The King Ordered Me to Share My Enemy’s Bed

Lady Seraphina Vale woke with a man's hand over her mouth and iron around her wrist. She drove her knee upward. The man caught it between his thighs before she reached anything useful. “If you scream,” Duke Cassian Thorne murmured beside her, “they will enter sooner.” Moonlight cut across the royal bedchamber. It found the hard line of his cheek, the black collar buttoned to his throat, and the scar that vanished beneath it. He was lying on top of the coverlet, fully clothed except for his boots. One of his wrists was locked to the opposite bedpost. Seraphina removed his hand with her free one. “If you touch my mouth again, Your Grimness, I will bite through your thumb.” “You tried last time.” “You remember me fondly.” She tested the bracelet around her left wrist. Gilded iron, velvet lining, ceremonial hinge. The chain ran through a carved ring in the headboard and disappeared beneath Cassian's shoulder. The king's guest suite smelled of beeswax, old roses, and moonroot incense. That last scent cleared the final softness from her head. Seraphina rolled toward the bedside table. Cassian's arm blocked her. “The brazier,” she said. “Put it out.” “Why?” “Because moonroot makes people agreeable, forgetful, and embarrassingly warm. Unless you want to confess your secret love for embroidery before the court arrives.” Cassian seized the silver water pitcher and flung it. The brazier hissed. Bitter smoke curled toward the canopy. He had not asked whether she was certain. He had trusted her diagnosis. Annoying man. Seraphina searched her memory. The Feast of Lanterns. A masked servant offering wine. Cassian across the ballroom, watching her as if she were a lit fuse beside a powder keg. She had followed a woman wearing Queen Celestine's sapphire moth brooch into the western gallery. Then a needle had grazed her shoulder. She touched the spot. A small ache answered beneath the sleeve of her gold gown. “Were you pricked?” she asked. Cassian's gaze sharpened. He pulled back his cuff. A red mark sat above the heavy bones of his wrist. “In the gallery. I thought it was a clasp.” “You were poisoned and assumed it was tailoring?” “I was occupied.” “Doing what?” “Catching you.” A noise sounded beyond the double doors: a shoe against stone, then an urgent whisper. They both looked toward it. Cassian sat up. The chain between them shortened and dragged Seraphina across the mattress until her hip struck his. His free arm caught her around the waist. “How touching,” she said. “Try to look less practiced.” His grip tightened once, steadying rather than claiming. “Can you stand?” “Can you explain why we should?” The answer came in the scrape of a key outside. The doors were locked from the corridor. Someone had arranged the room, the incense, the chains, and an audience. They were expected to be discovered in bed. Standing six feet apart would not matter. Being fully clothed would not matter. Court did not require truth when it had a picture. Seraphina studied the chain. One long length passed through both bracelets, leaving them enough movement to reach each other and very little else. The lock was new. The gilding was not. Three tiny flames had been engraved near the hinge. “Sanctum marriage chain,” she said. Cassian's mouth flattened. “Reserved for fertility rites.” “So the kingdom's coldest duke knows ceremonial bedroom equipment.” “So does the kingdom's least marriageable lady.” “I read.” “You trespass.” “Both broaden the mind.” The latch turned. Cassian moved first. He pulled the canopy curtain around them, then used the slack in the chain to roll Seraphina beneath him. Her breath struck the hollow of his throat. “What are you doing?” “Giving us two seconds without witnesses.” “This is your idea of privacy?” His body formed a wall between her and the opening curtains. He kept his weight on one elbow. Nothing about the position was intimate except everything visible to anyone who entered. “The west door is twelve paces from the bed,” he said quietly. “When I pull the chain from the ring, run.” “You cannot pull an iron ring from black oak.” “No. But I can pull the bedpost from the bed.” The doors opened. Light flooded the chamber. Queen Celestine entered first in silver silk, one hand raised delicately to her lips. Behind her came two royal matrons, Chancellor Malrec Vane, six members of the court, and—because whoever planned this had a sense of theater—King Edric himself. No one looked surprised enough. Seraphina