“He’s not his fucking father,” Eli snarled, and dragged the man up by his collar. “Are you?”
“You’re insane,” the man said, and Eli frowned, shaking him violently.
“Are you?” A crowd was starting to gather. Eli slapped the man in the face, and the man scrabbled at him, tugging at his shirt collar and revealing the ragged scars around his neck.
“Oh, spirits,” the man said. He tried to move back, but Eli straddled him, slapping him hard a second time. “It’s you. You’re the man…the one with the…the one who buried poor Tarrin.”
“Poor Tarrin? He was keeping girls in his cellar. Friends, were you?” Eli struck him again, and the man seemed to black out for a second before Eli shook him awake. “Where were you taking that boy on your horse, eh?” Eli drew a knife at his belt, and Rey ran forward as the growing crowd let out a collective gasp.
“Let’s not slit a man’s throat in a public street,” Rey whispered, grabbing Eli by the arm and hauling him away. “What’s possessed you?”
“He’s a kidnapper,” Eli hissed. “The boy he was with asked for help.”
“Help,not murder in broad daylight!”
“People have gotten away with worse,” Eli said.
Footsteps pounded behind them, and Rey cursed under his breath as a pair of guards from the noble carriage ran over. One of them reached for Eli, who jerked away, and the other checked the once-more unconscious man lying in the middle of the road. The other man on the horse slithered from the saddle and stumbled to his hands and knees, and the guard near Eli went to help him to his feet instead.
“He was holding that man against his will,” Eli said, and Rey closed his eyes in a silent prayer to the universe.
“Was he?” a voice called.
Rey turned. A well-dressed man stepped onto the dusty street, boots gleaming and sapphires shining at his ears and collared cloak. He had black hair he kept tied back in a queue, and his gaze was keen as he surveyed the chaos unfolding in the street before him. Every inch of him screamed money and power, and as he approached, the submissive guardsand members of the growing crowd looked down, instinctively responding to his dominance.
But only Eli dropped to his knees.
Rey stepped back, startled, as Eli clenched his hands on his thighs and stared down at the ground, his dominance nevertheless radiating from him in uncontrolled waves. His grip on himself was clearly slipping, but why? Because a wealthy noble had stepped out of a carriage?
Eli’s face was unnaturally pale, and his eyes looked wild as he stared down at his lap, refusing to look up at the man in the expensive clothes and perfect boots.
“Is there areasonfor all this nonsense?” the man asked.
Rey opened his mouth to speak, and one of the guards shook his head. “Choose your words wisely. You’re standing before Duke de Mortain, consort to the king.”
Chapter
Six
“Well,” Isiodore de Guillory tugged at his gloves as he stepped closer, “isn’t this a promising start to the afternoon?”
Eli resisted the dominant urge to rise, staring fixedly at his knees. As Isiodore passed, Eli could see the shine of his polished boots and the glitter of his buckles, and suppressed a shiver.
Isiodore de Mortain, before marrying Adrien, had been King Emile’s left hand and the spymaster when Eli was hanged. It was very likely, based on how close he had stood to the king when Eli had been dragged up the steps, that he’d been the one to uncover the de Valois attempt to overthrow Emile. He was ruthless, fiercely intelligent, and it didn’t matter if he’d once been best friends with Eli’s father, Arthur de Valois—as Emile’s left hand, he was the one who’d signed Eli’s death warrant.
“Is this the man they claim is abducted?” Isiodore’s voice was as cool and collected as Eli remembered it. “I’d like to hear it from him, please.”
“That man just attacked his companion out of nowhere,” someone in the crowd said.
Isiodore examined the young man who’d fallen off the horse. “The dilation of his pupils and his overall pallor says he’s taken a drug of some kind, but you’re clearly the expert.” There was a silence, the hush of a whispered voice, and the scuff of boots on the sand. “Will you please escort this gentleman to my doctor in the city, and inform me when he’s aware enough to give us more information? Thank you. Ah. And do detain this—fellow, here, when he wakes up again.”
Then, all too soon, Isiodore came to a stop in front of Eli.
“There’s no need to kneel, boy.”
“My sincere apologies, my lord.” That was Rey. “Jim Melville, cousin of his lordship Pietr Melville—this is my hired man. He can get a bit too carried away, that’s all.”
Eli felt something shift in the air as Rey spoke, a subtle magic that Eli only recognized from his encounters with King Tristan. Instead of flooding the street with dread, Rey’s magic eased the thrumming thread of tension hanging in the air.
