The Traitor’s Mercy by Iris Foxglove

Chapter 2

Laurent had no idea if Sabre’s parents were really traitors or not. It didn’t matter, not in the grand scheme of things. The king was the king, and he was not known for being rational. He hated the Mislians for some fever-dream of his perfidious wife—the stories said he’d executed her himself, and made their young son, the Crown Prince Adrien, watch. And now he barely spoke to Adrien, though whether it was because his son and heir looked like his hated mother, or was a submissive, no one knew. And given he’d once executed his entire personal guard for speaking too quietly in his presence, it was unlikely anyone would ask.

Laurent wanted his noble title not because life was easier for him, but because it let him make life easier for others. He remembered being in the House of Gold, chosen for his odd looks—thanks to his foreign parentage, on whatever side—and shaking in his bed at night, fucked to an inch of his life and suppressing his own natural dominance so fiercely that he hated the feel of the silk sheets on his skin. Maybe it was the thing that made him so popular amongst Staria’s elite, who were bored and jaded enough to find complacency too dull and an outright challenge too much work. He liked pleasure as much as any courtesan who was well-trained enough to enjoy it, but submitting went against every natural instinct he had.

The king had called for him only once, but Laurent was a popular choice with Isiodore de Mortain, the king’s loyal advisor and, so it seemed, only friend. He was the only person who’d ever seemed to notice Laurent’s dominance, and as one of the most notorious sadists at court, even Laurent wouldn’t have quite known what to do with him if he’d been allowed to manifest his true proclivities.

It must be terrible, de Mortain had murmured, stroking Laurent’s cheek with a knife. To have to shove what you are, and what you think, so deep inside. Don’t get me wrong, pretty thing. You’re better at it than most. But it takes one to know one.

One thing about de Mortain—he paid handsomely, and he always gave Laurent a bauble, some ring or piece of jewelry that he explicitly said should be sold off to someone instead of given to Lord Julien, as the custom dictated. And he gave Laurent information, tidbits about the court that proved invaluable because he was never wrong. Come to think of it, if de Valois’ family were traitors, de Mortain probably knew. And probably turned them in for it, too. He might have been the reason Sabre was still breathing.

De Mortain liked to cause pain. Maybe a good choice for Sabre’s first client, but not time to think about that, now.

“You should have a bath. Come with me.” Laurent went to his private bathing room, which had a deep, sunken marble tub heated by taps, large enough for six people to comfortably swim in. There were heated floor tiles and soft cotton towels, and a smaller pool with cooler water cascading over a stone slab, allowing for a waterfall effect to provide a bit of relief from the heat.

It was absurd and unnecessary for one person, especially when the house itself had its own bathing room, full of floating lights, several waterfalls and benches for relaxation. Laurent knew what it was like to come back from an assignment and want nothing more than a nice, long, hot soak. Especially here, where clients tended to be a bit...more intense than the others.

“I used to be indentured in the House of Gold,” Laurent said, as he led Sabre into the bath, gently guiding him to step in. “One of the courtesans there was a former orphan from the lower city, came from one of those crowded houses full of motherless children. A thieves guild, you might call it, where the kids were sent to some rich merchants’ houses in the winter. He talked about how he was supposed to play it up, shiver and cry, so they’d let him stay the night, and so he could rob them blind in the morning. He did it until he was too old to look innocent, then he sold himself into debt to get off the streets. Someone asked him once if he nicked some silver from the nobles who hired him, but he said no. That it was honest work, and at least he had the choice to do it. There weren’t many, for a starving child with no one to look after him.”

Sabre lowered his head and stared at the water, shoulders drooping. There were freckles there, which wasn’t common—so many courtesans used powder to hide them, thinking it made them look common, as if they saw the sun more than two minutes a day.

