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Inez smiles. “Your brother Atticul is unmarried. Your brother Endrew is a young man fighting a bitter war. Everyone says they are losing badly in Ik-Sundal without The One Man Army. Is it really so unlikely that people will look to you one day?” She pulls out of his grip and slips off his lap to sit down on the bed behind him. She slides backwards, reaching for Damon and urging him onto the bed on top of her.

Damon lets her guide him. He holds his body weight on his arms and kisses her again. “A bastard could not rise so high.”

“I don’t agree,” Inez whispers, then she looks at him and reaches for something on the table beside the bed. A small bottle made of gold and spun glass. The liquid inside it is deep brown, almost black.

Damon takes the bottle from Inez. “What is this?”

“It worked before,” Inez says.

“A love draught?”

Inez nods. “Such draughts are permitted for the Feast of Surrus. I had it sent from the Rose Palace. Mixed by The Moon Truth herself.”

Damon shudders with a prickling of shame. He needs this to cover his wife and she knows it. Feast of Surrus or not, his own weak will and traitorous heart could never be enough. She took care of it where he did not. Too much the coward to secure a love draught for himself. He unstoppers the bottle. The tonic is thin with a familiar bitter taste, but he can feel its effects taking him fast. He feels hot all over. Lightheaded as his blood moves. His cock prickles.

Inez lifts her face close to kiss him. Before their lips meet, she whispers, “Close your eyes, my love. Forget me. Think of your pleasure slave.”

“Wife?”

“Pretend I am him, it will go easier,” Inez says simply.

And Damon does. He thinks himself that demon and Lyr, the blushing fae maid.

Later, Damon lies alone on Inez’s bed as she returns to the feast.

When he hears raucous cheering, he knows she has announced that Zai has blessed them. He looks up at the carved wooden canopy of Inez’s bed and lies where he is a little longer, wondering if he can bear to return to the revelling.

Is Lyr already coupling in the grove with his maidservant lover? If so, Damon thinks he ought to stay away.

But he cannot. He wants to see what else the night will bring him. He has done his duty, perhaps he will find his own blessing from Surrus.

As he gets up and pulls on his breeches, he sees Inez has a small shrine to Surrus set out on a table in the corner. A small gold idol with white flower petals around it. A gesture meaning to bless their union tonight. Damon stops to kneel before it and asks Surrus to put a child in his wife’s belly and save him from sin.

When he stands, he feels like his blood is burning with desire. Surrus has not given him what he asked for, far from it.

He wants Lyr. Now, tonight. No matter the consequences.

14

LYR

Lyr’s head still swims a little from the poppy cake Mina gave him. He is sure if he hadn’t eaten that, he would never have let her kiss him. But his heart felt prickly and sour when he saw Damon with his wife.

When Damon’s wife leads him away, it is Mina who helps Lyr up from the terrace and takes him into the kitchen and dresses his wounds. While she is dabbing something over his split lip, Kres comes in, angry. Lyr cowers, thinking Kres might hit him again, but Damon’s household guard follow quickly and drag him away.

When he’s feeling calmer, Mina fetches him a drink of honeywine and tries to persuade him to come back to the feast. “Everyone must rut in the grove to bless the household,” she explains brightly. “So that Master Damon will have a son.”

“Mina,” Lyr says, “You know I cannot rut with you. You know I am sly.”

Mina cocks her head onto one side. “I know you lie with noblemen. King Ramel and Master Damon, but why should that mean you cannot rut in the grove? You say Master Damon is sly and he has taken his wife.”

Lyr doesn’t know what to say to that. Luckily he doesn’t have to come up with anything. Because before he can say a word someone appears in the kitchen doorway.

Tall and slender with dark hair cut short and a gold gown that is barely more than a few scraps of fabric held together with gold chains. “Here you are,” she says in her deep musical voice, sounding delighted.

Lyr briefly notices Minas’s eyes go wide before he leaps up and rushes to embrace her, “Opeth!” He all but leaps into her arms.

Finally, breathlessly, he turns and says to Mina, “This is Opeth. She was in King Ramel’s harem too.”