And he let himself pretend, just for a moment, that they weren’t only talking about tonight.
Thomas woke suddenly, a vague sense of dread creeping up his spine and making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He blinked himself awake and extracted himself from Evan’s grip, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and sitting up as he tried to make sense of his sudden unease.
The fire had burned down to embers, but there was still enough light to see that everything in the room was as it should be. Evan’s breathing was deep and even, and when Thomas checked he found the door still locked. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss.
He ran his hands over his face, stifling a yawn, and considered ignoring his disquiet and crawling back into bed. Evan was right there, naked and warm and tempting. But that itching, prickling sensation of wrongness refused to leave him.
He heaved a sigh. Maybe it was just an instinctive reaction to knowing the castle was unguarded. He hauled himself to his feet. He’d do a patrol of the outside entrances and that would reassure him that he was worrying over nothing.
Then he’d come back to bed and see if Evan couldn’t be tempted to another round of fuckery. He didn’t think it would take much.
He dressed in silence and slipped out the door, leaving Evan sleeping. There was no reason to wake him, not when Thomas only intended to do a single round of the castle’s entry points and check everything was secure. He moved soundlessly down the stairs and headed for the kitchen, where he grabbed a lantern to light his way. From there he made his way to the front courtyard, starting his inspection with the main gates, which were locked up tight.
It was eerily quiet. It was obviously too early for any of the staff to be up and starting their day, and the absence of guards at the gate was jarring. Thomas took a deep breath, rolling his shoulders and reminding himself that even if someone were to break in, there wasn’t much harm they could do. It was the reason Evan had sent the king and his husband out of the country.
He made his way back into the castle and worked his way along the passages that led to the exterior, checking every door and gate along the way, even the ones that hardly anybody used.
Everything was as it should be.
Still, he found himself tensing every time he turned a corner. Something waswrong—he could feel it in the marrow of his bones. He just didn’t know what.
He’d made it two-thirds of the way around the perimeter when he found it.
At the end of a short, dust-filled corridor, a door leading to a small courtyard with low walls that hardly anybody used was standing ajar.
He might have thought it had been left open by accident some time in the past, given that the area was barely visited, except he knew for a fact that there had been a guard posted hereonly yesterday. Thomas’s gut clenched as he stepped closer and lifted the lantern to get a better look. Dust motes danced in the air, and the lamplight showed a trail of fresh footprints leading from the courtyard along the passageway toward the main part of the castle.
Thomas lowered the lantern, his brow creasing.
Who was sneaking in a disused door and why? If someonehadcome to fulfil the threat against the royal family, they weren’t very skilled in their craft, given that they were apparently unaware the king and prince consort had left Lilleforth.
Honestly, the pragmatic part of Thomas was offended by the existence of an assassin who was so poorly prepared.
Evanneverwould have left that door open. And he would have covered his tracks at the very least. There was a reason he’d escaped detection for so long.
That, and nobody would suspect a member of the royal family of being a spy.
Thomas sucked in a sharp breath as his own earlier words to Sam came to mind.
The Duke of Ravenport is also a member of the royal family.
The hairs on the back of Thomas’s neck stood on end and waves of hot and cold ran through him, his stomach clenching as realisation hit him like a brick.
Evan was royalty.
Evan wasroyalty.
Thomas had been blind.
When they’d been told there was a threat against the royal family, they’d all—Evan included—assumed the king was at risk, but what if somebody had worked out that Evan was the Rogue, and he had been the target all along?
And Thomas had just left him, asleep and alone, in an unlocked bedroom in an unguarded castle.
The passageway echoed with the clattering of boots as Thomas ran back toward the main hall at full pelt, his heart beating hard enough that it threatened to leap out of his chest. He skidded around the end of the corridor and raced up the stairs. He surged forward, not slowing—and had there always been this many steps?
He was gasping for breath, the staircase seeming to go on forever, but he forced himself to keep moving until he reached the top.
Taking barely a second to suck in a lungful of air on the landing, he started running toward Evan’s chambers, desperate to warn him and keep him safe.
