He bade them good night and stepped into his rooms. “Marissia?” he called. It was late, she might have gone to her bed in the little side room—more a closet, really. But she didn’t answer. Which she wouldn’t, if she’d betrayed him.
Behind him, Gavin Greyling was closing the doors. “Um, she left about half an hour ago, sir.” She often worked late into the night when he returned from trips, giving him the most up-to-date reports the next morning and arranging the most pressing business on his schedule. And if she was loyal, she’d been doing everything she could to investigate her “failure.” Yes, that was Marissia. That was the heart of the woman, dutifully looking to correct any error, even when it meant she’d forget that when he came home, he wanted her here. She didn’t have betrayal in her.
“Ah.” Shit.
“Is there anything we can do, my lord?” Gavin Greyling asked.
Gavin leveled a bemused gaze on the boy and said, “I have been traveling for the past four months with a woman I find incredibly seductive but whom I can never have. So no, I’m afraid that the duty I have for my room slave to perform is not one I would ask of you.”
Gill started laughing. It took his brother longer.
“Are you talking about Watch Commander Ka—Ow!” he said as Gill slammed the butt of his spear onto his foot.
Gavin Greyling looked at his brother, peeved, and then blanched. “Oh. Oh. Um. I’m sorry, sir. Would you like one of us to go summon her? Her the room slave, I mean, my lord. Not her the watch commander… Although I suppose… Ahem.”
Even though they were offering, Gavin knew he wasn’t supposed to treat the Blackguard as his fetch-and-carry boys. It would, quite possibly, get these young men into trouble for having volunteered it. No, he’d spent the time talking with them to gain some rapport and to make sure they weren’t assassins. He wasn’t going to throw away that rapport just for his complaining loins.
But it was close. He shook his head.
The doors closed behind him and he shuffled toward the painting. He was exhausted, and there was a ball of despair swelling in his stomach. He looked at the painting closely, examined the hidden hinge, saw no sign of tampering. The frame of the painting needed a new coat of paint, though. The oils on his fingers had worn one edge smooth. He would have to disguise that. He pulled the frame open.
The panel under which sat the liquid yellow luxin was undisturbed, inert until the alarm injected air into it to make it glow faintly. The alarm hadn’t gone off.
He drafted superviolet and reached deeper, pushed the superviolet into the hellstone panel, felt the brush of the filaments he’d left there, so thin they’d tear at the slightest touch—so thin they’d tell him if anyone had tampered with this. He felt the mechanism. It was undisturbed.
For one wild moment, he thought that it was all a mistake. Dazen was still in the blue prison! Nothing had gone wrong! He’d merely panicked because he’d lost blue. Because he’d had a bad dream about Dazen escaping—which he’d been fearing for sixteen years, so that was no wonder, in the aftermath of losing blue.
Except that the Third Eye had said his brother had broken out of blue, too.
But fortune-tellers are often wrong, right?
Not her.
Gavin drafted deeper down to the chute. It had moved over. It had moved to green.
So Dazen had broken out of blue, but he was still stuck in green. The blue alarm had failed, but eventually Dazen had gotten food. He’d been getting blue bread in the green prison, but he hadn’t broken out. Either the green had made him too wild to think clearly enough or the blue bread when illuminated by green light had been too spectrally close to give him usable luxin. He was in green and he was alive.
Dazen could never be counted out, but it wasn’t a catastrophe. Not yet.
The enormous weight didn’t quite lift from Gavin’s shoulders, but it shifted to a more comfortable position. This one emergency, at least, could wait until the morning. He wasn’t ready to face Dazen, not after this day. He’d rest, and gather his wits, and then face his brother. Tomorrow.
He walked to his desk, took the folded shimmercloaks and the deck box, and tucked them in a closet. More problems for tomorrow. There were always more problems for tomorrow. He went to his bed, stripping off his clothes. He threw them willy-nilly, suddenly peeved. Where was Marissia, anyway? What does one have a room slave for, if not for some damned companionship once in a while? Schedules could wait. He wanted her here. He cursed, feeling peevish and petty.
Truth was, he was angry at Karris for being so damned intractable. And he missed Marissia, and not only for her admirable bed skills. He didn’t want to sleep alone tonight. He wanted to hold her body, to feel the soft comfort of her curves. To wake and embrace her and then sleep again. He wanted to take her in the bath in the morning, and then have her comb his hair, anoint him with oils, dress him, and send him off to conquer the world again with a clear head.
Instead, she was off doing whatever it was she did when she wasn’t serving him.
That was ungracious, unfair. Most of the time that Marissia spent away from this room was to serve him. He crawled under the covers and thought dark thoughts for a few more seconds, then surrendered to sleep.
In the middle of the night, Gavin must have gotten hot and thrown the covers off, because he felt cold. Foggy-headed, he reached a hand to pull the blankets back on him, but then he felt the sweep of long hair over his thigh, and then a kiss. She took his hands and tucked them firmly at his sides, telling him not to interfere.
Oh, Marissia, if a man could fall in love with a slave…
Marissia pleasured him like she did everything: efficiently and well. She’d done this before when he’d come back from trips and she’d been out when he got back, or even just when she’d sensed that he was hungry for the pleasures of the flesh. She would wake him rapidly and pleasantly, and then ride him to a quick climax. It was like providing a meal on the march: she satisfied his hunger as quickly as possible, and interfered as little as possible with the business at hand. In this case, his sleep. Funny woman, but Gavin wouldn’t trade her for the world.
Having roused him with admirable dispatch, Marissia crawled up Gavin’s body. He reached for her breasts, but she grabbed his hands and pushed them above his head. Marissia’s breasts got so tender some months that she didn’t like Gavin to even touch them. She’d allow it if he insisted, of course—she served for his pleasure—but Gavin didn’t want to insist tonight. Not when she was being so solicitous.
She quietly moaned as she lowered herself onto him a little at a time, and the pleasure of it almost blotted out all thought for Gavin, but he opened his eyes. Marissia rarely moaned. The room was dark. Gavin could of course change that, but pleasure blotted out will. It had been so long.
When she settled fully on him, though, even without hands, without sight, he knew this wasn’t Marissia. As he came out of his stupor, it became more and more obvious. He knew Marissia’s body, how she moved, the smell of her arousal and the smell of her perfume, and this was not—
That perfume. As his succubus began to rock her hips rhythmically, Gavin was entranced by the competing soporifics of pleasure and memory.
Karris almost never wore perfume. Only one day a year, and then only when she couldn’t get out of it. She only wore perfume to the Luxlords’ Ball. This perfume.