“Wasn’t that kind of Malac?” Cecily demanded politely as she waved her maid forward with a meal cart full of covered trays, obviously sent up from the palace’s main kitchen.
“Yes. Of course.” Maari could only watch, still clinging to Malac’s hand, as the maid began to set out a feast comprised of at least a dozen kinds of scrumptious finger food. Along with another bottle of champagne.
“I’ll be back for you in a couple of hours.” Malac pressed a kiss to the top of her head, then he gently pried his hand from her desperate grip. “You ladies have fun!” He kissed his mother on the cheek, then disappeared into the hall. Abandoning Maari with a stranger.
“Have a seat, dear.” Cecily gestured at the chair to the right of the one she stood behind. Evidently they were going to sit side by side, rather than across from each other. Which implied a more intimate conversation than Maari could imagine having with a woman she’d just met.
A woman whose role in the palace was evidently supposed to be the model for her own.
That was why Malac had brought her, surely. To show her what the life of a royal concubine could be like, if she cooperated. If she gave the Camden princes what they wanted.
The maid pulled Maari’s chair out for her, and she sat, a little surprised to realize that this luncheon with a stranger—a fellow concubine—was the most formal reception she’d received since her arrival in the palace. The first time she’d been treated as a guest worthy of formal service and proper clothing.
Even if she couldn’t quite decipher the way her hostess was looking at her. Even if she couldn’t quite trust Cecily’s motivation for having her over at all.
Maybe this was just a favor for her son. Gods, please let this just be a favor for Malac.
“We’ve been blessed with a beautiful day, don’t you think?” Maari said with a look out a large picture window overlooking a private, walled garden.
Cecily cocked her head without even glancing at the window, as if she were trying to see through the small talk and puzzle out some mystifying bit of subtext. Then she burst into polite laughter. “You really are a princess, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Maari frowned. “Third-born of Stead Delayne, and the eldest daughter. We are one of the First Families, from a royal bloodline unbroken since the planet Syrus was first terraformed and settled.”
“I see.” Cecily took a sip of her champagne, still studying the princess over the rim of her glass. “And do you find nothing amusing about the idea of two concubines, each tasked with keeping their respective king’s cock drained, sitting across the table from each other and discussing the weather?” She laughed again. “Is that how they taught you to socialize at that fancy school Jude sends his sisters to?”
Maari lifted her own glass and sipped from it, buying time while she considered her reply. “I’m afraid that nothing I learned in school could have prepared me for this particular social situation.”
Cecily laughed again, and Maari found the sound rather pleasant. And she could see where Malac had gotten his compelling smile. But if the son’s smile hid a dark temper and a manipulative streak, could the same be true of his mother? Or had he inherited his mercurial temper from the late king Cedric?
“And despite that unbroken royal bloodline, the council sent you here to suck my son’s cock.”
The princess choked on the sip she’d just taken, covering her mouth with her napkin as she tried to expel champagne from her windpipe. In polite society, women did not discuss such things at a luncheon.
Cecily only watched, studying her reaction as if there were more to be gleaned from it than the fact that the princess had evidently abandoned several long years of etiquette training over her three months in captivity.
Finally, Maari replaced her napkin in her lap, struggling to reclaim her composure. “I was sent as a concubine for all three of the Camden princes. Including your son. But I consented to this arrangement,” she insisted, despite the false nature of a statement that was true, on its surface. Oddly, she found that in speaking to Malac’s mother, she could not bring herself to characterize her position as coerced or forced, even though that was a much more valid interpretation of how she came to be in Loborough.
“Is that so?” Cecily sipped from her champagne flute again, and the silence that stretched between the two women seemed to say much more than her tongue actually had.
“Yes, I… Well, I had the opportunity to serve my stead—to protect my people—and I couldn’t very well turn away from such a responsibility, could I?”
“To serve your people? On your back?”
“I—” Maari’s mouth snapped shut, as she suddenly realized what was happening. Princesses are trained in the art of conversation. They’re taught to fill every uncomfortable silence with polite small talk, a fact her hostess was obviously manipulating.
The strategy was simple enough: Cecily would say something provocative, then sit back and let the ensuing silence compel the princess to reveal more than she normally would say to a stranger at a luncheon. Because she hadn’t known she was coming to meet Malac’s mother, and she’d had no opportunity to study her hostess. To prepare a list of acceptable topics of conversation and polite segues.
Maari’s gaze roamed the meal laid out before her. “Is that how you would characterize your own role in the palace?” she asked as she served herself a couple of finger sandwiches and a tiny little lime tartlet. “You serve on your back?”
“You might recall that the king I served has been gone for five long years now.” Assassinated by Maari’s oldest brother—a fact both women allowed to go unspoken.
“And when he was still with you?”
Cecily took another long sip from her glass. “No, that isn’t how I would have characterized my role here. I had no people to serve. No royal responsibility to uphold.”
“May I ask, then, what brought you here?”
“Cedric brought me here.” Malac’s mother arched one brow at her. “Was that not obvious? Were you under the impression that peasant girls have more choice, faced with a king’s desires, than a princess does?”
