The Blood Mirror

He owed her this. She’d made love to him many times when she probably hadn’t really wanted to. Didn’t he owe her this once?

And he did want to.

But Karris. Karris, his wife.

She would never find out. If she found out, she would understand. If she understood, she would forgive him, as she had forgiven him so many other things.

But what another will forgive is shitty ethical measurement, isn’t it? Karris would understand that she’d married a faithless piece of shit. Karris would understand that you don’t blame shit for being shit. It’s your own fault for thinking you could polish shit and find gold.

I’m tired of being shit. Of being a liar. Of being an oathbreaker.

This wasn’t about Karris. It was about Gavin and what kind of man he was.

Gavin the Liar. Gavin Get Along, who wanted everyone to love him… and quietly cheated in the background. Gavin the Gray.

Gavin’s hunger was a trumpet, blaring in his own ear. His body wanted satisfaction. It knew the pleasures of Marissia’s body. He deserved this, didn’t he? He should take what small comfort he could. Some sweetness. After all he’d been through.

If Marissia had made the slightest move to please him, had rocked her hips against him, had brought his hands to her breasts, had kissed his cold lips, he would have acted, he would have damned himself again, eagerly. He was that weak.

But she didn’t. She knew him that well. More than that, her self-control told him that she loved him that much.

“Marissia,” he said, pained.

“Karris,” she said. It was defeat. It was heartbreak. She scooted back, unhooked her leg from over his. Her face fell.

She deserved so much more.

“My oaths, Marissia. They’ve been worth nothing for my whole life. This is my last chance.”

She got off the palanquin and swallowed. “Am I always to be cast off and second best, my lord? Here at my end, is there nothing left for me?”

And then she wept. There were no corners in the spherical cell, but she huddled as far away from him as possible, knees to her chest, hiding her face. She’d wasted her whole life on him.

Where was his golden tongue now? Gavin sat up with effort, and pain lanced through his burnt eye again, leaving him breathless for a long moment.

There had to be something to say that was honest and true and comforting, but Gavin wasn’t a master of words like that.

“So you live.”

Gavin nearly got whiplash looking for the source of that oddly disappointed voice. A panel had opened in the wall, and something stung Gavin’s chest.

His one good eye took in his father in a split second. He wanted to lunge and kill that old bastard—

But he looked down. A dart was stuck in his chest, and it felt warm. So warm.

“Marissia,” Gavin said. But he wasn’t sure what he wanted to tell her, now. His thoughts were thick, gooey. This was it. The end.

“Put these on, caleen,” Andross Guile said. He stood powerful, as if he’d dropped twenty years, and packed on a few sevs of muscle. He tossed a pair of manacles over to her, utterly certain she would obey. He didn’t even see her.

Andross stared at Gavin, an intensity in his deep eyes, but he said no more.

“You can’t. I need her,” Gavin said.

“Need her?” There was an edge of dark amusement in his voice.

“Please. Please don’t kill her. I’ll go mad without her.”

“Go mad? You’re worried about going mad?” Andross said. He laughed, a free and open sound in the cell, and turned away, dismissive.

Gavin swung his legs over the side of the palanquin. He stood, wobbled, braced himself on the palanquin. The warmth had spread everywhere.

He blinked, suddenly on the floor, drool dribbling down his cheek. The dart in his chest was gone. The palanquin was gone. Carried out by Marissia and Andross? He tried to speak, but couldn’t make words.

But Marissia and Andross hadn’t left, not yet.

The last thing Gavin saw was Marissia’s tear-streaked face as she was pulled out of the prison, hopeless, broken, looking back at him for what he couldn’t give.

And then she was swallowed by the darkness.

Chapter 11

“Are we being bad?” Tisis asked.

“We’re being naughty. There’s a difference,” Kip said. The morning sun angled in through poorly sealed cracks in the walls of the captain’s cabin, emphasizing how little privacy they had. “Are you ready?”

“I better be,” she said. “She’ll be along any minute now. Take off your tunic.”

They’d been up half the night talking. But plotting was one thing, carrying it out was another.

“Oh, I just had another idea,” Tisis said, keeping her voice low. She sat up in the narrow bed and swung her slender legs over the side. She’d put her lingerie on again after their little disaster last night, adding a light robe to her camisole and underwear. “Tunic, Kip,” she said, throwing off her robe and tossing it into a corner.

He’d seen her in beautiful underthings several times now, and she’d been nude during his very first interaction with her at his Threshing, but Kip wasn’t even close to being accustomed to seeing Tisis’s body. Before he’d known her, he’d actually kind of hated her for being so flawless. He’d thought at the time that she’d tried to kill him, and she had made him fail the Threshing. But still. Hating someone for being beautiful was kind of perverse, wasn’t it?

And he was really the last person who should hate anyone for what she’d inherited. Kip had somehow gone from the whore’s boy to the polychrome husband of the richest heiress in the Seven Satrapies—all because of his father. Of course, that he had been a hypocrite to hate her didn’t make it easier.

It wouldn’t be so bad if she were just beautiful. Even just among the squad, the young men had different preferences. Cruxer was a sucker for a pretty face and dark kinky hair like Lucia had had. Ferkudi waxed poetic about a bottom that could shake your house like an earthquake. Big Leo had wanted a petite girl, and when Teia had made fun of the obvious size differential that would create, Leo had said, ‘Yeah, petite, like you, Teia, but you know, with breasts.’

Later, in training, she’d accidentally kicked Leo in the stones. Twice.

The problem with Tisis was that she was exactly the type of beautiful Kip liked most. Skin light and exotic to a boy from the hinterlands of Tyrea, the vanishingly rare true blond hair, a huge smile, radiant hazel eyes, a heart-shaped face, and that body. Those breasts.