by Brenna Lyons
The wide lawn was coming to an end, and the tents pitched for the nobles sat on the border of the orchard he would have to cross. Mik tipped his cap further down, shading the taut lines of his face as he passed Minn. When his escape was discovered, Minn might be the one person on Kegin who would care. Not that Minn cared about Mik. Her upset would be purely self-centered.
“I can’t believe you’re actually doing this,” one of Minn’s sisters whispered.
He stopped in the deep shadows behind an Eir tree in full bloom, his heart pounding.
Minn chuckled. “Relax, Sari. The contract favors me.”
He swallowed a sound of disgust. I know. I’ve seen early drafts of the contract. The fact that she still argues it is reason enough not to trust her.
“You’ll contract and mate with a kidnapper, a half-mad re-bred—” Sari began.
Mik felt his stomach clench. That was what they thought of him. That was what they all thought of him. He deserved no better, but he still wished he could convince them that he wasn’t that same desperate man. Aren’t you? You could be in a warm bed with a willing schente. Why are you here, Mik?
“Prince, Sari. He’s a prince. It’s the longest contract in recorded history. Aside from the production of children and official duties, I won’t have to lay eyes on him.”
Sari shivered. “But to produce children—”
Minn shrugged and examined her manicured nails, gilded in the style of the current hopefuls. “Three children. It shouldn’t take long, and if once a week for six months pass with no child, I collect my penalty. In the meantime, my contract allows me schaen.”
Mik shook his head in disbelief. They actually approved schaen for her. What a nightmare! He’d have his schente, and she’d have her schaen. Once a week, he’d be called out to stud like a bull kit. That wasn’t Mik’s idea of a marriage.
“Six months?” Sari squeaked. “It will never happen, Minn.”
She smiled a cold, empty smile. “If it is intolerable, there is always Walla tea.”
Mik fisted his hand and eased away toward the forest two stride from the cliff side. He’d heard enough to last him a lifetime. “Walla tea,” he cursed. The herb was used to prevent pregnancy. She planned to take the tea to win her penalty if he didn’t perform to her liking? Minn picked the wrong man to play games with.
“Thank Mag I won’t be tied to that jaglin.” He thanked Mag for his justice in letting him hear her true thoughts. Mik knew Minn didn’t love him, but he wouldn’t stand for a woman actively plotting against him. He thanked Mag, but he wouldn’t thank Fion.
As far as Mik could tell, the goddess of Love and mercy had no interest in him, and he had no time for a deity who so openly opposed him. From the death of his Earth-born cross-mate to Susan— No. Susan wasn’t Fion’s fault. That one, he would blame on Len driving him to madness.
The hottel Mik stashed in the forest was waiting for him as he’d hoped. It wasn’t his war-buck. Only nobility would have a beauty like his steed. No. This hottel was a nondescript mare, white with a brown face and thick waves of long fur, much like the one his soldier shot from under Susan.
Chidan was that mare’s name. “Beloved,” he noted. Jole had named the mare for Susan, as a sign of how much Susan loved her, or perhaps as a sign of how much Jole loved Susan.
He pushed the unwanted memory of his brother’s bride sailing over the beast’s head from his mind and mounted the mare. Mik tucked his knees up, scowling at the fact that his feet all but dragged the ground as he rode unless he drew up his knees as he would on his war-buck. The mare was not a dignified beast, but she was young and strong. Most of all, she was common.
Mik laughed. “My dear, your name is Frelang,” he purred, patting her neck. Freedom was a fine name for the mare he would ride to freedom.
He urged Frelang on with a cluck of his tongue and a squeeze of his knees. Common— His freedom would come in being the things he had been taught to avoid, the things that were beneath him.
CHAPTER TWO
Veril 16th
Mik smiled at the clear blue sky, lacing his fingers behind his head and crossing his legs at the ankles. The late autumn grass was cool and crisp against his back, not brown yet but not the vibrant green of summer. A day’s growth of beard made his chin itch, but it would be worth it in the long run. He’d never been permitted to grow a beard like some common men did. Mik had always wanted to.
