The newly ed Princess Pasiona exuded cold disdain to everyone equally, servant and noble alike. A popur rumor circuted that she and the prince kept separate bed chambers and desded to a businesslike jugation monthly, a practice that would be set aside as soon as the princess was with child.

  Etian had never wasted time listening to gossip before his wedding, and he didn’t start after. His wife’s icy public demeanor was a soul-pierg trast to the Pasiona he knew when the bedchamber door closed. She burned like a fire rampaging through a straw vilge. She screamed and begged and demanded, aian threw himself into fulfilling her every desire.

  There was no thought while he was with her, nothing but exertion and pleasure. He loved seeing her drenched i, hearing the rip of her clothih his fingers while she tore at his, tasting her salty skin. He adored the frozen abaster statue who sat at his side during affairs of state, and he craved the voracious creature who waited to pounce when they were alone.

  He loved her.

  But he did keep a separate bedchamber.

  It was on their wedding day that he’d been forced to establish the sedary room.

  “Is there another woman?” Pasiona had asked when he slipped out of their bed.

  “No.” Etian shoved the sweat-soaked hair off his forehead and slid his lenses ohought she was asleep. He should’ve waited loo make sure, but the sensation of his filth sinking into her pure, perfect skin had been excruciating.

  She sat up, ing the disarrayed bedclothes around herself. “If there ever is, tell me. I want to know before the cossips do.”

  “If there ever is, I swear I will.”

  “Are you angry?”

  “Why would I be angry?”

  “Because I called for Darios.”

  “I barely heard it,” Etian said holy.

  He cast around for a way to say that the dead man likely deserved her affeore than he did, couldn’t find one, a.

  The servants had started keeping a cauldron of water always warming for the prin the kits. He couldn’t find anyone awake after the feasting and celebration of the day, so he brought up the warm water to the bath basin himself, then added two more from the springhouse. Not the scalding sanitization he’d had in mind, but better than nothing.

  He returo the bedchamber and climbed in beside his now truly sleeping wife.

  Sometime in the day, a weight crushed his chest. Thick, close bess pressed in all around him. The overp stench of fear and human waste filled his lungs. He hammered on the lid of the trunk, uo get enough breath to scream. The most sound he could make was a low, whimpering whihe lid wouldn’t budge.

  Trapped ao die. Alone. Fotten.

  Someone shook him. “Etianiel, wake up. You’re having a terror.”

  He came awake fighting. It was a gng blow, but it knocked Pasiona out of bed.

  He apologized, expended a huge amount of royal blood magic healing the bruise, far more than necessary, apologized again.

  Pasiona shrugged it off. Everyone was haunted by bad dreams.

  But Etian should have known it would happen. It had been a misstep not preparing ahead of time when this particur dream had been terrorizing him daily.

  In Sangmere, an old servant’s cell adjoihe bridal chamber. Etiahere when he and Pasiona were finished with each other. At Mistfen in Siu al, he andeered Izakiel’s former bedchamber, which y across the hall from his. When the court moved to Siu Patanal for the summer, he had a cot put ihing chamber off their quarters.

  The dream houian wherever he was, but he made certain it couldn’t hurt his wife again.

  ***

  cio winced as he made his the Siu Patanal pit house steps toward the boxes. He had never paid attention to stairs as a young man; he had takewo and three at a time just because he could. He’d even made fun of his father for moving the lord’s chambers to the ground level of Bzing Prairie, calling it an old man’s ziness. A progressive disease, his father had joked.

  If cio could apologize for ohing to his father, it would be that. Not the explosive a finding out what Lord Paius had done, not dismissing his father’s arguments that nothing short of total overthrow would ge the kingdom, not even aiding in the man’s arrest. No, he would apologize for teasing an old man who was just trying to save his ag joints a few stairs. In any case, who was to say that all the other disagreements hadn’t risen from the same root—an arrogant young fool’s ck of uanding?

  He certainly uood now. Everywhere he went with the court, there were stairs. Stairs to meeting chambers, stairs to feasting halls, stairs to residences, stairs to take the flainst another lord arguing some ridiculously evil new paradigm.

  Stairs to this night-forsaken arena of butchery.

  If the king hadn’t summoned him to the pit house, cio would never have limped his way into one. His father had taken him to the dyre fights once as a child, when cio had asked why he should care about the stupid beasts. It had been a viscerally educational experience. He hadn’t darkehe door of one since.

