Champion of the Rose - Kobo Ebook (26 page)

Something her Rathen hadn't yet managed: he was still up,
reading one of the histories covering the last two hundred years. This had become routine – brandy, cheese and
books to take him late into the night. It was, Soren suspected, part simple enjoyment and the rest a way of
coping with the sheer loss those histories represented. Reading until he was exhausted, and less
likely to be haunted with dreams. But a
sleep-deprived king was a dangerously short-tempered one.

At least the amount of brandy, though generous, had not
grown, and she kept a careful eye on the servants' preparations, just in case
the Champion's much-vaunted ability to detect poison proved false. The day had left her tired, and she'd already
covered the
mageglows
, leaving only the warm light of
the braziers. But getting to sleep
before Strake was always difficult, so she sat cross-legged on her bed, combing
her hair.

A key turned in a lock. Mid-stroke, Soren blinked at a robed and hooded figure, crossing through
the Regent's former throne room. In
moments it was in the Hall of the Crown, heading toward a door opposite the
royal apartments. Palace-sight made it
easy for Soren to peer up at the face beneath the hood and discover
Jansette
Denmore
, smiling and
excited as she produced another key and unlocked rooms which were once and soon
would again be the Chancellor's apartments.

Soren's initial thought was that this was to be an attempt
on the Treasury, but
Jansette
worked her way around
that guarded corridor and made a circuitous route to a doubly-locked door. One of the entrances to the royal apartments,
rarely used, and unguarded because its lock was enchanted to respond only to
the correct key.

Which
Jansette
held, it
seemed. Suddenly the scene between
Halcean
and the former favourite was explained.
Jansette
had been
busily finding a way to get to the King of Darest.

It quickly became apparent that another thing
Jansette
had collected was details of the security routines. She whisked along a route which neatly
avoided encountering guards or servants and finally paused in one of the
bedrooms once used by the royal heirs. Here she produced and kindled a tiny mageglow and set it and a ring of
keys before a mirror taller than herself.

Faintly astonished, Soren watched
Jansette
shed the heavy cloak with a single, fluid shrug to stand in the chilly night
air wearing a diaphanous wisp of nothing. She was, as Soren had noted on too many occasions, truly exquisite. Her skin glowed, fine curls tumbled past
slender shoulders, the line of her neck and back was pure perfection. She smiled at herself in the mirror, then
rearranged curls over her small, high breasts so they partially concealed what
the transparent cloth did not.

Torn between outrage and intense appreciation, Soren sat
unmoving as
Jansette
donned the cloak and again
shrugged it dramatically to the floor. This time she adjusted the drape of gauze around her hips, then ran her
hand upward from knee to inner thigh, apparently out of sheer
gratification. She trailed fingers
across the soft curve of stomach, stroked her throat. Voluptuous delight. And then, again the cloak, the shrug, another
tiny adjustment.

Despite herself, Soren responded to the sight. But the performance wasn't for her
benefit.
Jansette
had gone to the royal apartments, not the Champion's rooms, and all too soon
she left the cloak on and turned to the door.

Not that it would open. It would be a peculiar kind of torture to watch
Jansette
turn this arsenal of delight on Strake, and all too easy to stop it. No door in the palace would open against
Soren's will.
Jansette
could sit there until the servants cleaned her out.

Or perhaps, supremely confident in her charms,
Jansette
would make a fuss, call out for rescue. Strake would inevitably investigate and learn
that Soren had intercepted such a peerless delight. Whether he had any inclination to accept
Jansette's
offer would be nothing beside his reaction to
such a manoeuvre. He'd made it abundantly
clear how much he despised manipulation.

Soren threw her comb across the room. Impossible man! He'd hated her from the start, for no reason
at all, and there were times he'd had her on the verge of apologising for being
forced to bear his child. He was keeping
secrets from her! Why shouldn't she stop
Jansette
? Why
should she have to second-guess every decision she made for fear of upsetting
him? It was her duty to protect him, and
that meant keeping a potential assassin out of his bedroom.