He sighed. He’d have to leave soon, but he intended to visit another of his dreams. This morning, there would be no servants and guards, no Kell making demands of him. There was only Mik and the splendor of a perfect, crisp autumn breeze stirring his hair.
Years ago, when Mik was a boy of five or six, he often snuck into Jole’s room at night. He asked questions, endless questions about their mother and Jole’s life with her. Mik had been starved for knowledge of her. Kell didn’t permit anyone to speak about her. The one time Mik dared ask— He cringed. Why must I always remember such things when I want to escape them?
He was three. Mik knew Jole would come to live with him soon, the older brother he’d seen only on ceremony days.
“Who was Tolerin?” Kell quizzed him. Kell always quizzed him. There were never quiet moments between them.
“A general under Ro Ti, the great conqueror. He was a favored son of the king for saving Ro’s life in battle. Tolerin took a blow intended to kill the king and slay the other man while he lay pouring his lifeblood on the ground.” The little details were important to Kell. Mik tried to remember every detail of every story, but it seemed an impossible task.
“And?” Kell barked, taking a sip from the glass in his hand.
Mik searched his memory. “He led the final three campaigns in Ro’s stead,” he offered, proud of his recollection. “The final battle was in Pri Ti 10-476.”
Kell’s jaw tightened. “And?”
Mik searched for more frantically, but he had exhausted his knowledge of Tolerin. He shrugged, knowing what was coming.
His father made a sound of disgust. “He took Ro Ti’s daughter, Riella, as mate and became the first king of the first Ri era. He fathered Deliya the fair and Benir the peace-bringer.”
He nodded, his face burning in defeat. He’d failed again. He always failed. As if Mik didn’t know his disgrace well enough, Kell gave him the look that announced his disappointment in his second son.
“You can do better, Mik. At your age, Jole knew the histories of two worlds by rote. He spoke two languages. You are smarter than he is. You were raised in the Keen manner with the finest tutors. You must apply yourself.”
But, Mik was applying himself. Was it his fault that Mag blessed Jole with an almost Vid-like memory? “Will I learn my mother’s language?” he asked, hoping to find a safer subject.
“Why, when you can barely handle Keen?” Kell growled.
“Will Jole teach me when he comes to live here?”
“No.”
“But—” How was Mik supposed to talk to his mother if he didn’t speak her language — or an Earth-born bride? Surely not through translators!
“I’ll not have you tainted by her inferior barbarian teachings,” he decided.
“When will I get to meet my mother?” he asked innocently.
Mik realized his mistake when Kell turned his cold, black eyes on him.
“You won’t,” he promised.
“When I am grown—” Mik began, desperate to know that he would someday meet her. When he was grown, Kell couldn’t order him not to.
The world went momentarily black then painfully bright. Balance deserted him. When Mik’s vision cleared, Kell stood over him. Realization came slowly. His father struck him. Mik ran a shaking hand over his cheek.
“Never ask me about the woman again. She is a selfish, proud woman. She denies Kegin daughters. She locks herself away from me and from you. What kind of mother does that?”
Mik hadn’t asked Kell again. Lessons like that were quickly learned.
He did ask Jole often and lived his mother’s love vicariously through his brother’s words. Jole lived in love and freedom. Their mother held him upright on his first mare. Jole hadn’t broken his arm falling from a war-buck or been scowled at for crying out as the bone was set.
Jole was permitted to lie in a field of lizors and contemplate cloud formations without a history tutor at his elbow. Jole was told often that he was loved. Jole was taught how to love. The only love Mik had known was Jole’s, but there was nothing Jole could do to improve Mik’s lot in life.
Mik never knew if his mother loved him. She died when he was seven. Jole hypothesized that she never talked about her second son because it was too painful for her to think about losing him at birth. Mik chose to believe that. It was better than the alternative that no one loved him but Jole. After Susan, even Jole distanced himself.