“I… No. Of course not.”
“Then let’s you and I be frank with each other, shall we, princess? There is no one in all of Loborough—perhaps in all of Syrus—who understands your position better than I do.” She cocked her head to the side, studying Maari again with narrowed eyes. “Yet even I have never been exactly where you are. Charged with keeping not one, but three men satisfied. The three most powerful men in the kingdom. This wasn’t really your choice, was it?”
Maari hesitated. Then she gave the slightest shake of her head, fighting to control the humiliated flush she could feel burning in the apples of her cheeks. “But I have accepted my position with all of the grace I—”
Cecily burst into a humorless laughter. “Don’t lie to me, child. You’ve been here for three months, and my son fancies himself in love with you, yet I’m just now meeting you.”
“He… He said that?” What else had he told his mother?
“He wants me to like you, but that’s only part of the reason you’re here.”
“He also wants me to like you,” Maari said. “Not just you as a person. Or even as his mother. He wants me to see what my life could be like.”
“Could be?” Cecily nodded. “If you accept this. Because you haven’t yet, have you?”
“I am trying,” the princess insisted. “But it’s a lot.”
“And you were a virgin, were you not? Before the king took you? I’m sure that was quite an adjustment.”
“It must have been the same for you.” Maari sipped from her glass again. “Malac said you were very young when the late king found you serving in a restaurant. Is that right?” He’d said his father had been enamored of Cecily at first sight. That he’d taken her that night and sent compensation to her father.
Cecily gave her another quiet smile. “No, dear. That’s just the story we told our son. I was very young. B
ut I met King Cedric in a brothel. I was one of the whores.”
Maari choked on another sip of champagne, and this time her hostess rose to gently pluck the flute from her grasp and set it on the table.
“Perhaps, if that’s going to continue to be an issue, you should focus on your food instead.”
“I’m sorry.” Maari coughed into her napkin again. “I must admit, that caught me by surprise.”
“I’m afraid Malac’s reaction would be even more severe. Which is why we aren’t going to tell him.”
Maari frowned. “He truly doesn’t know?”
“Of course not. What prince—even a bastard prince—wants to hear that his mother spent time on her knees for money, before he was born?” Cecily’s crude words were entirely at odds with her formal bearing. With her expensive clothing and poshly decorated apartment. With the proper way she held her glass and tucked her ankles together beneath her chair, as if she, too, had been schooled in Valemont, with the children of royalty. Though Maari knew she had not.
She leaned forward in her chair, piercing Maari with a gaze like steel. “That will be our secret, princess. My gift to you, in welcome.”
“Gift?”
“It is customary to present royalty with a gift upon the first introduction, is it not? And I think you’ll find, once you’ve been here for a while, that information is much more valuable in the Camden household than are jewelry or trinkets. It’s become somewhat of a currency, in fact.”
Maari nodded slowly, as she processed the implications of what she was hearing. The value of confidential knowledge and the peculiar wealth of those who might hoard it. “Our secret,” she parroted. Then she frowned. “Why— Why would you share that with me?”
“Because knowledge is power, dear. And I know my son well enough to assume that, as besotted as he obviously is with you, he is not the kind of man to relinquish power in a relationship. And you, I can see, don’t yet know how to seize it for yourself.”
Maari wasn’t quite sure she agreed with the last part of Cecily’s statement, but the “gift” suddenly made sense. “And now I know something about Malac that no one else knows.”
“Now, I didn’t say that. It is in your best interest to assume that our current king knows everything, about everyone. Even if he doesn’t, it pays to err on the side of caution with that one.”
Maari nodded. “But I know something about Malac that he doesn’t know about himself…”
“Precisely. That might seem like a small thing right now, but you may find, in dark moments, that a little bit of power—even secret power—is enough to light the way.”
“You are not wrong about that.” And for a while, Maari had had a much more significant bit of secret power. But with her secret now exposed… She lifted her glass again and smiled when Cecily arched one brow at her. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “Unless you’re waiting until I take another sip to say something else shocking.”
Cecily laughed. “No. But I do suggest that you eat something, if you’re planning on a second glass.”
Maari took a bite from one of her tiny sandwiches. “Was this your idea or Malac’s? This luncheon.”
“His, of course. But I am glad that he brought you. I don’t have guests very often.”
“Neither do I, anymore.” Maari took another bite of her sandwich, and she found her appetite returning. “I don’t get to go anywhere or do anything.”
“That’s because you play the game exceptionally poorly, dear.”
“The game?”
“We’re all pieces on a chess board, princess. Only in life, it’s the king rather than the queen who controls the board. And you and I should both thank the gods for that, because queens have a tendency to be rather…
“Unpleasant?” Maari finished for her hostess, and Cecily laughed.
“I was going to say bitchy. But yes. Lenora was more than a little unpleasant to me, and I cannot imagine that Geneva has not carried on the tradition.”
The bite on Maari’s tongue went sour. “She threatened to have my children murdered in their crib.”
“Children?” Cecily leaned forward, her intense gaze suddenly hyper-focused on the princess. “How many will they allow you?”
