by Megan Hart
"My lord prince." Bertram, Cillian's man, shifted from foot to foot in the doorway.
"Pleading your mercy, m'lord, but I've been to the train, wot she weren't on it." Cillian meant to fair rend the air with his curses, but naught would come from his lips. Instead, he found himself on his knees on the cold, hard floor, face cradled in his hands. She had not come. Again, she had not come.
"Go back and wait for her, idiot," Alaric said quietly to Bertram before kneeling by Cillian's side. "Let me put you to bed."
"No." Cillian shook his head. "I'm not overdrunk on wine, Alaric. I'm merely . . . I . . ."
"I know." Alaric put a strong hand around his shoulders and gave a squeeze. "You want. I know."
Cillian raised his head and gave his friend a steady glare. "You presume to know what I want?"
"I presume to know you." Alaric let go and got to his feet, offering Cillian a hand he took to get up. "And I know a bit about wanting."
"But you have what you want. I lack for nothing, and yet I remain unsatisfied." Cillian swallowed against the dreadful lump in his throat and tried in vain to shake off his disappointment.
Weeks and days he'd been waiting, certain his torment would ease as soon as his Handmaiden arrived. He'd forgone his daily visits to the playroom in anticipation of her. And yet, though he'd been promised her solace, he had yet another day to wait for it. It was not to be borne!
"Go away, Alaric. Go seek your lady's bed, lest she find it cold and choose to warm it with another. Leave me alone."
Alaric sighed and gave Cillian a half bow that wasn't even mocking. "My lady has bid me leave to stay until you have no more need of me."
This raised Cillian's brow. Lady Larissa did not grant her favors easily, but once granted, she did not release them. "Larissa has bid you serve me instead of her?" Alaric, with his fair hair and coloring, could do little to hide the heat in his cheeks. "Not... to serve you, Cillian. Not that way."
Cillian's brow inched higher and he crossed his arms over his chest. "Indeed? And what if that's the sort of service I should require?"
Alaric blushed, but now recovering quickly, he gave Cillian a shameless, provoking grin.
"I'm not your flavor, and you know it."
Cillian sniffed. "You have no rein to poke at me just because you're my boon companion."
"I'm not poking, truly." Alaric looked contrite. "It's only that. . . well. Since Edward has taken his leave—"
"Speak not his name to me." Cillian put a hand over his heart, where the pain sliced deepest. "I am the Prince of Firth. I command whom I please. It's not my pleasure to force Lord Delaw into my presence if he wishes not to be in it." Alaric nodded and made another half bow. "I know."
"You claim to know too much!" Cillian snapped and turned on his heel, already unbuttoning his wasted waistcoat and ringing for his fetchencarry. "Go home to your mistress or to your own hand for all I care, Alaric. Just go." Alaric left without another word.
Cillian paced, muttering curses for every moment it took Renzell to arrive. The man would insist upon taking his bedamned time, no matter the consequences. It came from being too soft on him, Cillian thought with a curl of his lip. Mayhaps the man would leap more quickly to his master's command if he'd felt the strap once or twice. Even the prospect of that didn't please him, and Cillian satisfied himself with breaking glass after glass in the fire, where the shards glittered and gleamed and refused to melt. He'd raised the last glass when Renzell at last bustled in.
"M'lord," Renzell said. "She's not arrived yet, eh? Late? Would m'lord like me to lay out his nightclothes, then, m'lord?"
At the man's inane and cheerful rush of words, Cillian drew in a breath, and then another, and put aside further thoughts of beating the idiot into some semblance of submission. He would own being irritable, tempestuous. Even difficult. But he refused to become the monster Edward accused him of being.
"Lay out my oxenhide trousers. I'll be in my playroom for the next few hours." Renzell nodded and bustled around while Cillian resisted pacing in front of the fire. The man was fast but not efficient, taking many steps when one would suffice, but at last he'd laid out the clothes Cillian required and helped him out of the ones he'd worn to greet the Handmaiden.
