“Your brother was right,” Alaan said as he secured the tiny servant’s cell off the kitchens. “Your family is irredeemable.”

  “Not Izak.”

  “He has honorable impulses, but…” Alaan stopped himself. It would not be appropriate to tell a young woman that her brother frequented prostitutes and lay with women he had no intention of marrying, even if she must know it already. “Izak attempts to maintain a veneer of irresponsibility and depravity, despite his honorable core.”

  “Not Izak,” the princess repeated more quietly, reverence for her eldest brother stubbornly rooted in the grafting.

  There was no bar on the door, so Alaan laid the princess’s sleeping chest in front of it, blocking the portal for the day.

  They were unlikely to be searched for here in the keep. Earlier in the day, Alaan had made note of the accommodations taken by each member of the royal family. The king was quartering in the commander’s tower, on the west[] side of the fort. The queen and the priests were said to sleep on piles of more dead in the northeastern watchtower, beneath the high place they had created. The crown prince’s consort was in the southeastern tower[], and the crown prince was quartered in the soldiers’ barracks below, along with the off-duty Thorns.

  Only the servants had been expected to stay in the keep. Most of them—including the senior cook Alaan had vacated from the princess’s cell—were stretched out on the floor of the kitchens, fighting over the spaces closest to the hearth.

  “Alaan?” The princess was watching him barricade the room from her customary place at the center. “Thank you for stopping Mother from hitting me.”

  He wished he could have killed the disgusting queen, but the grafting had stayed his cutlass like an anchor chain pulling up short. Like the princess’s father, her mother was protected by the enchantment unless the queen attempted to kill the princess.

  “You showed courage in petitioning your father on my behalf,” he told her.

  Blades in hand, he had been unable to do anything. Worthless. Helpless. He had been entirely reliant on the princess, but that was a tenuous defense. Even the princess had not known whether she would have been strong enough to refuse if the king had ordered her to turn Alaan’s grafting over to the queen.

  “I couldn’t lose you,” she said to the floor in front of his boots.

  Alaan unbuckled his swordbelt, laying out the cutlass and swordbreaker by the head of the sleeping chest.

  “Your reliance on something does not make it permanent.” He toed off his boots and set them against the wall. “Everything and everyone can be lost, and you can live on without them. Turn away while I change.”

  She faced the servant’s cot. Alaan traded his uniform jacket, shirt, trousers, and hose for the common roughspun shirt and pants.

  “But it hurts,” she said. “Losing everything and everyone. It left you with a wound so big all the stars in the sky can’t fill it.”

  Slowly, Alaan folded the pieces of his discarded uniform and stacked them beside his boots.

  “If I could, I would heal it.” Her sincerity filled the grafting as if it could wash out all else.

  “I am finished,” he said as if he had not heard. He stretched out on the sleeping chest. “You should go to bed. The day is nearly over.”

  The princess turned around. Her dark eyes searched his face.

  “Can I sleep in the chest? I only have a few more nights before I have to sleep in a bed. With my husband. But I want to sleep in the chest until then.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  When the princess had donned her sleeping shift, Alaan opened the lid for her and handed her in. He shut the chest and laid down again.

  The sensation of the gentle tropical breeze drifted through the grafting. It came more and more frequently these days, in spite of Alaan’s attempts to ignore it.

  She marries in three nights.

  He closed his eyes and tried not to think about what could heal him.

  Nothing could repair his mutilation, nothing could lift his curse, nothing could reverse his separation from his people or his god.

  Only the impossible blood debt remained.

  ***

  “He should have been Teikru-blessed the way he seeds women,” Jadarah snarled, pacing the fort commander’s suite where Hazerial had taken up residence.

  The king shrugged into his winter robe to escape the chill that pervaded the fortress. “Are you still squawking about that pirate? He can’t impregnate your daughter, woman. She’s cursed by the strong gods; she can never bear any fruit but the fruit of their hells.”

