The Immortal Prince (23 page)

Once a year, the King of Glaeba came to Lebec.

It was a tradition as old as the nation of Glaeba itself, although the reasons for the annual ball were lost in antiquity. Tilly Ponting claimed it had something to do with one of Stellan's ancestors saving a Debree's royal hide in some obscure battle fought long ago, and the annual visit was to acknowledge the family debt.

Being rather more cynical than his wife's friend, Stellan thought it probably had more to do with the king keeping on the good side of the one branch of his family with the wealth, the resources and the right bloodline to topple him, if the mood ever took them. The Deseans were loyal supporters of the king, but it would only take one Duke of Lebec to get a little greedy for the whole royal house to start trembling.

That, Stellan knew, was the reason Mathu had originally been sent to Reon Debalkor and not here to Lebec, when it came time for his lessons in government. Enteny wished to keep his cousin onside. He didn't particularly want him
in
side.

Despite that, Enteny and Stellan got along quite well, helped, no doubt, by the difference in their ages. The king was already a young man by the time Stellan was born. In fact, he was closer to Mathu's age than the king's age. They had never been rivals—Stellan and the king—or even particularly close friends when they were younger. It was only since Stellan had become Duke of Lebec that the king had begun to fully appreciate what a loyal servant he had in his cousin, and maybe even now, he didn't fully understand how good a friend Stellan was. Karyl Deryon knew, but it was in the best interests of both men that the king remained in ignorance of some matters.

The king's visit, however—politics aside—was easily the most important social event of the year, marking the beginning of summer and end of the court's winter recess. Everybody who belonged at court, many who wished they did, and quite a few who were out of favour, flocked to Lebec for the King's Ball and then retired to their town houses in Herino for the rest of the summer, where they could attend court on a daily basis if they wished to. Or if the king wished them to.

An invitation to the King's Ball in Lebec was a guarantee of favour for the coming court season. Exclusion might mean something as simple as an oversight, or it might herald the downfall of an entire House. One advantage of hosting the ball, Stellan thought as he descended the grand sweeping stairs that led down to the ballroom, was there was no danger he wasn't going to be invited.

“The flowers are all wrong! That's not what I ordered at all!”

Stellan smiled at Arkady's irritated exclamation as he reached the bottom of the staircase. The vast ballroom was empty, but for his wife and the score of Crasii slaves loading up the tables and placing gilded, velvet-upholstered chairs around the walls.

“Should I fall on my sword now, or wait until the king arrives?”

“You mock me at your peril, Stellan,” she warned.

He kissed her cheek fondly. For a common physician's daughter, she had a remarkable eye for the finer details of staging a royal event. He studied the flowers in question, which were being held by a nervous canine Crasii whose face was lost amid the foliage of the large arrangement. “They look fine to me.”

“That's because you're a complete ignoramus about anything floral. You can't tell the difference between a petunia and a pine tree. Fuchsias are in this year. Royal Cerise fuchsias, to be precise. These are Noble Scarlet fuchsias.”

“They look like pretty red flowers to me.”

“Laugh at my flowers one more time, Stellan Desean, and trust me, you won't need to fall on your sword. I'll give you a push.”

“I wouldn't dream of questioning your floral expertise,” he assured her, forcing his features into a very serious, albeit entirely false, expression. “You look quite stunning, by the way. Is that the dress you beggared me for?”

She nodded distractedly, dismissed the Crasii who'd brought her the flower arrangement to inspect, and then turned to look at him. She was wearing the family rubies, an elaborate choker encrusted with deep red stones interspersed with freshwater pearls that had been in his family for generations and was probably worth as much as some entire noble estates. The ball gown was red beaded silk, the same colour as the rubies (and Arkady's questionable fuchsias), cut low at the front, even lower at the back, designed to entice as much as conceal. Her dark hair was caught up in a matching ruby and pearl clasp on the right side, but allowed to tumble over her bare left shoulder in a cascade of perfectly arranged curls.
She has an eye for more than the appropriate flowers, this wife of mine,
he thought.

“Do you like it?”

She was beyond beautiful. She was breathtaking. But Stellan knew how annoyed she could get when he reminded her of the fact. He shrugged. “Actually, I'm a bit disappointed. Given the price of the damned thing, I was expecting it to be encrusted with hand-sewn virgin mermaid scales, at the very least.”

Arkady spared him a brief smile, ordered another one of the Crasii to move the punchbowl on the main table and then turned back to him. “It's the quality of the workmanship, Stellan. The stitching is so small you can barely see it. No, Tassie,” she called suddenly, “put the cups by the punch-bowl, not by the hot food platters!” With a sigh, she turned her attention back to her husband. “Have you seen Kylia yet?”

“No. Why?”