"Would m'lord like the maids to draw a bath for him, later?" Cillian closed his eyes, briefly, and bit back a harsh reply. "Of course." What he wanted more than anything was not to need to tell anyone what he wanted. To come back from taking his pleasure in the playroom and find all he wanted in readiness for him. What he yearned for, indeed, what he craved, was to have someone who knew his every wish before he made it, and one who'd do her best to grant it.
"And a meal, m'lord?"
Renzell was not the brightest burning taper in the candelabra, but again, Cillian forced back a sharp retort. Edward was not there to see his efforts or appreciate them, but. . . Cillian tried anyway. "Yes, Renzell. A meal. I'm sure I'll be fair famished." Renzell offered a bright, cheery, and utterly loathsome grin. "Anything else, m'lord prince?"
Cillian remained stripped to the waist but pulled on his black trousers. Velvet-soft oxenhide, treated against moisture and stains, they were one of the few garments he owned for practicality, he thought, for once not overproud of his frivolity, but half disgusted with his own excess.
"That will be sufficient, Renzell."
He didn't wait for more inane babbling. The fetchencarry would go on, if allowed. No matter how many times Cillian had screamed at him or threatened to take a crop to his back, the man simply never broke. It would have been more inconvenient if Cillian hadn't been too lazy to train a new body servant every other fortnight. As it was, he'd had to holler himself hoarse enough to need honeyed tea at least thrice a week, and Renzell continued his service without changing the manner in which he provided it. The playroom would have to soothe him, since there was no Handmaiden to do it, and after so many days without that release, his blood thrummed in fierce anticipation. Cillian took the back stairs, bare and wooden and without decoration. A servant's staircase, meant for the passage of staff to keep them from the eyes of nobles who wished not to be bothered with mundanities such as who did their laundry and emptied their chamber pots. These stairs weren't meant for princely feet, and Cillian took great pleasure in using them. The old man would have a fit should he learn his only son was traipsing about the servants' corridor, but then again, he pretended he didn't know about the playroom. Both facts would cancel out the other.
The door flung open on well-greased hinges, and inside, the women Cillian had procured looked up from their various activities. He gave them anything they needed to occupy themselves whilst he was not here. Embroidery, cards, paper-folding. Ladies' pastimes with which most of them had never occupied themselves before his employ. Female all of them, but ladies none.
A sweet, chirping chorus of "my lord prince" greeted him and sought to tug a smile to his lips. The door closed behind him, and Cillian breathed in deep and long. The scents of ironwood, rose oil, and the salves his women used mingled with the odor of desire created a pungent miasma he lifted his head to capture as deeply as he could. Here he was the master, and not for the crown upon his head but for the rod he wielded. Here he was given everything without being asked for anything in return. Here, in this place, with these women, Cillian need not curb his temper, bite his tongue, rein his hand. Every one of them had been chosen not for their physical perfections, for indeed many of Cillian's hareem women wore the evidence of hard living on their faces and bodies, but for something more lovely to him. Their desire to serve him in any way he deemed fit, and their utter and unrelenting pleasure in doing so.
Here he need be nothing more than a man, no matter how much a prince they made him with their obedience.
"Beauties," Cillian said and opened his arms to embrace them all at once. "Who is first?" he train was more than late, it did not arrive at all. Ten miles out of Pevensie station, the cars shuddered to a halt, the metal wheels shrieking. The s
cent of burning hair filled the cabin in which
Honesty had been riding, and the people around her shook their heads, muttering when she covered her nose with her sleeve.
"It's an odenbeast," said one elderly gentleman with a sigh and a shake of his newsprint.
"They've gone wild in this part of Firth since the prince declared their hides are no longer in fashion. Nobody hunts them any longer. They get on the tracks, the bloody great stupid things. The train's hit it."
Honesty had never heard of such a thing, even from the most backward of provinces. In her home province of Bellora the train system had been elevated, in fact, to prevent such mishaps, but she didn't point that out. She hadn't been to Bellora in a long time. The odenbeast on the tracks had necessitated an entire removal crew to come out from the station, and they seemed in no rush. Nobody on the train seemed to find this a matter of consequence. Honesty, however, had been traveling for several days nonstop. She hadn't eaten a full meal since luncheon the day before and that had been a pocket tart grabbed hastily as she ran from one train to the next.
