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“I’m sorry, Your Highness, but I don’t know anything about it.”
He stood up, looming over Blake with closed fists. “Your lies aren’t doing you any favors, human. Tell me what you know at once.”
The man standing behind Mikos made the extraordinary move of stepping forward and touching his arm. The prince visibly flinched and then whirled around to glare down at him too. “I told you to go back to your quarters.”
“And I refused,” he replied in the most extraordinary manner, his eyes flashing.
The prince looked for a moment as if he might hit him, and even raised his hand, but then Davos shouted, “Enough!”
“You asked your question,” Davos said. “And it was answered. Now, you’re both excused.”
“Father, this is a mistake,” the prince said, his face dark with passion. “You can’t trust him.”
But Davos shook his head. “You’re excused, Mikos. Take your mate with you as you go.”
His mate? Blake felt stunned. How had he not realized this must be the infamous ex-colonel in the Alliance, Ryan Donnelly, who had married the Bloody Prince? Their relationship was not the greatest, to say the least, but everyone knew about it. They’d been married just before the end of the war, to help make a treaty with terms that were acceptable enough—just barely—for the Alliance so that the Alliance could make peace and still not have such strict terms that they didn’t wreck the uneasy new truce. It was a strictly political marriage, but Donelly had agreed to have the prince’s child.
Shortly after that, Ryan had been kidnapped, or so he claimed, by an organization called ARes, or the Alliance Resistance. They had attempted to kill Mikos and his younger brothers on Tygeria during the kidnapping, but they’d failed to finish the job. When Mikos caught up to them, and thinking Ryan Donnelly was part of the conspiracy and not a victim, he’d put his mate in prison for a while, assuming his guilt even before the trial, which had found him guilty and sentenced him to prison. Ryan had proclaimed his innocence and eventually, the prince released him. Donnelly even had Mikos’s child. He’d gotten pregnant while he was still behind bars, though Blake had heard there was no doubt it was the prince’s child, once again showing what a complicated relationship they truly had.
They lived together uneasily now, but rumor had it they were both unhappy. Blake knew Ryan worked for the king, but he and Prince Mikos had never truly reconciled, even though they’d stayed together. Mikos claimed he made Ryan stay for the sake of the child, but the boy was in his teens now.
“I’m sorry about all that,” King Davos told Blake after the prince and his consort had left the room. “My son believes you had something to do with the bombing. He hates all humans, unfortunately, so it’s easy for him to believe that all of them are treacherous.”
“But he’s married to a human.”
“Hmm. Not by choice, and theirs is a difficult relationship. Unfortunately, they bonded.”
“Bonded?”
“It’s something that happens with Tygerians. It’s unbreakable, I’m afraid. Mikos is a troubled man, I’m afraid. My sons were raised by a human captive. I thought, at the time, that the man was the perfect caretaker for my children. I found out later that he wasn’t what he claimed to be. He was cruel and abusive and Mikos suffered the most. I was away for long periods of time, and this person was able to do as he wanted, though he covered his tracks well and made threats to them about what would happen if they talked. Mikos was fourteen by the time I finally found out, and by then it was too late to change his and the other boys’ feelings about all humans. As a result, Mikos and my other sons despise them.”
“Not great for the future of humanity, then, considering they’ll inherit your throne one day.”
“Yes, I’m afraid I made mistakes where my family’s concerned.”
“You never married?”
“No. Tell me, Blake, how many of your years has it been since you left the army?”
“Almost fifteen, sir.”
Davos nodded. “Right after the surrender.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it was five more before that since you were last on Tygeria.”
“That’s right.”
“I think of that night we met from time to time.”
“Y-you do?” Blake wasn’t sure what surprised him more—that the king remembered that night and their excruciating encounter, or that he was bringing it up now.
“I looked for you when the war was over but had trouble locating you. After you left the Alliance army and mustered out with an undistinguished record, you dropped out of sight for a while.”
That remark about an undistinguished record surprised Blake and also stung a little. He’d been a good enough soldier and had done whatever his superiors had asked. No more, but no less than anyone else. He supposed in comparison to Davos’s war efforts, it didn’t seem like much, but he hadn’t had the advantage of being on the winning side and having an uncle who had been the king either. The important question, though, was why in the world Davos had ever spared someone like Blake a second thought, let alone gone to the trouble of looking for him. The king reminded Blake he was waiting for an answer by clearing his throat.
“Oh. I-I moved to the Mars colony.”