“No particular reason. Just be certain to make a fuss of her when you do see her, particularly if Mathu's around. This is her first official outing as an adult. She needs to know she's beautiful.”

“Is Mathu suggesting she isn't?”

Arkady smiled. “Just do it, Stellan. Don't try to figure it out. Be impressed by her. And don't ask what the dress cost.”

He sighed dramatically. “If you're so determined to ruin me, Arkady, I could arrange for you to stand at the gates and throw all my worldly wealth to the passers-by, you know.”

“I'd never be able to lift the antiques,” she replied blandly. “This is much more fun.”

Shaking his head, Stellan smiled. “I'll bet she looks a treat. As do you, I might add. Are you planning to flirt with the king?”

“Don't I always?”

“You know he thinks you're the only woman in Glaeba he can't have.”

Arkady seemed amused. “That's only because he doesn't get out much, Stellan. Do you think they'll be on time, this year?”

“As they haven't made it on time once in the past decade, I'm not certain it would be wise to count on it this year, your grace.”

Stellan and Arkady both turned at the unexpected answer to find Declan Hawkes standing at the entrance to the ballroom, cutting a surprisingly elegant figure in his unaccustomed finery. It must be raining again, Stellan noted. The spymaster's hair was damp, although obviously he had taken the time to comb it before entering the palace ballroom. Hawkes stepped forward, bowed politely to Stellan when he reached the foot of the staircase and then turned and bowed with equal respect to Arkady. “You look lovely as always, your grace.”

“Thank you, Declan. It's nice to see you again.”

“As always, it's nice to be home,” he replied, raising her hand to his lips.

Stellan frowned. The friendship between Declan Hawkes and his wife made him more than a little uneasy. He frequently told himself there was nothing sinister about it. They'd grown up in the slums of Lebec together. Their friendship was almost as old as they were, but it disturbed him, nonetheless. Perhaps it was because he was never certain just how much Arkady had shared with her best friend, or indeed if Declan Hawkes wasn't secretly jealous of him for marrying Arkady and simply biding his time, waiting for the right moment to bring the whole world crashing down upon his rival. Stellan had no proof, or even the slightest evidence that was the case, but the possibility niggled at the back of his mind every time he saw his wife and the spymaster together.

And then another thought occurred to him. Arkady knew Stellan would not object to a lover. If she took one, would it be this man? For that matter, had she already chosen him? Was that what she meant when she'd warned a lover was too dangerous? Did she mean all lovers in general or was she specifically referring to Declan Hawkes?

“Is the rest of the royal party following you?” Arkady was asking, as Stellan forced his growing paranoia away to concentrate on Declan's reply.
You worry about nothing,
he assured himself.
Hawkes would die before he allowed anything to hurt Arkady and I trust her implicitly.

“The king and queen were an hour or so behind me,” he was assuring Arkady. “I rode on ahead so you can tell me of your progress with our would-be immortal.”

Relieved there was a rational explanation for Hawkes's early arrival, Stellan smiled. “Arkady has been quizzing him quite diligently. She wanted to chop his pinkie off.”

Declan's face creased into a smile. “That sounds like something Arkady would suggest. As for proving his immortality, for all we know, it could be true.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Caelish have never heard of him. Or if they have, they're denying it.”

“Then he's
not
a Caelish agent?” Arkady asked, with a glint in her eye that made Stellan wonder if she was still planning to dismember their prisoner.

“There's a question about whether or not he's even from Caelum,” Declan told them. “According to my sources, the only reason the Caelish Ambassador hasn't denied it officially yet is because his government is still trying to decide if there's some sort of profit to be made by claiming him.”

“If he's not Caelish, what is he then?” Stellan asked. “Tenacian, perhaps? Senestran? He's too fair-skinned to be Torlenian.”

“He says he's Kordanian,” Arkady informed them, clearly sceptical of the claim.

Declan shrugged. “That's convenient. Claim to come from a nation that no longer exists. Who decided he was Caelish, anyway?”

“I believe that's what he said when he first arrived in Glaeba,” Arkady informed them. “Or they assumed it. It doesn't surprise me to discover he's lying. Cayal lies about everything.”

Stellan shook his head. “Are you sure we're not just dealing with a madman?”

“Not entirely,” Arkady conceded. “But I suspect not. His story is too well thought out to be the ravings of a lunatic.”

“Well, you're the one interrogating him,” Declan told her, “so I'll leave you to be the judge. Just be careful.”

“We can't be faulted on this, Declan,” Stellan assured him, a little surprised to hear the spymaster issue such a warning. “We've done everything according to the strictest letter of the law. The fear this man might be a Caelish agent left us no other choice.”

“Don't be too sure of that, your grace,” the young man warned. “To an outsider it looks as if you have your wife interrogating a potential spy, instead of executing him again or handing him over to me officially. Someone is bound to read something into that.”