Albeit the only weapons
Jansette
could be carrying beneath that scrap of gauze were far from fatal, and the
cloak had not fallen as if weighted. The
main reason Soren wanted to stop her had little to do with Strake's physical
safety.

With a groan, Soren relaxed her unseen grip on the door,
just as
Jansette
reached it and slipped out into the
corridor.

"Maybe I can go back to Carn Keep," Soren muttered
to herself. "Get away from all the
horse-killers, and leave Lord Ill-humour to be seduced by anyone who pleases." It wasn't as if her presence was making any
difference to the conduct of the Court or to Strake's safety.

Sourly unhappy, Soren watched the little scene play
out. Strake glanced up as his door
opened and looked purely surprised as
Jansette
shut
the door behind her and stood with her back to it. Then the well-rehearsed shrug, and he stared
in earnest as she took one step forward out of the folds of the cloak.

Snapping shut the book held in one hand, he said
something.
Jansette's
reply, delivered with that air of ingenuous gravity, surprised him to
laughter. Whatever he said then was
accompanied by an extremely sardonic expression, but still he put the book down
and stood up, did not sneer or snarl or send her scurrying.

Nor was he precisely encouraging as
Jansette
crossed the room to stand before him, but surveyed her careful display with
critical attention. The Lady
Denmore
was equal to the challenge, however, moving with
unhurried aplomb and composing herself into a very pretty picture, hair falling
away from that lovely throat as she gazed up at him, head tilted ever so
slightly to one side.

Strake asked a question.
Jansette's
attitude was demurely inviting as
she replied, though it was difficult to understand how it was possible for
anyone to be demure in such a flimsy excuse for clothing. By comparison Strake looked overdressed,
ready for sleep in loose hose and a grandly patterned bed-robe. The Master of Apparel was slowly succeeding
in his attempts to inject a little colour into the royal wardrobe.

Kittenish,
Jansette
arched her
back, then leaned forward until she was almost resting against his chest. The ecstatic enjoyment of her approach was
obviously disarming. They spoke again,
an exchange which brought a glint of appreciation to Strake's long eyes. He had not stepped away, did not move as a
slender white hand touched his wrist, travelled up to trace his arm beneath the
robe, then slid further still to twine around the back of his neck.

Soren only just anticipated it, knew a moment before
Jansette
tried to pull his mouth down how her Rathen would
react. It was a fatal, inevitable
error. Strake threw his head back like a
shying horse, then gripped
Jansette
by the upper arm
and spun her across the room. She
bounced off the door, regaining her balance to stare back at her incandescently
furious king. Soren had never seen
Strake angrier, and wholeheartedly applauded
Jansette's
quick decision to gather up her cloak and leave the way she had come. In a few moments she was back in that empty
bedroom, gathering up her keys, head cocked to one side as she listened for any
outcry.

Strake hadn't moved, still gripped by the memory of the
Rose's assault. He looked like he was
grinding his teeth, quite capable of chasing after
Jansette
Denmore
and beating her to a pulp. And then he did follow her out into the
corridor, but turned left instead of right and slammed open the door which
connected the royal apartments to the Champion's rooms.

In her shock, Soren actually squeaked, then hastily leaped
off her bed and retied her robe so she wasn't gaping out all over the
place. On the far side of her
apartments,
Halcean
sat bolt upright in her bed,
jerked out of sleep by the bang.

Soren had barely fumbled tight the sash before her bedroom
door was wrenched open and Strake was somehow right in front of her, tall as a
mountain, eyes black as pitch.

"What do you think you're playing at?" He snarled the words, almost spitting in his
fury.

Her mouth wouldn't work, and she must have gaped like a
fool, but knew better than to pretend she didn't know what he was talking
about. How could she have anticipated
this?

"I – it – I wasn't sure whether I should make those
decisions for you," she quavered, hating herself for the too-exposed
fear. "She wasn't carrying a
weapon."