  “Not the savage!” The queen hissed and took another turn about the floor. “The blind prince, second issue of your loins, he and his ugly consort! That is who I speak of. Your son spreads his seed in fertile ground like a farmer who fears starvation.”

  A scratch at the door announced the servant Hazerial had called for.

  “Get this out of here.” The king gestured at the body on the floor.

  The servant started at the discolored lump protruding from the dead girl’s neck, but wisely withheld comment as he removed the corpse.

  Jadarah had withheld herself from him as retribution for his refusal to yield to her tantrum, but Hazerial simply used the homely cook’s apprentice who brought his mulled wine instead. The mad queen had taken that no better. Ramming the girl’s gaudy brooch down her throat was without a doubt one of Jadarah’s more creative murders, Hazerial had to admit. The strong gods had certainly approved.

  When they were alone once more, Hazerial turned his attention back to his queen. “Etianiel has barely had his consort for a fortnight. You can’t know whether she’s taken his seed.”

  “I know, I always know!” Jadarah sneered, the expression twisting her beautiful features into a grotesque mask. “It’s in her skin and hair and teeth.” She clutched at the corresponding bits of her own body. “It’s all over her! The blind prince populates the Kingdom of Night with his bastards.”

  The mad queen railed on, growing more irrational and frenzied with every breath.

  Hazerial ignored her. His patron strong goddess, Eketra, beckoned.

  Nobility feared illegitimate male children, killing them early on or packing them off to Thornfield before they could bring bloody contention to lines already in danger of destabilization. Utilized properly, however, a royal bastard could be a valuable asset.

  Smiling to himself, Hazerial sent a prayer to Teikru that his son’s bastard would be male.

  ***

  Shamasa’s barracks was a squat construction, patched and repaired piecemeal over the centuries. Most of the chambers sported flattened piles of straw to replace the ruins of bunks repaired until there was no more timber to repair them. One end of the building had been some sort of office, but there, too, straw had been piled by soldiers who missed out on a spot in the chambers.

  Off-duty Thorns filled the place, claiming spots and trying to refresh flattened straw piles, as Izak and Etian passed through with the Crown Prince’s Thorns. A few swordsmen were already putting their straw to use with some of the less shy serving maids.

  Rather than set up in the eastern tower with Seleketra, Etian chose an individual chamber at the farthest end of the soldier’s barracks. Izak, Dolo, Gray, and Phriese swept the small space for threats—the work of a few seconds. Guarding it would be a breeze. There were no alternate entrances into the narrow little box, no more furnishings than the single bunk, piles of straw in the opposite corners, and the small trunk containing Etian’s clothing.

  But before Izak could dismiss the others and post himself outside the chamber, Etian pulled him aside.

  “Get some sleep, Izak. Dolo and Phriese can take the day watch.”

  Izak shook his head. “Fond as I am of foisting all the hard work onto others, they’re both worn out from that last leg. Besides, Phriese has been chomping at the bit for some alone time with his betrothed. Cut them loose for the day, and they’ll be twice the better for it.”

  “Gray alone, then,” Etian said. “While we’re here, I want you on night duty.”

  Tamping down the surge of irritation, Izak jiggled Loss in his hand. “Do you? Or does a certain unwashed she-viper want me on night duty?”

  Etian scowled. “I told you, she’s none of your concern.”

  “When she’s poisoning my brother, she is.”

  “If you’re going to make me pull rank on you, fine.” Adjusting his lenses, Etian stepped back. “Commander Izak, I order you to assign Thorns other than yourself the day watches for the remainder of our time at Shamasa Redoubt.”

  The grafting caught Izak around the throat like a fist. He resisted for as long as he could, but in the end, the enchantment wrung the obedience out of him.

  “Gray, you’ve got first watch,” Izak snarled as he stalked out of the narrow chamber. “Keep an eye out for snakes. This place is infested with them.”