fae sentiment out of the papers,” Marius said bitterly. “I thought Her Majesty told you to stop that?”
Irritation flickered in the earl’s eyes. “I am not actually in control of every media outlet. Nor do I advocate censorship. Though there actually are a number of stories that haven’t made the papers, under my watch.”
“Yet,” Marius bit out. Righteous anger took hold of him. “Don’t pretend you have any moral high ground! Gregory’s got nothing whatsoever to do with this and he’s practically still a child. He’s not even nineteen yet!” If the earl threw his weight around to stop the university accepting Gregory back next term… “Oh. You didn’t know about that.” Marius’s anger came to a screeching halt in the face of the earl’s blankness.
“What precisely do I not know?”
“Er…your son and his friends got into a fistfight with my brother. My brother was rusticated for the rest of term. Your son wasn’t, even though he provoked the confrontation.”
“And you naturally assumed I would wage war via hot-headed eighteen-year-olds.” There was a tight anger in the earl’s voice.
“I’ve no idea what you would or wouldn’t stoop to. You had no problem blackening my sister’s reputation.”
The earl’s fingers spasmed on his glass, and Marius thought he was about to lose his temper. However, when he spoke it was in an even tone. “I would never encourage such behaviour. I will speak to James, and the university. I have left his schooling too much in his mother’s care, perhaps. She’s very protective of him.” Uncertainty coloured his tone. When they’d drawn the careful lines that governed their relationship, his wife had made it clear she considered James’ schooling to fall entirely within her sphere. It had seemed the least he could give her.
Marius recoiled, not wanting the insight into the earl’s marriage. Maybe I’m reading too much into things. The pain in his temples sharpened.
The earl shook himself, leaving the subject behind and drawing the mantle of authority around himself again. “Are you aware Prince Hallowyn promised Her Majesty a treaty between his court and Stariel in exchange for her permission for Lord Valstar to marry?”
Marius remained silent, dreading what was coming next.
“His Highness made this promise on the assumption that he would inherit the throne of his home court. It has come to my attention that this assumption has not been borne out in fact.”
What should Marius do? Lie? Lying to the queen’s advisor seemed like a bad idea. “He’s working on it.” That was sort of true, wasn’t it? His chest tightened. They should have heard from Wyn and Hetta by now. What if something had happened to them? Rakken had said he’d know if Wyn died, but that wasn’t exactly reassuring. There were a lot of things short of death that Rakken wouldn’t know about, and what about Hetta? Why in the hells had they let her go without more protest? Weren’t pregnant woman supposed to sit at home and be cosseted? Could Hetta not be so damn reckless just once?
“Working on it,” the earl repeated flatly. “Her Majesty has already extended your sister and Prince Hallowyn considerable leeway on this.”
“And the deadline she gave them hasn’t passed yet.” Marius felt on firmer ground.
“Hmmm. And the compulsive magic? How do you propose we are to protect our people from such a thing, with fae apparently appearing behind every bush, if the tabloids are to be believed.”
“The ones in the papers—those are lowfae, maybe the odd lesser fae,” Marius said. “They have magic, but not compulsion. Only greater fae can compel. And it’s not as limitless a power as you think. Compelling people to do something they don’t already want to do is hard, even for greater fae. There are protections you can wear, certain herbs made into charms.” It felt like betrayal, but Marius pushed the feeling aside. He wouldn’t do anything that made it easier for fae to compel people. Besides, the queen already knew about yarrow.
The earl listened with interest, asking several pointed questions. It began to rain, a sudden downpour that filled the awkward pauses in the conversation with white noise.
“You’re thinking about how to stop fae from coming to Prydein at all.”
The earl’s eyes narrowed. “We already require foreign citizens to declare themselves at the border.”
“I’m not sure how you’d enforce that, given the nature of the border we’re talking of here—” Marius began, before he followed the thought to its conclusion. “Oh. You’d put the onus of proof onto them to prove they’ve been permitted in. Make them carry papers? I’m not sure how you’ll get them to agree to that.” His eyes widened. “Oh. Oh. Do you want to start a war with fae courts? I’m pretty sure imprisoning or attacking their greater fae would be a good way to do that.”
The earl was looking at him with deep suspicion. “That is a dangerous combination, insight paired with an inability to hold your tongue.”
“I’m right, though, aren’t I? That is what you’re thinking of doing.” Marius rubbed at his head, trying to ease the pounding in his temples.
“I see few alternatives, unless we can reach agreements with all the individual courts, of which I gather there are many who are at war with each other.”
Marius hesitated, then decided the risk was worth it. “You need the High King to intervene—whatever he decrees, the courts will have no choice but to fall in with. You know Wyn—Prince Hallowyn—and my sister are searching for him currently.”
The earl’s mouth thinned into a line. “Prince Hallowyn’s promises have so far proved fairly empty. In any case, there is a need for a visible ambassador between Faerie and Prydein—here, in this city, not far in the isolated North.”