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Lyr nods. He says, “This is hard to explain. Please, I need you to tell me about the stablehand.”

Damon frowns. “What stablehand?”

“The one Atticul caught you with. Atticul told me about it when he spoke to me in his carriage.”

Damon quirks a half-smile. “You are jealous? Lyr, it was a long time ago.”

“I’m not jealous. Damon, please, just tell me what happened?”

Damon shrugs. “I will tell you, as you wish, but then you will leave.”

Lyr nods. He knows Damon doesn’t need to do this. He could have called his guards the moment Lyr stepped through the door. He could have had Lyr punished severely for even coming above stairs into the manor house.

Damon says, “It happened long ago. I came home. After I led the mission to retake Pluma-Ferris. I was nineteen. I’d been made a Commander and Selim had given me Sanvicta. Plumillar was the stablehand taking care of my horse, Greywise. One night I went to check on her after supper at my father’s table. We got to talking and I lay with him. He was quite overwhelmed by it. I was a great hero, even then. And he was just a stablehand. I went back the next night and the next. I never thought about what could happen.”

“What happened?” Lyr whispers.

“I was at the Rose Palace for a moon. On my last night, I went to the stables. We made love again, but it was bittersweet. I was to return to the battlefronts in east Azuria the next day. We had developed feelings, I suppose. Or I thought we had. But as we lay together Atticul appeared along with two of his bodymen. He must have spied on me. Perhaps the night before, perhaps another. Because he had found out what I had done. He had Plumillar’s full written confession. Everything we did together. Every detail. Plumillar had told them everything, even though he knew what it could mean for both of us. Plumillar knew they were coming that night to catch us together, the two bodymen to serve as witnesses, although I hadn’t noticed anything amiss when I took him. I don’t know what Atticul offered him to betray me.”

“Perhaps he did to him what he did to me. Threatened someone he cared about.”

Damon’s tone is sharp. “Indeed, Atticul has not had a new idea in two decades. But Plumillar should have come to me, like you did, and told me the truth.”

“There was a written confession? What happened to it?”

“If Atticul had taken that confession to our father with him and his bodymen as witnesses, it would have ruined me. And not only me. I’d have likely been expelled from the army and exiled. Our father’s crimes would have had to be paid for another way. It could have ruined him too, but Atticul would never have seen it like that. He was blind to everything except destroying me. So I had no choice. I fought.”

“You fought them? You were unarmed.” Lyr imagines it. Damon, naked, caught making love to a stablehand by Atticul and two bodymen, forced to fight for his life.

Damon nods. “There were only two.” He looks a little smug. “And you are only unarmed until you kill your first armed man. I killed both of Atticul’s bodymen and put one of their daggers to Atticul’s throat. He had Plumillar’s confession with him, of course he did. I took it and I burned it.”

“What happened to Plumillar?”

“He ran during the fight,” Damon says bluntly. “I never saw him again.”

“You didn’t try to find him? After he’d betrayed you?”

“No,” says Damon. His face is expressionless. It’s dark in the room, the shutters are closed. The only light comes from the parlour beyond. “I’m glad he got away. After what he’d confessed. I assume Atticul promised him he’d protect him, but he was older than me and a stablehand and I am the favoured royal bastard of Prince Rafus of Azuria. He would not have had a pleasant death. He got away and I am glad of it.”

Lyr nods. “I am glad too,” he says.

“And there you have the story. Atticul caught me with Plumillar. He had a confession and he had witnesses in himself and his men. I destroyed the confession and killed the men. Atticul’s word alone without the confession would not have been enough. His jealousy of me was already known. I was The One Man Army and I did what I had to do. You know the story and now you must leave. Please, Lyr, we are so close to safety.”

Lyr looks into Damon’s dark eyes. “I will, I swear, but I just need a little more. Please let me stay longer. It is important.”

Lyr knows Damon does not want to do this. He is so close to getting everything he wants. If he were discovered now with Lyr in his bedchamber, it could all fall apart. But he also knows Damon trusts him. He watches Damon nod. “Very well, but it cannot be for long.”

“Have you ever heard of the Ullinor question?”

Damon looks bemused. Lyr is sure this means he has no idea about the theory that Opeth explained to him. Atticul’s apparent fear. “Ullinor my father’s wife?”

“Yes, there is a theory, Opeth told me about it. This theory states that if your father had permission to take a second wife, then when he got your mother pregnant, he should have married her.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Damon scoffs. “My mother was a whore. My father was the son of Emperor Erond. He would never have been bound to take her to wife.”

“Perhaps. But it's a clever theory. Someone with a head for politics worked that out.”

“I suppose.”