Mik had lived for the day when he would turn twenty and be free of Kell’s rule, free to seek out the mother he’d been denied knowing. He dreamed of one day being embraced by Jenneane as Jole described her embracing her older son. Mik might have forgiven her for dying before he could have that wish fulfilled were it not for what he learned two years after she passed.
He found the hidden corridors that allowed him to sneak to Jole’s rooms early in life. At the time, there were only three exits he utilized — his room, Jole’s room, and the one near the kitchen. That night, Mik was headed to the kitchen.
Mik paused as he passed a bank of soldier’s quarters, stunned by someone uttering his mother’s name. There wasn’t a doorway, but the stone had crumbled, making it easy for him to hear the voices in the room beyond. He stilled, placing his ear against the stone to hear better.
“Jenneane,” he whispered, wary even in his solitude to speak it aloud.
“Lovely. A beautiful woman,” one soldier attested.
“You looked at her?” another asked in disbelief.
The first barked a laugh. “Yes. I looked. I was all but ordered to bed her if she were willing.”
“Was she?”
Mik held his breath and waited for the answer. Please, not that. Please, Mag.
“No.” His voice was petulant, as if he considered her refusal a personal affront.
Mik sighed in relief.
“Not for me,” he continued. “But for someone.”
His hand fisted on the rock, leaving cuts that Jole would heal before Kell could see them the next morning.
“Who?” the other man asked.
“I don’t know, but I do know how she died.”
“An accident, wasn’t it?”
The soldier laughed harshly.
Mik felt weak. He slumped against the wall, the air thick in his lungs.
“That was the official release.”
“Then what really happened?” the other demanded.
Mik imagined the first soldier puffing up, proud at possessing knowledge that the other didn’t. He hated the man, but he wanted to know more.
“She poisoned herself.”
There was more. Mik could hear the implied hanging knowledge in his conspiratorial tone.
“Losing her sons was finally too much for her?”
“No. She used gola berry tea and olum.” He sounded gleeful.
Mik shook his head. At nine, pharmacology had not been one of his subjects yet. He didn’t know what that combination signified.
The second soldier sucked in a breath, audible even through the stone. “Who was the father?” he asked solemnly.
“If Kell Ri knew that, I imagine the man’s blood would have stained a blade by now. The king doesn’t take being cuckolded lightly. Or maybe it was another man ordered to take her, and the bitch simply found a way to escape his trap. I’m sure Kell isn’t happy that she found a way to best him again.”
“They’re certain?”
“Why else does a woman choose gola berry but to kill a bastard?”
Mik had no memory of the trip back to his rooms. He was numb from the shock of what he heard. He drew a bath and sat in it until he was shivering, the water chilled to the temperature of his soul.
Had Jole ever known the true woman, or had she lied to him, shown him a false face? Mik wanted to gut the soldier for his lies, but he couldn’t be sure that the man was lying. Was his mother truly a wanton and a traitor? Had her death been an accident or had she left him by her own hand? Had she ever considered Mik when she chose her path?
There was no way to learn the answers to those questions. Mik wasn’t permitted to ask his father or the guards. Jole wouldn’t know for certain, and Pyter—
Mik tried to ask Pyter how his mother really died. He trusted the man for one reason. Jole trusted him, and that spoke volumes to Mik. That misconception didn’t last long. Mik couldn’t trust Pyter any more than he could trust Kell.
Pyter’s cold look put his father’s to shame, as if the mention of his mother was a personal affront to Jole’s mentor. Worse, Pyter asserted that, by contract, Mik was never his mother’s son. Legally, Pyter was constrained from telling Mik anything. All of it was delivered with undisguised hatred.
Mik never understood why Pyter hated him. He only understood one thing. Jole had Pyter to watch over him and care for him. Mik still had no one. Now that his mother was dead, he would never have anyone to fill that void.