"Don't you know an attempt to climb to the throne when
you see it?" he snapped. "The
last thing I need is another manufactured heir. Another trap." Sheer
loathing dripped from his voice, and he lifted his hands, quivering, then paced
around her as if he had to move or hit out. "The moment I set eyes on you, I knew I should have run as far and
fast as possible."

This made Soren blink. But she had known it, remembered that surge of anger as she walked into
The Lost Prince. Even before the Rose
had assaulted them, he'd felt this way. "Why?" It came out as a
gasp.

"Look at you!" He stopped pacing, made a violent gesture toward her face, then caught
himself and turned away to stare at their images in her mirror. Two white faces: one frightened, the other
furious. "As if I would obediently
take the treat offered me. And then when
I did not–!" He was vibrating with
fury, shaking.

It was immensely difficult not to move away, for she very
much wanted to put some distance between them. She was painfully aware of
Halcean
, now out of
her bed and listening hard, obviously just able to hear Strake's voice and not
at all sure what was going on.

"I don't understand." She forced herself to be soft and composed,
to not provoke, to try and defuse.

The expression he turned on her then well recalled his words
on their arrival in Tor Darest. That he
had never so wanted to punish another human being. He lifted a hand, but this time it was only
to summon illusion, sparkling into the air beside them, an eerie intruder to
shift a confrontation's balance.

"We were looking for a third,
Vahse
and I." Strake's voice had lowered
to a hiss. "Our tastes were shared
and we made an image of our ideal and set out to find her. I never saw anyone even close, until that
inn."

It
was
close. A tall, dark-haired woman with the same oval
of face and exactly the same mouth. The
build, the carriage, the eyes were all familiar. It reminded Soren horribly of her sister,
Rain.

"Composite of my desires," he went on. "As if I would obediently perform at the
first opportunity. And you ask me
'why'? The why I can't answer is why I
haven't damned the consequences of destroying the Rose and gotten rid of you
both."

"Both?" Soren echoed. She was still staring at the woman Strake and
Vahse
had been looking for. Not her face, but her. Very much her.

"Wonderfully arranged." Strake was pacing again, each step provoking
a responding clench of Soren's shoulders, anticipation of a blow. "The Rose operates through the Champion,
and the Champion carries my child. If I
destroy the Rose, the power backlash releases through you, and thus makes me
murderer of my own heir."

"And me." Her voice was breathy now, strangled by disbelief.

"Sometimes that doesn't bother me."

He was only getting angrier, working himself up with this
flood of explanation, a litany of frustration and betrayed hope. On top of her fear, Soren added a flush of
embarrassment, for
Halcean
had crossed into the
receiving room, and was hesitating in its centre, concern written over her
face. Soren doubted the woman could hear
exactly what was being said, but the tone, the participants, would be clear.

"I'm sorry," she said, forcing the words past the
tight lump of tears. "I wish there
was some way I could fix this. That I
could erase what happened, or make it less awful. I...I know you have nightmares. I know that it's the Rose you want to
hurt. If there was anything I could do,
you know I would. Anything at all. But I can't unmake it."

Strake stared at her, black fury riding his eyes. She could feel his need to hurt her beating
down, growing stronger, boiling over.

Then he said: "Take off your clothes."

"What?"

"You heard me. Something you can do."

The look in his eyes was ugly, unlike any she'd seen there
before. It didn't matter that this had
been a thing she wanted, that he could have had her with a gesture, a
glance. Lust wasn't what was driving
him. This was for revenge, to kill the
nightmares and the memory of being forced on her. An outlet for overwhelming anger. She wasn't sure he would let her leave. That would be even worse.

This was the moment Soren discovered how to operate the
palace defences.

They coiled down out of the ceiling, vines of milk or
moonlight; mist. Thorns longer than any
plant's had a right to be, leaves serrated like saws. Glass snakes, flawlessly deadly. They glowed, leaving a vicious little trail
of afterimages as they dropped to frame his face. He would only have to turn his head to see
them, but he was frozen now, intent on her stricken eyes. Wholly gripped by old, cold, seething anger.