  Probably the reason Hazerial had summoned him to the pit house that day.

  The younger set of the nobility jounced up and dowairs, gawking in surprise or calling idiotic taunts when they reized the Lord of the ternds.

  “Finally ing to see what you’ve been missing, Mattius?”

  “Are you here to set the dyre free?”

  “Best bring a k of meat if you want them to follow you.”

  “If you don’t hurry, you’ll miss the fight.”

  “He doesn’t care. House Mattius is only ied iimes when dyre look human.”

  In a way, it was refreshing. The offspring had their fathers’ callous thirst for blood, but hadn’t yet developed the two-faced inveigling required to wheedle favors from a lord they hated who also happeo wield much more wealth, nd, and power than they did.

  “My father is going to kill you.”

  That one was a little more direct. cio paused oop step, distributing his weight between the walking stid the er of the wall.

  The speaker was a boy in his te teens scarred by horrendous ae and backed by two thuggish friends with clearer skiher of the thugs looked familiar to cio, but he reized their leader.

  cio gave the boy a smile. “You’re Lord Kariot’s son, aren’t you?”

  Reition didn’t give the boy pause. But then it must be hard to cow a child used to watg bloodsves scream for mercy before they were enthralled in his family’s sacramentals.

  “You’ll be dead before the Festival of Summerlight,” he sneered.

  “If your father puts his mind to it, I don’t doubt I will.” cio tapped the boot of his stiffened leg with his walking stick. “I’m not a fast-moving target.”

  Kariot the Youook a step toward him. “I could push you down these stairs right now and break your neck.” His dark eyes glittered. “Everyone knows you don’t have any blood magid my friends and me could make sure no healer got to you in time.”

  It sounded like certain lords had progressed past idle talk and into the pnning phase of his assassination, if they were discussing his blood magic abilities around their sons.

  “You could,” cio said. “Now that I’ve reached the top of the stairs, such a death would hold a yer of irony that I doubt you’re capable of appreciating at this age. Perhaps one you never may be capable of appreciating, if you share your father’s ck of intelligence. Of course, I’d prefer you don’t push me. Falls are particurly painful these days, and if it doesn’t kill me, I’ll wish it had before the recovery’s over. I’m a notoriously sulky patient. Ask my family healer.”

  The boy scowled. “Did you just call my father stupid?”

  “I also suggested you might be. It doesn’t bode well that you haven’t picked up on how heavily your father relies on my holding’s iron. That’s why he hasn’t killed me yet. He’s scared to do it before I supply his test demand. Though I’m sure he appreciates your alertio the immi danger.”

  By then the boy’s face was red around his weeping ae.

  “My father doesn’t fear anything!”

  irked. “Except bloodsves before the enthrallment ritual shuts off their free will and angering the cripple who supplies the iron for said ritual.”

  The boy charged him, head down, arms out to shove rab. His friends caught on that they were in a fight a moment ter and followed, though they were smart enough to keep their eyes up.

  cio turned his body, leaning against the wall to avoid the boy’s tackle, and tripped him with the walking stick. With an undignified cry, Kariot the Younger crashed down a handful of stairs and sprawled, dazed, across the risers.

  The rger of his thug friends swung a fist. cio twisted away and cracked him in the knuckles with the stick, following with a sharp whack to the ear. Blood burst from the point of impact. The thug screamed and grabbed the bloody fp of gristle, the scuffle fotten in the pain.

  Surprisingly, the st friend had the brains to back away, hands up, presumably to stop the crippled lord from chasing him down.

  “Blood sport isn’t as much fun to participate in as it is to watch, is it?” cio returned his stick to the floor and leaned his weight on it. “You’ll five me if I don’t help pick up the pieces. I have a rather urgent appoio attend.”

  With a polite nod, he headed down the rounded corridor toward the royal box.

  He was grinning, his heart pounding in his ears, the flush of victory warming his fad swelling his chest.

  Stupid. Reckless. Entirely irrational. The smallest mispt of his good foot, a minor shift i, a little more ce or speed or determination from any one of those boys and he could have been a corpse lying at the bottom of the stairs. A tiny miscalcution and he would’ve saved Lord Kariot and his spirators the trouble.

  But a Josean-blessed man got sid tired of being a cripple. Every now and then, he wao remember what it was like to win a fight.