He was ten before Mik understood that Kell didn’t favor Jole despite his brother’s many strengths. In some strange way, Kell seemed to loathe Jole even as he held him up as a shining example of success to his younger son. Mik had hoped he could win a place in their father’s heart by simply besting Jole at something, anything.
Saying that was easier than doing it. Jole was faster, stronger, and more knowledgeable. The fact that Jole was five years his senior rarely occurred to Mik. Since it made no difference to Kell, it was immaterial to Mik. In retrospect, it should have made a difference. Maybe that was the beginning of his madness, beating himself black and blue for something he could never hope to attain under those circumstances.
In the end, Mik excelled in only one area before Jole set up his own household at the age of twenty-two. Mik was the better sneak, cutthroat, and all around bastard. Of the two of them, he had truly grown to be Kell’s son. It was no wonder that Susan spurned him.
Mik sighed and pushed to his feet. He had ridden half the night. He was far from the palace but not far enough. He should have kept riding. Mik should have been through Fint early that morning and within the southern hills of the Garesh Mountains by now. He had to move quickly.
He would purchase supplies in Fint and hide in the forests between the villages to make his way to the foothills. If Kell did try to find him, Mik would not be an easy man to find. This was one game he could win against his father. When it came down to it, Mik was a world-class sneak.
*
Mik ducked through the marketplace, backtracking to the stable and Frelang. What in Len’s Unholy Underworld were all of these soldiers doing in a small village like Fint? Well, there was only one possible answer to that question.
He berated himself. Mik had lingered too long, enjoyed his freedom too much. Now his enjoyment could cost him that hard-won freedom. His father had outflanked him. Mik hadn’t expected pursuit to come so quickly and be so intensive.
Mik kept his eyes down and his shoulders hunched, making himself as inconspicuous as possible. He bowed to a passing general, thankful that it wasn’t one he knew personally. Mik cringed at the meek exterior he was affecting. He would have died rather than do this two years ago, but there were worse things than death.
If freedom meant presenting as if he was the lowest drifter, he would do it. I am not a desperate man. “Right,” he quipped, fighting back a laugh at that thought. If anything, he was even more desperate than he had been in those dark times. The stable was just ahead, and Mik hurried toward it.
His eyes passed over a woman, and he stopped, looking at her in dismay. “Susan,” he breathed. Mik shook his head, sure that s
he was a hallucination of some sort. He prayed to Mag that his mind had snapped and supplied this torture for him, but Mag wasn’t in the business of granting Mik’s wishes that day.
Susan locked on his eyes and mouthed his name. She scanned her eyes up and down the alley.
Mik followed the movement, a stark terror making his stomach rebel. If she screamed, he would never make it from the town. He turned and ran for the stable. If she screamed when he was already mounted, he had a chance. Thankfully, the alley was deserted. He was on Frelang when she appeared in the doorway of the stable.
“Mik. Don’t do this. Please.” Her grasp of the Keen language had improved in the last two years, but the voice that spoke it was the same.
He didn’t look at her. Susan wasn’t his. Mik should never have looked at her in the first place. He should never have touched her. “I’m not hurting anyone, Susan. I don’t intend to. You have— My vow isn’t worth much, but you have it.”
“Just talk to Joel. Don’t leave this way.”
He winced at her pronunciation of his brother’s name. The Earth inflection was beautiful. Even when he was sure she was cursing him in her native language, her words were beautiful, elegant. Mik wished that Jole had taught him the language, but it was a risk his brother wasn’t willing to take.
“What is my name, Susan?” he pleaded quietly. Mik had to know. What would his name sound like in the language he was denied.
“I don’t understand.” Her voice was closer.
Mik pushed down the urge to move away from that voice. She wasn’t his to touch, but he wouldn’t run from her either. “How would my mother have pronounced my name? Tell me. Please.”
“Mik was a baby name, an endearment. She might have called you that.”
“A baby name for what? What is my name?” Who was he really? Mik was the child. Who was the man?
“Till tells me that her brother’s name was Michael. Jenneane named you to honor her brother.”