"No sense in fidgeting," the old man told her from over the edge of his paper. "Wherever you're going will still be there when you get there, I'm sure." That was true enough, as well as discouraging. Honesty concentrated on reciting the mantras of the Order in her head, trying to ignore the smell of singed odenbeast and the curious glances her gown garnered. No matter where she went it seemed there were always those who hadn't seen a Handmaiden in the flesh, and who didn't believe she was as human as the rest of them.
As the hours melted into one another and her stomach grew emptier, it had never been so difficult to convince herself that true patience was its own reward. By the time the train, cleaned of its unexpected passenger, rolled into the station, so many hours had passed beyond her estimated arrival that Honesty doubted there'd be anybody to meet her. She knew all too well how impatient princes were. So when the man, head bent to his chest and shadowed by the brim of his hat, stirred at the sound of the train and got to his feet, Honesty didn't expect him to greet her.
"Miz?"
She clutched her hand-trunk to her side, wary. Handmaidens were under the protection and long-reaching arm of the Order of Solace, but that didn't stop every idiot from believing he might be the first to get away with taking what other men needed to pay for.
"You waiting for a ride?" he asked when Honesty didn't answer. The man turned out not to be some randy scouse git with an aim at mischief, but the Prince of Firth's own man, sent to fetch her from the station. He firmly ensconced Honesty in a carriage so finely made it was like riding in a jewel-case. And she the jewel, she mused, settling onto the black velvet seats with a spread of her skirts. She didn't mean to sleep, but weariness overtook her. She'd had a hard few days of travel. Though all Handmaidens had personal rooms within the main Motherhouse in Neaku, the Order of Solace had sister-houses in many of the provinces. She'd most recently come from one of them, fresh from her last assignment without even a trip home before beginning the next.
She woke when the carriage halted and Bertram opened the door to let in a breath of fresh night air that smelled of rain. The sky held no hint of moon or stars and though she couldn't see them, Honesty felt the weight of the clouds like a mantle over her shoulders when she stepped out with Bertram's hand to assist her.
She lifted her face to breathe in the wet-thick breeze. "Storms are coming."
"Oh, aye."
As if at her word, thunder rumbled. She laughed gently at Bertram's assessing face. "I like the rain."
"So do the fields, Miz." Bertram grinned, showing straight white teeth set in sharp contrast to his shadowed face. "We'd best get you inside." Night hid the palace, which was just as well. Honesty didn't need to count the number of towers or judge the quality of the brick and marble. She wasn't here for that. Her interest lay inside with the prince who'd called for her. Everything else was merely the cream on the custard.
At this time of night, only sentries roamed the halls. Sentries and drunkards, she thought as they passed a thick wooden door half cracked to show a party of young lords inside. The sounds of their revelry and the scent of herb reached even to the hall, and Honesty paused, assuming her prince might be amongst the merrymakers, but Bertram only shook his head and motioned with one thick finger for her to follow down another set of corridors, more plainly dressed, and around the corner to a dusty, unkempt hall.
"He's down here." He pointed to a door at the end of the hall. She waited, but clearly he wasn't going to take her farther. Honesty blinked, stifling a yawn. Bertram nodded and stood aside. There was no sense in waiting, she saw. Honesty went through the door.
A short flight of stone steps took her to another door, the wood of this one outlined in scrolled black metal ornamentation. The gas lamps had been dimmed to dusk here, and she blinked again to clear her vision of the dust motes dancing. She pushed the door open.
She'd been trained to expect anything from her patrons. To withstand much and look past more. Even so, Honesty recoiled at the thick, rolling scent of sweat and sex and blood that assaulted her the moment she walked through the door.
She saw a girl bound by her wrists to a cross of ironwood, naked, her back crisscrossed with welts. Her head hung down and her tawny flesh gleamed with sweat. Her shoulders rose and fell with
each breath. There were other girls, too, most naked though a few wore sheer night rails that hid nothing. Had Bertram sent her to the wrong room?
