Princeps’ Fury

resolve everything overnight. Maybe even not in my lifetime, but…”

“But it’s a start,” Isana said.

“It’s a start, Your Highness,” Raucus said. “Septimus, my friend, chose you. And chose well.” He bowed his head to her, and said, simply, “I am yours to command.”

“Your Grace,” Isana said.

“Highness?”

“These creatures have destroyed our lands. Murdered our people.” Isana lifted her chin. “Pay them for it.”

When Antillus Raucus looked up, his eyes were hard, cold, and clear. “Watch me.”

CHAPTER 42

Once Lady Aquitaine and the Vord queen were gone with their retinues, the courtyard was strangely silent. Only a handful of Vord remained, along with a similarly reduced contingent of collared guards-and the prisoners, of course.

Of which, Amara was very much aware, she herself was currently the most endangered.

She shivered in the cold, her muscles aching from the effort, hardly able to do more than curl her body up as tightly as possible to keep from succumbing to the chills.

“You and your husband crippled my father,” Kalarus Brencis Minoris said in a quiet, deliberate tone. He walked toward her, the silver band of a discipline collar in his hand. “Not that there was a great deal of love lost between Father and me, but my life grew harder after the old slive was trapped in his bed. Do you have any idea how much damage you had to do to his spine to leave him broken like that?”

“H-h-he should have held still,” Amara said. “I’d have been glad to kill him.”

Brencis smiled. “My father always appreciated defiance from his women. I never really had the same tastes-but I’m beginning to see the appeal.” He crouched over Amara, the collar swaying in front of her eyes. “Rook was my first, you know. I think I was about thirteen. She was a couple of years older.” He shook his head. “I thought she liked me. But I realized later that she must have been acting under orders.” He bared his teeth, a hideous expression, completely disconnected from anything resembling a smile. “Just as she must have been doing tonight.”

Amara stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then she said, “It’s not really your fault you were raised by a monster, Brencis. M-maybe you never really had a chance. And I can’t bl-blame you for wanting to survive.” She smiled back at him. “So I’m going to give you one last chance to do the right thing before I k-kill you.”

Brencis stared at her for a second, uncertainty flickering in his eyes. Then he let out a short bark of a laugh. “Kill me? Countess,” he told her, “in a little while, I’m going to my bed. And you’re going to be happy to go with me.” He glanced idly around the courtyard. “Perhaps I’ll bring one of my girls, so that she can bathe you. We’ll see if we can broaden your horizons.”

“Use your head, fool,” Amara said. “Do you think for one moment that you’re going to survive the Vord?”

“Life is short, Countess,” he replied, bitterly. “I have to take what I can from it. And right now, I’m taking you.”

She hadn’t noticed that he’d smeared his bloodied thumb to the collar, but it went around her neck like a band of ice.

And ecstasy turned her world into a single, endless white blur.

She felt her body arch against her bonds, and was helpless to stop it. The pleasure wasn’t merely sexual- although it was that, too intensely so to believe. But atop that rapture were layers and layers of other sensations. The simple satisfaction of a hot drink on a cold morning. The heart-pounding excitement she felt when seeing Bernard for the first time in days or weeks. The joy of soaring up through dark, heavy clouds into the clear blue sky. The fierce pleasure of victory over intense competition in the Wind Trials, when she had been at the Academy. The bubbling laughter that followed after the third or fourth excellent joke she’d heard in an evening-and a thousand more, every single happiness, every single joy, every wonderful thing that had ever happened to her, every individual gratification of the body, mind, and heart, all blended into a single, sublime whole.

Brencis, the courtyard, the Vord, the Realm, even her husband-none of it mattered.

Nothing mattered but feeling this.

She knew she’d be weeping if she’d had thought enough for such inanities.

Someone was whispering to her. She didn’t know who. She didn’t care. The whispers didn’t matter. All that mattered was drowning in the pleasure.

* * *

She came back to herself, slowly, inside a warmly lit room. It looked like an inn room, a fairly lavish one. There were soft hangings on the walls, and an enormous bed. It was warm-blessedly warm, after the hideous cold of the courtyard. Her fingers and toes were tingling, so intensely that it would have hurt, if anything she felt could have been interpreted as anything but pure pleasure.

She was standing in a tub, and one of the barely clothed girls was taking off her travel-stained blouse. Amara stood in blissful disinterest. The girl began bathing her face and neck and shoulders, and Amara reveled in the warmth, the feeling of the soft washcloth against her skin, the scent of soap in the air.

She became aware of Brencis walking in a slow circle around the tub, unbuttoning his shirt as he went.

Despite his faults, she thought, he really was quite beautiful. She watched him, though the effort of moving her head simply became too much to sustain. She let her eyes follow him, tracking his movements through her lashes when the simple pleasure of feeling herself being cleaned of weeks of grime became almost too delicious to endure.

“Lovely, Countess,” Brencis said. “You are lovely.”

She shivered in response to his voice, and her eyes closed completely.

“Don’t forget her hair,” Brencis said.

“Yes, my lord,” murmured the girl. Warm water cascaded over her head, and a gentler, softer-scented soap was applied to her hair. Amara just reveled in it.

“It’s too bad, really,” Brencis said. “I had hoped that you would put up more of a fight than this. But you were brittle, Countess. The ones who go this far under, this swiftly-they don’t come back. Do they, little Lyssa?”

Amara felt the girl standing close beside her shiver. “No, my lord. I don’t want to come back.”

Brencis stopped in front of her, smiling slightly. “I’ll bet she has pretty legs. Very long, very slender, very strong.”

“Yes, my lord,” Lyssa agreed.

Amara found herself sleepily returning Brencis’s smile.

“Take the trousers, off, Amara,” he said, his voice holding a quiet, snarling promise in it.

“Yes, my lord,” Amara said drowsily. The soaking-wet leather was stubborn against her pleasure-numbed fingers. “I… it’s too tight, my lord.”

“Then be still,” Brencis said, his voice amused. “Very still.”

A dagger, its tip glittering with fascinating, wicked sharpness, appeared in his hand, and he knelt by her side. “Tell me, Countess,” he murmured. “Were you here on Gaius’s orders?”

“Yes, my lord,” Amara murmured. She watched as the knife’s tip, doubtless enhanced by Brencis’s furycraft, sliced effortlessly through the hem of the leather flying trousers over her ankle. He began cutting slowly upward, his knife opening the garment as readily as a boy might peel a fruit.

“And your husband,” Brencis said. “He isn’t dead, is he?”

“No, my lord,” Amara said sleepily. The knife slid over her calf. She wondered if she would feel it if such a sharp blade opened her flesh. She wondered if, in her current state, it would feel good.

“Where is he?” Brencis continued.

“Nearby, my lord,” Amara replied, as the knife moved past her knee. “I’m not sure where, exactly.”