Percival novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Say It Wrong

June tests the thread while he dresses and learns he cannot lie to her, then asks the question he most wanted to dodge: what happens to him now.

Percival dressed faster than any man I had ever seen.

He was buttoning his waistcoat with his back to me before Maisie knocked a second time.

"Tell the king I am coming," he called.

"He said now, sir."

"He said now to a man who has not slept."

I sat up in the middle of his bed with the quilt around my shoulders and watched his hands.

They were still not steady.

The silver thread had faded to a faint line on my wrist, but it had not gone.

Something was going around in my head, and I could not stop it.

He had said four years.

He had said it flat and fast, and then he had gone still, and I was a record keeper.

I had filed it for later.

"Percival."

"Yes."

"Are you wearing a waistcoat?"

He glanced down at himself.

"Say no," I said.

He opened his mouth.

I watched him struggle with it.

"I am wearing a waistcoat," he said, and shut his mouth hard.

I grinned.

"Say that you hate me."

"I cannot."

"Say that your name is Harold."

"My name is Percival Wolcott." He put one hand over his eyes. "June, please."

"Say that you're not glad I'm here."

"I am so glad you are here that I cannot think."

It came out of him like a confession torn out by force.

I stopped grinning.

He lowered his hand and looked at me, and he looked a little sick.

"Do you understand what this is?" he said. "It is the worst thing that could happen to a man in my chair."

"I'm starting to."

"I have lied for the Crown for two hundred and thirty years. I can look a Russian ambassador in the face and swear the winter stores are full when they are empty."

"And now?"

"And now there is exactly one person in the world to whom I cannot tell a lie."

I pushed the quilt aside.

I got out of his bed in nothing but the thread on my wrist, found my nightgown, and pulled it on.

Then I walked across his cold floor in my bare feet and stood in front of him.

I had to tip my head all the way back to see his eyes.

"One person," I said. "Me."

"Yes."

"Which means I can tell you anything I like, and you can't tell if I'm lying."

He went very quiet.

"Yes," he said. "That is also true."

"I could say I don't want you."

"You could."

"I could say it's a mistake and I'm leaving."

"I would believe you." His eyes burned. "I would have to. I would have no way to know."

I looked at him for a long moment.

A man who could run a court, and a war, if he liked, was standing in front of me and telling me where he was weakest.

He was doing it because I had asked.

That is when I decided to like it.

"Mr. Wolcott," I said. "I think you should kiss me."

"Is that a lie?"

"Find out."

He cupped my face in both hands and kissed me, long and deep, until the room went away.

He walked me backward.

My shoulders met the door, and his mouth moved to my jaw, and my ear, and the place below it that made my knees go.

I slid my hand down his waistcoat, past the brass watch chain, and cupped him through his trousers.

He was already hard.

He groaned into my neck, and his hips jerked.

"June. The king."

"He can wait for you to stop shaking."

"I do not want to stop shaking."

I squeezed once, slowly, and let go.

He made a sound that was almost a curse.

"I'll see you tonight," I said, and pushed him a step away. "Go and be adviser at somebody."

He did not go.

He stood with his hair down and his hands clenched and looked at me.

"Ask me what you want to ask," he said hoarsely. "You have a question. I can see it."

I did.

It had been sitting under my ribs since the moment he said the word Council.

"What happens to you, now that you're bonded to a human?"

I watched him decide whether he could stay silent.

His hand went to his chest, and his face changed.

It hurt him.

Silence was not allowed, either.

"There is a law," Percival said. "No adviser of the Crown may take a mate. I swore it to the old king in seventeen ninety-four."

"And the penalty?"

"At midwinter the Council meets, and anyone who has bonded forfeits the chair, the house and the name."

"When is midwinter?"

"Twenty-four days from today."

Maisie knocked a third time, and the door shook against my back.

I put my hand flat on his chest, over his heart, which was running.

"Then we've got twenty-four days," I said. "And I run this."

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