Page 5 of The Court of Venus

“How dare you,” I spat. “Where is his head? Is it still rotting on a spike? Does it hang as some trophy on your wall? Where is it, Roland?”

I couldn’t master myself—for these past few months, I’d practiced what I’d say to him when I finally got the chance. Every night I’d rehearse, and my argument was pristine. Now I had forgotten it all. The knife clattered to the floor.

Roland kicked the blade under his desk. “The king sent Prospero to the Tomb, not me.”

I rounded on him. “But who gave him the idea, Your Grace? You whisper into his ear at night and in the morning, it is made law.”

“Prospero fell from favor because he couldn’t satisfy the king.”

“And you can?”

Roland inclined his head to the doors. Holding a finger up to his lips, he mouthed spies, his pearl earring flashing in the light as he turned. “I am trying,” he hissed then, his voice lower than before. “And you cannot imagine what it’s costing me. So, is this why you returned to court?” He indicated the knife in the shadows. “For revenge? For dear old Prospero, who always loved you more? He spoke of you at the end, you know. Right before his neck hit the block, he said your name, not mine. Well, I serve the king, and his moods, and he wanted a head. Prospero promised him a son, and the king grew impatient. That’s the trouble. The king thinks a magician will solve everything for him. And when we can’t deliver—” He dragged a finger across his throat.

His eyes didn’t leave mine. Yet I felt his attention lingering on the knife. “Prospero was my father,” I said.

Roland snorted.

“He was like my father in every way,” I insisted. “He was all I had in the world. I would have knelt on the scaffold in his stead, if it meant he was safe.”

“How valiant of you. I want to live,” he spat. He was breathing hard, shining with sweat. His eyes wide. All that careful, constructed cruelty was gone.

“Is that all? Truly, Roland?”

He recoiled and slumped into a chair, grasping for his carafe and filling a goblet with wine. He swirled and swirled the drink around, watching it shudder and still in the cup. “Why are you here?”

“A letter.”

“From whom?”

“You. You wrote to me.” Studying him now, even in the dim candlelight, I could see the love marks on his neck, some with serrations in the shape of teeth. “You offered me a place in the new queen’s coronation tournament and my old rooms in the palace.”

“No, I didn’t. Where’s the letter?”

“I burned it.”

He stared at me, blinking several times. “Convenient.”

“I was instructed to burn it.”

Something mouthed under his breath. Of course you were, it might have been. As he traced the rim of his pewter cup, I took the seat opposite him. “Are we to be civil now?” he asked. “Or shall I shout for my guards?”

I stole his goblet. Sniffed before I drank, a habit from growing up at court, though poison would dissolve—tasteless, odorless.

“You were a fool to trust the invitation.” He was eyeing his wine, deciding whether to snatch it back. “Someone wanted you at court. I’m sure they hired a Mercury to replicate my hand. So. You’re here now, we’ll endure it, but I won’t pretend I’m glad to see you.”

Yes, I felt very much the fool. I was alone with the most dangerous person in the kingdom. And I had regressed back into childhood again, always chasing after him. He was irresistibly charming, even when he was infuriating. It was essence, his power, which drew others toward him. Others, I told myself. Not me.

“I wanted to believe you would invite me,” I admitted. “You convinced Prospero to send me away, to the Staffords, and I wanted to believe you regretted it.”

“It was Prospero’s idea, Mouse,” he said calmly. “I wasn’t here. I was still in Lionesse, banished for my—” He hesitated, chewing his lip. “My transgressions. Or do you not remember?”

“I know it was you. Somehow you influenced him, sent him a letter. You wanted me out of the way. You wanted to be exactly where you are now. Because ever since I arrived at court, you resented me.”

“Or,” he countered, leaning forward, “Prospero sent you to some barren, wet corner of the kingdom to be rid of you.”

“Prospero loved me.”

He nodded in agreement. “And so your father saw you utterly and completely. You are adept at magic, yes, but not at this.”