He took the empty glasses in one hand, and let her lead him with the other, up the stairs, and down a corridor, and into a room that smelled less like the brothel’s careful perfume and more like the woods at night. Wild.
By the time the door closed, and locked, she was already guiding him up against the wall, pressing playful kisses to his collar.
“Ciara,” he said gently, and then, when she did not withdraw, more firmly. “Ciara.”
Her lips drew into a perfect pout. “You really are no fun,” she said, rapping her nails against his chest. “Does the king alone still hold your heart?”
Alucard smiled. “He does.”
“What a waste,” she said, retreating. As she did, she pulled the end of the white silk that wrapped around her, and it unraveled, and fell away. She stood there, naked, the full length of her body shining like moonlight, but his eyes were drawn less to her curves, and more to her scars. Silver traced the hollow of her throat, the curves of her breasts, the crooks of her elbows, the insides of her wrists. A relic of the Tide that fell on London seven years before. The cursed magic that spilled the Isle’s banks.
Few people knew that the magic had a name, and it was Osaron.
Osaron, the destroyer of Black London.
Osaron, the darkness that believed itself a god.
Osaron, who corrupted everything and everyone he touched.
Most who survived did so by succumbing to his will. Those who fought largely perished, burned alive by the fever raging in their veins. The few who did not fall, who fought the magic and the fever and lived, they alone were marked by the battle, their veins scorched silver in the curse’s wake.
Alucard handed Ciara a lush white robe, his gaze flicking briefly to his own hand, and the molten silver mottling his wrist.
He shed his rich blue coat and cast it over a chair, unbuttoning the clasp at his throat, the closest he would come to undressing. They left the bed untouched, as they always did, and turned instead to the small table that held the Rasch board.
It was already laid, pieces huddled on the six-sided board, black gathered on one side, white on the other. Three taller figures—priest, king, and queen—surrounded by twelve soldiers. Ciara’s board had been a gift from a generous patron who happened to prefer her insight to her body, and the pieces were carved from marble instead of wood, ribbons of gold ore running through the stone.
“May I?” he asked, nodding to the bottle on the sill.
“This night is costing you a fortune. You might as well enjoy it.”
“I always do,” he said, pouring them each a second glass of the golden liquor. He lifted his, dragging an old saying up from memory. “Och ans, is farr—”
“Don’t,” she snapped, as if the sound offended her.
Alucard hesitated. He knew he lacked the king’s fluency. He spoke Arnesian and High Royal, what Lila Bard called English, and could recite a handful of sayings in other tongues, enough to manage niceties at court. But his Veskan was stilted and gruff, learned from a sailor on his ship. That said, he didn’t think it was the accent that bothered Ciara.
“You know,” he said, “it is not a bad thing, to be from more than one place.”
“It is,” she countered, “when those places are at war.”
Alucard raised a brow. “I didn’t know we were,” he said, taking his seat. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“I’d wager I know many things.” She poured herself into the opposite chair as if she too were liquid. “But we both know that Arnes and Vesk are wolves snapping at each other’s throats. It’s only a matter of time before one of them draws blood.”
But of course, one of them already had.
Seven years ago, two of Vesk’s heirs had arrived at the palace, ostensibly to celebrate the Essen Tasch and solidify the bonds between empires. But they’d come with their own plans—to cripple the crown, and seed the ground for war. They’d succeeded, in part, slaughtering Rhy’s mother, Emira. They would have succeeded in killing Rhy too, if such a thing were still possible. The only thing that kept Arnes from declaring outright war was the more immediate danger of Osaron’s attack and then, in its wake, the Veskans’ disavowal of the offending son and daughter.
They’d gone so far as to offer up their youngest heir, Hok, as penance, but Rhy had seen too much blood in too short a time, had lost his mother to another prince’s ambition and his father to the darkness at the palace doors, had watched the Tide sweep through his capital, and been forced to fight against the darkness that ended an entire world. In a matter of days, he had been orphaned and crowned, left to pick up the pieces of London. And if he sought retribution, it wouldn’t be with the life of a child.