“You know the reasons we can't execute him again as well as anybody, Master Hawkes. And it was your suggestion Arkady become involved.”

“Yes,” the spymaster conceded. “But that was before Prince Mathu invited himself here. It's not what I believe that counts, my lord. It's what the king believes. And right now, you have another cousin suffering intense embarrassment because the king's heir would rather be in Lebec with you than in Venetia with the mentor his father chose for him.”

Arkady glanced at her husband with an expression that spoke volumes, but she was too polite to say
I told you so
with Declan Hawkes looking on.

“Mathu hasn't put a foot wrong since he's been here,” Stellan reminded him.

“A situation that simply makes Duke Reon look even more incompetent.”

“Am I in trouble with the king?” Stellan asked, a little sick of Hawkes's instinctive need to hedge around the real issue.

Hawkes shrugged. “Let's just say that both the king and the Duke of Venetia are acutely aware of the crown prince's presence, not to mention his exemplary—and quite out of character—behaviour, in Lebec.”

“Enteny only had to say something and I would have sent Mathu back to Reon in Venetia,” Stellan reminded him.

It was Arkady, as usual, who saw straight to the heart of the problem, even before Hawkes could answer.

“You should have known, Stellan,” she told him. “That's what the king will be angry about. He's mad at you because he shouldn't have had to say anything about it at all.”

Jaxyn Aranville waited a good long time before he attempted to speak with Arkady at the ball. There was no point going near her early in the evening. As Stellan's hostess, either she was too busy organising the legion of Crasii slaves on duty for the occasion or she was occupied greeting their guests with her husband, Mathu, and the King and the Queen of Glaeba. Either way, she had no time to spare for a houseguest whose only function this evening was not to draw attention to himself.

He watched her from afar, thinking the Duchess of Lebec was going to be a real challenge. It wasn't just her physical attributes that attracted him. Arkady offered a challenge the likes of which he hadn't enjoyed in a very long time. She genuinely despised him. What's more, she despised him for the purest and most admirable of reasons. She could see through him.

And that, to Jaxyn's mind, meant that she understood him.

To understand him, Jaxyn figured, she must be able to think along the same lines. To fully appreciate the depth of his ambition, she must have a similar ambition of her own. It was that which Jaxyn found so enticing. The idea that in the perfectly proper Arkady there might lurk a soul mate was like dangling a piece of shiny string in front of a kitten. Even if she didn't realise the truth in herself, the fun would come from peeling away those protective layers she had drawn about herself, exposing the darkness lurking underneath.

It was more than enticing, Jaxyn decided. It was nigh on irresistible.

Corrupting innocence is easy, after all; corrupting the self-righteous…now that is infinitely more satisfying.

Jaxyn had watched the party rather than taken part in it. He had a very comfortable life here in Lebec and wasn't about to ruin it by embarrassing Stellan. He kept to the fringes, smiling, drinking and nodding to the few people he wished to acknowledge and avoiding those friends of the family likely to ask awkward questions about his activities, or worse, actual members of the Aranville family. It was close to midnight before he deemed it safe to approach Arkady. By then everyone had consumed enough alcohol that he could count on hazy memories tomorrow, if need be—including his own.

Not that it mattered much. Nobody was really watching him. All eyes were on the crown prince, the room talking of nothing but the attention the young man had paid to Kylia Debrell all evening. And what was Prince Mathu doing in Lebec anyway? Hadn't the king sent him to Reon in Venetia?

Kylia was wearing a much more demure gown than Arkady. Dressed in layers of pale green silk so fine they were almost transparent, she wafted around the ballroom, her gaze only for the crown prince, ignoring every other person in the room.

The prince's obvious attraction to her didn't surprise Jaxyn. She might have Stellan believing she was an innocent, but Jaxyn knew better. The girl was a born seductress. What remained to be seen was how her machinations would impact on Jaxyn's plans. He hadn't decided yet if Kylia was going to be a problem, partly because he wasn't entirely convinced she had the skills to snag herself a prince, which was clearly her intention, and the reason the gossips were so busy. He watched her looking into Mathu's eyes as they danced, her face alight with happiness, and shook his head.

Poor Mathu didn't stand a chance, really.

Putting aside the dilemma of Kylia, Jaxyn turned his attention to his own, more immediate problem. As the evening wore on he worked his way surreptitiously around the ballroom, nodding a greeting here, smiling there, even taking the time out to partner Lord Devalon's decrepit old wife through the quadrille. When he finally got near Arkady, he hesitated, content to just admire her from a short distance. She was addressing a number of slaves, issuing more orders, and the canines listened eagerly, determined to please. True, that was the nature of canine Crasii. The eagerness of dogs to please their masters was the reason the Tide Lords chose to blend dogs and humans into household slaves in the first place, Jaxyn knew. Arkady had a way of dealing with them that went beyond simple inbred loyalty. The Crasii actually loved her. They
wanted
to be her slaves.

