Kings and Assassins by Lane Robins Read Free Book Online Page A

murder, accused you of regicide. Now that I lack Aris's protection—you needn't pretend you ever cared for me….”
    “Had I wanted you dead, my sweet, dead you would be. Yet here you live, and well enough to vex me.”
    She touched his face gently; her eyes dazed but intelligent, questioning. Her face hardened as her emotions resurfaced beneath the smothering blanket of the narcotic. “Go away,” she said. “Murderer.”
    “And abandon my wife when she's so beside herself? Trust your safety to a pair of kingsguards green and lazy? I'll stay. And, see, I'm so far from killing you, I'm offering to protect you.” He grinned and she squirmed back against the bedstead.
    “You protect yourself,” she said, her words slurred and slow. “Rue might wait for evidence, but others would kill you given the opening, let matters sort themselves out as they might.”
    He twiddled the edge of the blanket for a moment, a little taken aback, and then found himself surrendering to a tiny laugh. “I do believe I prefer you on Laudable,” he said. “You're far more interesting.
    “There are those who want me dead, certainly. There are those who will think to use me as a placeholder to keep Itarus at bay, until I can be safely removed. And there are those who understand that to dispose of me is for Antyre to lose what little independence we have left. Aris's advisers may hate me, but they do need me.”
    Psyke groaned into her pillow, tossing her head. He wondered if it was the politics that displeased her so, or that she found herself unable to comprehend his words through Laudables veil. Her eyelashes flickered; she rested her head on his thigh and fell asleep.
    He touched the matted tangles of her hair, comparing it to her usual smooth coils, and found satisfaction in the physical disorder.
    Psyke whimpered in the back of her throat, a muffled thing, her brow creasing, as if her worries were so vast as to chase her into Laudables dreamless sleep. When a small hand sought his warmth, creeping toward him with the blind instinct of a nursing animal, he left the bed and settled himself at her dressing table, knees banging the gilt tips off the elaborate wooden crenellations dangling beneath. A woman's room this, and a small woman at that.
    He tugged the drawers open, one after another, hoping to find something to ease his own tension: the Laudable was all gone and the drinks at Ivor's table seemed hours ago. Psyke's furious tongue and temper had been a surprise coming from a young woman who might as well wear a porcelain mask for all her placid perfection. Mayhap her furniture hid secrets as well.
    The drawers disappointed him, yielding nothing more than the usual fripperies of handkerchiefs and lace panels, the brilliant parure he had given her on their engagement, discreet boxes of rice powder, milled carmine, and the tiny pot of eyeblack. A bottle of perfume came to hand, oddly sharp scented for a woman, mint and vetiver, nothing like Maledicte's sweet lilac, so rich a scent that it clung for days, and to bury his face in Maledicte's black curls had been like finding an unexpected garden at the start of spring.
    Janus unbarred and opened the door, shouted out at the guard to bring him
Absenté, even
if they had to roust every member of the palace staff to find him a bottle.
    His darting gaze fell on Psyke again, the tidy tumble of limbs and long, pale hair; the stained shift and her bruising shoulder the only shadows on her. Psyke made another soft sound, a mutter that could be complaint or pleasure, and Janus's lips curled.
    He hadn't expected her to be so … agreeable, even with Laudables influence. To go from spite and blackest rage to yielding in his arms—
    He traced the bruises on her shoulders, so much like handprints but longer, broader than his and chill beneath his fingers. Leaving that mystery, he reached out to touch her lips, parted and soft, and a tiny breath wisped against his palm on a stuttered sigh. Janus drew