They Drugged Me Into Darkness, Now I Am Its King novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Prince Who Would Not Kneel

Aquas returns Lucien's cloak before the assembled Pluto court and refuses to accept royal guard or perform gratitude, studying the elders' reactions while Lucien's authority is challenged in public, ending when Lucien reaches for Aquas's wrist and his shadow recoils from Aquas's skin.

Aquas lifted the heavy black cloak from his shoulders before the court had finished settling onto the obsidian benches.

He folded it once, carefully, and held it out to Lucien.

The great hall went still.

A goblin elder halfway to his seat stopped with one foot in the air. Mossbeard's mouth opened and closed without sound. Durn, standing at the edge of the forge delegation, crossed her arms and watched with the expression of a woman who had just found a crack in a wall she had trusted for twenty years.

'You are cold,' Lucien said.

His voice did not rise. It never did. But the shadow-dark at his back stirred, slow and heavy, like something turning over in deep water.

'I am not cold,' Aquas said. 'I am returning what was placed on me without my asking.'

He had not asked for the cloak. Lucien had wrapped it around him in the corridor outside his chambers, after he had woken, after the gold fracture under his eye had finally stopped burning, and had said nothing at all while doing it.

Aquas had let him.

He had let him because his legs were still weak and because Lucien's hands had been careful, and because some small, traitorous part of him had wanted the warmth.

That part could be quiet now.

The court was watching. Forty or more of them, the war council and the goblin elders and the dwarf captains, all of them gathered because Lucien had summoned them, and all of them now staring at the consort who had just handed the dark prince his own cloak back in front of everyone.

'You were unconscious for two days,' Lucien said. 'You will take the guard.'

It was not a suggestion. It was an order, delivered in the same flat tone he used for border deployments and execution warrants.

'No,' Aquas said.

Someone inhaled sharply. A goblin elder near the front, the one with the moss-green beard, made a small choked sound that might have been outrage or delight.

'No,' Lucien repeated.

'That is what I said.'

Lucien's jaw tightened. It was a small movement, barely visible under the high collar of his coat, but Aquas saw it. He was learning to read the dark prince's stillness the way Durn read fault lines.

'You were attacked in my hall,' Lucien said. 'You burned the ceiling black and collapsed in my arms. You will rest under guard or you will be carried to your chambers and guarded there.'

'You would carry me?' Aquas asked.

The question landed. He watched it land. Lucien's eyes flickered, just for a breath, and the shadow-dark behind him pulled back half an inch.

'I would do what is necessary,' Lucien said.

'Then do it.'

Aquas did not raise his voice. He kept it soft, measured, the way he had been taught to speak in the moon court, where a raised voice was a loss of control and a loss of control was a weapon handed to your enemy.

He was not in the moon court anymore.

He was in Pluto, in the great obsidian hall, standing in front of the only court in Ethens that had ever looked at him without measuring what he was worth to them.

And he was refusing their prince.

It was the most alive he had felt since the solar pulse had torn through him.

'This is not a performance,' Lucien said. 'I am not asking for your gratitude.'

'What are you asking for?'

Lucien did not answer.

The silence stretched. Aquas used it.

He let his gaze move across the assembled court, slow and deliberate, cataloguing. Mossbeard was leaning forward, both hands braced on his knees, his amber eyes bright with something that looked worryingly like pride. Durn had not moved, but her jaw had shifted, and Aquas had learned that Durn's jaw shifting meant she was thinking hard about something she did not like.

The war council sat in a row of dark stone seats, their faces unreadable. The goblin elders whispered to each other behind their hands. The dwarf captains watched with the patient attention of people who had seen many strange things in the deep halls and were prepared to see one more.

And Temik, the vampire prince, stood near the far pillar with his arms crossed and a smile on his face that showed just the tips of his fangs.

He looked delighted.

'You are angry,' Lucien said.

It was not a question.

'I am not angry,' Aquas said. 'I am tired of being managed. Your court has been kind to me. Kinder than my own blood. But I will not be wrapped in cloaks and posted with guards like a treasure that might be stolen.'

'You are a treasure,' Mossbeard said loudly. 'You are the finest treasure in the whole of the underworld, and I will herewith fight anyone who says otherwise, including the dark prince himself, though I would prefer to fight him in a letter.'

A ripple of laughter went through the goblin elders.

Lucien did not laugh.

'Mossbeard,' he said. 'Be silent.'

'He is allowed to speak,' Aquas said.

He did not know where the words came from. They were out before he could stop them, and the hall went so quiet he could hear the torches guttering in their iron brackets.

Lucien turned his head. Slowly. The way a storm turns.

'You defend him,' Lucien said.

'He has been kinder to me in three weeks than my own father was in twenty-seven years,' Aquas said. 'So yes. I defend him.'

Mossbeard made a sound like a kettle coming to boil. Durn put a hand over her eyes.

Lucien stepped closer.

The shadow-dark came with him, rolling off his shoulders in slow waves, and the torches dimmed. The court drew back. Even Temik's smile faded.

But Aquas did not move.

He stood still, his hands at his sides, the silver vial on its chain cool against his chest under his robes. The Moon King had put it there at the wedding, his fingers cold on Aquas's skin, and had told him it held his mother's moon-tears, and that he must never open it.

Aquas had never opened it.

He had also never believed a word of it.

'You are not afraid of me,' Lucien said.

His voice was low now, close, meant only for Aquas, though every creature in the hall was straining to hear.

'I am afraid of many things,' Aquas said. 'You are not one of them.'

It was the truth. It surprised him, even as he said it. He had been afraid of the dark prince once, on the long road to Pluto, when the marriage chains were still cold on his wrists and every shadow had seemed to reach for him.

He was not afraid now.

The dark prince had carried him through a burning hall. Had shielded him from monsters. Had stood one step behind him while the light tore out of his skin and had not run.

Lucien reached for him.

It was the same movement he always made, the same careful catch of the wrist, the grounding touch Aquas had learned to expect in the quiet moments after a nightmare or a pulse of light.

Aquas turned it.

He did not pull away. He stepped into the reach, closing the distance, and took Lucien's hand in his own. Then he pressed it flat against his chest, over his heart, where the silver vial lay hidden under silk and the gold fracture still burned faint under his eye.

'If you want to know what I am feeling,' Aquas said softly, 'ask me. Do not reach for my wrist like I am a flight risk.'

Lucien's hand was warm. His fingers spread over Aquas's heart.

And then the shadow-dark recoiled.

It snapped back from Aquas's skin like water from hot iron, pulling away so fast that the torches flared bright again, and Lucien's whole body went rigid, and his eyes, those dark, knowing eyes, went wide with something Aquas had never seen there before.

Something that looked like fear.

Not of Aquas.

For him.

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