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My final orgasm starts with a shudder that resonates right out of the center of me. I crack apart in a blaze of pleasure that knocks the breath from my lungs.
Casimir groans and nips my shoulder when he follows me over. As we sag together, Rheave sits up, licking his lips.
“I look forward to learning all I can,” he says in an awed tone.
A breathless giggle escapes me. “I think I’m looking forward to it even more.”
At least I have a few good things waiting after all the trials I haven’t yet faced. Assuming I survive that long.
Nine
Ivy
The previous time I entered the Capital Palace, I was racing at Stavros’s heels, no thought in my head except preventing an impending disaster. I’m not sure the enormity of that act sank in until this moment.
Where I’m perched on the broad stone wall that surrounds the palace, all of the front courtyard sprawls before me. Dark splatters and scorch marks discolor the polished cobblestones and squares of garden.
I can’t tell how many of the blotches are from the attack we intercepted weeks ago and how many are more recent. A sour, faintly rotten scent laces the cool winter breeze.
Definitely recent is the refuse scattered across the grounds. A soiled velvet vest lies crumpled here, a torn silk gown there. Broken chunks of marlwood and porcelain litter the terrain as if some looters had second thoughts after running out with one or another treasure and opted to destroy them instead.
I spot at least one brownish lump where a particularly ornery intruder relieved themselves on the palace’s front steps. Through the swelling horror, I wrinkle my nose.
I can almost hear Julita’s horrified voice. Really, have they no limits at all?
Do the looters not realize that even if they’ve decided this king was false, the point is to find a new ruler they’ll want to lead them? And that ruler will prefer to move into a palace that’s not shit-stained?
They’re not even finished. As I watch, concealed from view by the blessed charm Tinom provided me with that dangles from a fine chain around my neck, a few figures hustle out of the palace. One is dressed like a noblewoman in an ornate embroidered gown, though her hair has fallen loose from its typical courtly style with only a few small curls still pinned up. The two men behind her are well but more plainly dressed—merchants, perhaps.
They’re all carrying ill-gotten gains: the woman a bundle that could be clothing or wrapped jewelry, one man a box gilded with gold, the other a stack of fine plates.
My jaw clenches. People like them benefitted the most from the king’s rule, and now they’re picking apart his legacy like vultures descending on a carcass. And they see themselves as the height of society?
How could they so easily turn on the family they pledged their loyalty to?
The only good thing about the current situation is that someone has propped open one of the double doors. Tinom’s charm, the same type he was wearing outside the Temple of the Crown the other night, keeps me from being seen as long as no one knows to look for me, but I can’t pass through walls. If people start wondering why doors are swinging around apparently of their own accord, I’ll be in trouble.
When the latest looters have hurried out the gate and the courtyard is momentarily still, I slide down the wall and slink across the grounds, carefully dodging the worst of the mess. The charm also only obscures smaller sounds. If I bang into anything and someone looks over, they might spot me through the illusionary magic.
I pass the purpling body of a guard who was clearly not a daimon, partly obscured by a garden shrub. A twinge of sympathy prickles through my chest.
I might have feared the Crown’s Watch and their ilk, but that woman was only doing her job. She gave her life in an attempt to protect the king’s home, maybe even after she had reason to believe he’d no longer be returning.
As I slip through the door and creep down the main hall, I have to avoid more figures coming in and out of the rooms where they’re rummaging through what’s left of the furniture and snatching the art still remaining off the walls. The noxious stink thickens. Whiffs like putrid meat reach my nose, along with the tang of urine and a rank note of body odor.
The source of the latter becomes clear in a matter of seconds. In several of the side rooms, the furnishings have remained mostly intact. Packs of men and women in questionable states of cleanliness sleep on the thick rugs or lean against the tables while they chatter in rough voices.
They wear a mix of clothing from cheap cotton to fancy silk, all of it smudged and stained. The fervor burning in many of their eyes reminds me of the Order of the Wild’s march.
These must be the scourge sorcerers and their allies, the followers Lothar has installed in the capital to maintain control.
My magic jitters against my ribs, pleading with me to let it wash away the wretched scents. To hurl all these intruders out through the windows in a hail of shattering glass.
I clamp down on it and hurry onward.
When a woman already carrying a set of gold candlesticks under her arm approaches one of the rooms filled with new inhabitants, a man snaps at her. “This spot belongs to the Order of the Wild for now. Grab what you want wherever else.”
She scurries off without argument. Whatever the locals have seen of the Order, they don’t appear keen to pick fights.