“Did you wear that dress for me?” Jaxyn asked, sidling up to Arkady as she finished ordering the last few slaves to bring out another platter of pastries for the dessert table, and they'd hurried off to do her bidding. “You certainly didn't wear it for your husband.”

The party had thinned a little, but still had a way to go before it was done. The king and queen hadn't retired yet, and most of the guests would not dare leave before they did. Arkady turned to Jaxyn, smiling, far too aware of the need to publicly maintain her gracious posture to react to his taunt.

“Lord Aranville,” she replied. “How nice of you to join us this evening.”

“Wouldn't have missed it for the world,” he assured her, slurring his words a little. “You look stunning, by the way. But you know that already, don't you. Want to know how I can tell?”

She sighed in annoyance, but her smile never wavered. Anybody watching them from a distance would be unable to determine the nature of their discussion unless they could lip-read. “I'm sure you're going to tell me.”

“It's because you're never surprised when a man tells you how beautiful you are. You accept the compliment like it's your due.”

“Then consider your dues paid and get out of my way,” she told him pleasantly.

He moved a little closer, running his fingers lightly down her exposed back. He felt her stiffen with shock under his touch, but she couldn't do anything about it without drawing attention to them both. “Can I come to your room tonight?”

“Only if you fancy being castrated.”

“I'm serious, Arkady.”

“So am I, Jaxyn,” she assured him, stepping away from his hand.

Jaxyn's smile widened. The more he had to do with Arkady Desean, the more convinced he became that she was just like him. “Stellan wouldn't mind.”

“I would.”

“Only until you came to your senses.” He cast his gaze over her enticing cleavage. “And I could arrange for that to be
days
from now.”

Arkady surprised him by laughing aloud. “No wonder you've turned to your own sex for gratification, Jaxyn. No woman over the age of fourteen would fall for that line.”

Jaxyn glanced around, surprised she had made such a statement so openly. There was nobody within earshot, fortunately, and even if there had been, with the music and the level of conversation going on in the ballroom, she probably wouldn't have been overheard. Still, Arkady was proving herself far more willing to take risks than he first suspected.

“You like living dangerously, don't you?”

“Unlike you,” she retorted, “who likes living like a well-kept pet.”

He raised a brow at her and grinned. “Jealous?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Ah, that's right…I'm a profligate parasite, but you have your noble academic work to keep you occupied, don't you?”

“Don't be so hard on yourself, Jaxyn,” she scolded sweetly, her smile dripping venom. “You have important work, too. Whoring can be a real challenge, I'm told.”

“Have you broken Cayal yet?”

His question took her by surprise, shaking her out of her smug condescension. “What?”

“The Immortal Prince?” he reminded her. “Cayal of Lakesh. Have you broken him yet? Proved his mortality.”

“What's that got to do with you?”

“Just curious.”

“It's none of your business, Jaxyn, whether I have or not.”

“I bet you'd wrap those gorgeous long legs around a real Tide Lord if you were given half a chance.”

She glared at him. “You should retire now, Jaxyn, while I'm still in the mood to dismiss your remarks as the drunken ramblings of a small-minded fool.”

“And you should learn to quit while you're still ahead of the game, Arkady. You're playing with fire and you don't even realise they've tied you to the pyre.”

She shook her head, clearly puzzled by his warning. “What are you babbling about?”

He almost told her, but stopped himself at the last moment. She wasn't ready yet and this game had a long way to go before it was done. “Nothing. You were right. It's just the drunken ramblings of a fool. Care to dance?”

“Don't be absurd!”

“Then I and my drunken, foolish ramblings shall retire, your grace. This is your party, after all, and this well-pampered
pet
doesn't fancy having to find a new home anytime soon.”

She stepped back from him, obviously confused by his erratic behaviour and more than a little disturbed by it. “Goodnight, Jaxyn.”

“Your grace.” He bowed to his hostess, wobbling a little on the way down, and then headed off across the ballroom leaving Arkady staring after him, clearly concerned.

With his back to her, he smiled, not nearly as inebriated as Arkady thought he was. He hadn't gotten any closer to seducing her, that was true, but he had worried her enough that it was unlikely she would think about much else for the rest of the evening.

Any night Arkady couldn't get her mind off him was a success, Jaxyn believed. Every worried frown, every nervous sip of wine she took while wondering what he was up to, who he was speaking to, who he might be offending, who he might be sharing Stellan's dangerous secret with…every one of them was a moment spent thinking of
him
and that, Jaxyn knew, was half the battle.

The first rule of seduction was to make your victim aware of you.

Forcing them to think of little else was the touch of a master.