“Allow? I’m to have as many as they can force upon me. And Geneva will see them each smothered, right in front of me.”
Maari’s hostess waved off her concerns. “Jude would never let that happen. And Malac… If you were to give him a baby, he would stop the entire planet in its rotation to protect that child. As, my dear, would I. I hadn’t expected to ever have a grandchild. Or at least, to ever know about one.”
“Well, you won’t really know about this one either. This hypothetical child. I’m not allowed to know which of them sires my children. None of us are allowed to know. That way, my humiliation can be passed on to my children. So they can inherit my shame.”
Cecily rolled her eyes and drained her glass, then she held it aloft, silently requesting a refill, which her maid scurried to provide. “There is no shame in bearing a child, dear. No matter how that child comes into being. There is no love in the universe as pure as the love of a child for its mother. It is unconditional. It defies reason. It doesn’t have to be earned and is very difficult to lose. A child will forgive any sin for the price of a hug. Of a kind word.
“This can be a very lonely life, princess. A child is a priceless indulgence. A brood? I cannot imagine such a blessing.”
“Did Malac tell you to say that?”
“Why would he do that?” she asked, and Maari couldn’t help but notice that her hostess had not answered the question.
“They’re all three trying to convince me to give them a child. Well, two of them, anyway. I don’t think Orlann cares.”
“Why would it be up to you, whether or not to breed? Do you have some reliable way of preventing that?”
“I do. A gift passed down through the women in my family. It’s so reliable a contraceptive method, in fact, that I haven’t yet figured out how to bypass it. Because it is tied to my will, and I don’t know how to truly want a child that Geneva is only going to take from me.”
Cecily blinked, surprised into silence for the first time since Maari had been introduced to her. Finally, she took a long gulp from her glass, then she set it down. “I’d say you have quite a problem on your hands, dear.”
“Indeed. And if I fail to give them a child—quickly—Jude says he will consider me in breach of my agreement, and he will rally an allied army to march against Bannon.” Maari fought tears as she whispered Jude’s threat. “He says he will slaughter every man, woman, and child in the kingdom.” And Malac will lead the charge. Though she did not feel comfortable blaming him in front of his mother.
Cecily lifted her glass again, ignoring the food on her plate, and she aimed a puzzled frown at the princess. “And why, exactly, would you let the king do that?”
“I—” Maari’s brows dipped, crinkling the bridge of her nose. “How would I ever stop him?”
“Child, you don’t understand one bit of this, do you?”
“I don’t know what you—”
“Why do you think there’s no piece for a concubine on a chess board?”
“Because most kings don’t have one?”
“Bullshit!” Cecily twisted in her seat to gesture at her maid. “Bring us something stronger. Whiskey.”
“You drink whiskey?” In Bannon, ladies did not drink hard liquor.
“So do you, now, child,” Cecily said, as her maid scurried toward a closed liquor cabinet on the opposite side of the long room. Maari noticed that though she’d started the meal as “dear,” at some point she’d become “child.” And she couldn’t tell whether or not that was a promotion in her hostess’s eyes.
While the maid poured an inch of dark amber liquor into each of two short glasses, Cecily leaned closer to the princess and lowered her voice so dramatically that Maari wondered if her room, too, was fitted with cameras. “There
is no piece representing the concubine on a chessboard, child, because no one is supposed to know that we’re playing the game.”
Maari huffed, her disbelief on display as the maid set a glass of whiskey in front of her.
Cecily accepted a glass of her own and took a long sip from it. Then she leaned in again and spoke in a gruff whisper, her eyes alight with quiet passion. “In life, the king controls the board—but the concubine controls the king.”
“That is certainly not true, in my case.”
“But it could be,” Cecily insisted softly. “Get him to bite you.”
“He did bite me—they all three did—but the effects have worn off.” She hesitated before admitting the rest. “I thought that’s what I wanted, but now… If Jude’s going to take me either way, I’d… I’d almost rather he bit me, but he doesn’t seem inclined to do it again.”
“That’s because he’s smart. Tempt him into it, princess,” Cecily whispered. “Just as information can give you power over Malac, Jude’s bite can give you power over him.”
“No, it’s the opposite!” Maari lifted her glass and took a sip, flinching over the foreign burn of the whiskey. “The bite makes me want him! It makes me unable to resist him. To stick to any ‘no,’ that I manage to get past my lips.”
Cecily waved off her statement. “You don’t get to say ‘no’ anymore, child, and the king wouldn’t listen even if you tried. Which means that word carries no power for you, unless your goal is to piss him off. And there will be occasions when that is your best bet. But most of the time, you will be far better served in turning a ‘yes’ to your advantage.” She leaned even closer, taking another sip from her glass. “The key to surviving Jude isn’t to fight him. It’s to influence him. That bite is a double-edged sword. It doesn’t just make you want him, child.”
“It makes him want me?” But Jude wanted her anyway. That was the whole problem. The last thing she wanted to do was make that any worse.
“It makes him unable to resist you. And not just your body. But he has to do it more than once. He has to bite you a second time—and preferably a third—before the effects of the first bite have worn off.”
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