let her head fall back against the pillow. If they wanted a scandal, she would not give them shame. “Your Majesty,” she said from beneath Cassian. “I believe this room was advertised as private.” One of the matrons squeaked. The king stared at the chain, the bed, and Cassian's arm around her. His face had the gray exhaustion Seraphina had noticed twice that winter. Tonight, a tremor ran through the fingers holding his cane. Chancellor Vane stepped forward. His white hair shone under the lamps. He looked like every kindly portrait of wisdom ever commissioned by a guilty man. “The First Flame's chain,” he said. “In a royal bed.” “Excellent eyesight,” Seraphina replied. Cassian rose enough to face the king while still shielding her legs from the court. “We were drugged and brought here.” “Your clothes appear remarkably orderly,” Vane said. “Were you hoping otherwise?” Cassian asked. The chancellor's genial expression survived. His eyes did not. King Edric rapped his cane once. “Enough.” The room obeyed. Seraphina watched the king rather than the courtiers. He had not asked who locked the door. He had not ordered the chain removed. He had come prepared to pronounce judgment. “Lady Seraphina,” he said, “you entered a restricted royal gallery alone with Duke Thorne.” “I followed a woman wearing the queen's brooch.” Celestine's hand fell from her lips. The sapphire moth pinned at her shoulder was smaller than the one Seraphina remembered. A copy, then—or the other brooch had been. “Cassian,” the king continued, “you followed Lady Seraphina.” “Someone had already tried to kill her once this month.” The courtiers shifted. That detail was not part of the pretty scandal they had come to enjoy. Edric's gaze passed between them. “You were found in a sanctified marriage chain before witnesses from crown, court, and Sanctum. House Vale and House Thorne have disputed the southern iron road for twelve years. I will not permit this spectacle to ignite another season of retaliation.” Seraphina sat up, dragging Cassian down beside her. “Then investigate the person who staged it.” “I intend to.” “Before or after you punish us for surviving?” The king's tired face hardened. “You will marry in five days.” Silence did not fall. It broke. A matron gasped. Someone near the door whispered a prayer. The queen closed her eyes for half a second. Cassian's hand went still at Seraphina's waist. She laughed. It was the only weapon she could reach. “No,” Cassian said. The single word carried farther than Seraphina's laughter. King Edric's knuckles whitened on his cane. “That was not a proposal.” “Then it deserves no answer.” Vane watched Cassian with almost paternal regret. “Refusal would revive the Vale attainder. Every southern property presently held in trust would return to the crown. The northern iron-road charter would also be suspended pending review.” There it was. Not two noble titles, but vineyard workers, miners, stable families, tenant farmers, and the patients Seraphina treated beneath the shuttered apothecary on Lantern Street. Hundreds of throats beneath one royal boot. Seraphina looked at Cassian. He had heard the same threat. The muscle beside his mouth moved once. “Five days,” the king repeated. “You will share one bed in the royal marriage suite for forty nights. You will appear before court as husband and wife. And before the year ends, I expect this union to secure the succession with an heir.” Cassian came off the bed so quickly the oak frame cracked. The chain snapped taut and hauled Seraphina to her feet beside him. “Her body is not a province you command,” he said. His arm remained around her, but the fury in it faced outward. He had been ordered to take her, and his first act as her intended husband was to deny the king ownership of her body. Seraphina wished that made him easier to hate. The king's guards reached for their swords. Seraphina caught Cassian's chained hand. His pulse hammered against her fingers, though his voice had remained calm. He had ruined her father. He had shadowed her for years. He had just challenged a king over what the king expected from her bed. She stepped close enough that the court would see a bride seeking her future husband's protection. “Careful,” she whispered. “If you get yourself executed, I may have to marry someone agreeable.” His eyes met hers. “Five days, Lady Venom.” Behind Chancellor Vane, a royal matron quietly slipped an empty needle case into her sleeve. Seraphina saw it. And the woman saw Seraphina see.