Tendrils of red fog edged her vision like lace. Hunger and exhaustion assaulted her, along with the heat and miasma in the room. Honesty drew in a breath, lip curling at the taste of the air. It gave her no respite. If anything, every breath she drew made the buzz in her ears and her sudden unsteadiness worse.
Then she noticed the man. Stripped to the waist, he stood with his back to her. Long, thick hair tumbled over his shoulders and down to the center of his back in the colors of ferlafruits. Amber, russet, glints of gold that caught in the gaslight. His hair was enough to make her throat close tight on a breath meaning to escape as a sigh, but when he turned to face her . . . oh, Invisible Mother.
He was beautiful.
His upraised hand gripped the handle of a flogger, leather tails dangling. Sweat ran down his face and across his lips, and his tongue darted out to swipe it away. He dropped the flogger to his side.
"Who are you?"
His voice, fluid and melodious, reminded her of the stream in her father's orchard as much as his hair had called to mind the fruits. Honesty, shaken by memory, took a step back, her hand over her heart. She didn't answer.
"Invisible Mother," whispered the Prince of Firth. He dropped the flogger and stepped over it, unheeded, toward her. "You're her."
And then she fell.
‘I’ve had fluttering eyelashes and curtsies directed my way," Cillian murmured, "but I must say until today I've never had a woman faint dead away at the sight of me." Consternation flooded her, and Honesty struggled to sit. The blankets that had been tucked so tightly around her waist tugged at her as she moved, and the prince, for there was no question he could be anything else, shifted his chair a bit away from the bed so she had space to move.
"I plead your mercy," Honesty said, her voice rough.
The prince poured a cup of water from a pitcher and handed it to her. "Bertram was under orders to bring you directly to me. If I'd known you weren't able to handle the sight, I'd have given him different instructions."
Honesty sipped, the cool water sliding down her throat slowly enough to give her time to answer. She hadn't fainted in months, though she was prone to dizziness when she went too long without a meal, and she was still a little disoriented. If given her choice, she'd have put her head back on the pillow, but the prince was staring at her with such expectation she knew that wouldn't suit him. It didn't matter what she wanted. Selfish is the heart that thinks first of itself. The mantra rose easily enough in her mind, even if it settled less
certainly in her heart.
He had green eyes, like grass, but spangled with white, like the sea flecked with foam. This, too, reminded her of the home of her childhood. Honesty made to speak again, but thoughts of her life before still crowded her tongue, and they had no place here. No purpose. They would bring no pleasure—not to him and certainly not to herself. Prince Cillian, Prince of Firth, her patron, leaned forward curiously in his chair to capture her gaze with his. Looking into his eyes was much the same as staring into the sea had always been. She thought she might drown in that gaze, should she allow it. Honesty looked away. "I plead your mercy. I was overcome from my journey, not the sight of you. I ought to have demonstrated more appropriate control." His hand lifted, whether to strike or caress her, Honesty couldn't tell. He withdrew his touch at the last moment. The prince stood, still shirtless. His finely cut oxenhide trousers clung to him as though they'd been made of ink poured over his legs.
"The Order promised me a Handmaiden, and yet here I sit, bathing your wrists and head as though I were the maid instead of you. Tell me," Cillian said in a voice low but nowhere near soft, "is this the way your Order trains you to behave?"
"No. I plead your mercy, as I said." Honesty pushed back the covers. She was in the prince's bed, if the sheets were anything to judge it by. Someone had removed her shoes and stockings, and her bare feet reproached her further. She swung them over the edge of the bed and tested her equilibrium before she stood.
He was not a tall man, and she didn't have to tilt her head to look at his face. She spoke softly as a matter of training, not because she was by nature soft. "Your mercy, sir. I was remiss. I should've made certain to eat and drink and sleep properly, so that I might adequately serve you upon my arrival. I regret I didn't do so." Not that she'd had the chance to do so, not with so little time between leaving her last house and being summoned here. It was unusual, if not unheard of, for a Handmaiden to be assigned a new patron within hours of being released from the last, but Lady Valennda hadn't yet been wound into her shroud before Honesty had received the summons to move on. She hadn't been given time to protest.