“So, in case you’re worried, I think you are no more a traitor for bowing to your king to save your life, than that courtesan was a thief when he stole to keep himself fed and from freezing to death on the streets. I might be a dominant, but I know very well how little that matters in Staria, where true power is granted not by your status or your wealth or your talents, but by your name and the favor of your family. Your family lost their favor, and maybe they were traitors and maybe they weren’t, but it doesn’t change what happened, or that it would have happened anyway, if the king wanted it to. A whim could have sent you to me and your family to the gallows.”

Sabre was gasping again, shaking. “They weren’t…I wasn’t—”

“This is going to get worse before it gets better,” Laurent said, speaking over him, voice ringing with dominance. “I know, because I’ve been there. I’ve spread my legs for men I hated, I’ve buried my face between the thighs of women who I’d just as soon see dead. Do you know how many courtesans pay off their debt, little fox? Hardly any. Especially in the House of Gold, where you are the most expensive whore there is, and so is your debt to the house that offers your services. I was, oh, moderately popular for a while, but my requests went up when I let them see just a little truth in the lie. That’s what you need to do, Sabre. They’ll ask for you first out of curiosity, they’ll do just Lady Amelie did, earlier, pick at you, poke your scars, want to tear at you so that you bleed. Some of them, here? Might put the rope around your neck again just to see what you do, feeling it there on your skin. Fall apart for them, bleed, cry...but never give them all of you. That’s the only way you survive.”

Sabre said, to the water, “I don’t know if I’m glad. That I…that I didn’t die. I wish I would have made myself watch.”

“I think you won’t mean that, in a year. Wash your hair, or I’ll have someone come in and do it for you.” Laurent’s days of playing bath attendant were long over.

Sabre washed his hair, and the rest of him, while Laurent watched. He took a few mental notes as he did so, noticing the lean body, the broad shoulders, the submissiveness that was so pronounced he only glanced at Laurent a time or two while he bathed. He seemed perfectly at ease in the hot water, and did not protest when Laurent told him to go stand beneath the waterfall, where the water was much cooler.

He was a pretty man, wide-eyed and pale like most nobles who didn’t venture much outside in their part of the city that was named for the sun, topped by their palace of gold. His eyes were the color of copper, or would be, if they weren’t dull and empty as glass. He pulled his hair as he washed it, and stood a bit too long beneath the cold water. When he tipped his head beneath the stream of clear water, his hands clasped behind his back, twisting of their own volition. It must have reminded him of the gallows, because he startled like a rabbit caught grazing unawares by a hawk. His gold collar gleamed in the light.

“When you’re done,” Laurent said. “Come kneel here, before me.”

Laurent waited patiently with a towel in hand—the thick kind, heavy woven fabric, kept above the brazier of coals that would make sure they were warm. Sabre was shivering when he knelt, and silent, though he was starting, Laurent imagined, to get lost in his head again.

Laurent took up a comb, braiding his hair after he wrapped the linen towel around Sabre to stop his shivering. He reached down and dragged his fingers over the gold of Sabre’s collar. “I know what he meant this to be, do you?”

“Justice,” Sabre said. “And that I live only at his mercy.”

“Such as it is,” Laurent murmured. “And yes, I’m sure you’re right. Well. If that’s the King’s sigil meant to remind you of the bright light of his eternal, ah, regard...I chose onyx for my house because it’s in direct opposition to the sun and the bright blazing light of our kingdom.” His voice went sardonic as he finished the braid, urged Sabre to his feet and wrapped the towel around him. It did little to ease his shivering, but Laurent knew well enough the cold Sabre felt came from within. “It is supposed to represent not only harmonious relationships between people, as in submissives and dominants...but they also say it symbolizes being the person we are in the dark, in the shadows where the light can’t reach. You’re going to spend a lot of time there.”

When he got Sabre back into the room, he found the cuffs and decided maybe to leave the ropes for the moment. That night was going to be hard enough for Sabre without them. “I’m going to put you under, then cuff you—wrists in front of you, and your ankles, and leash you by both to the foot of my bed. All right?”

Sabre’s eyelids were drooping—he must have been exhausted. He probably needed to eat, but likely sleep was more pressing than anything. Laurent took the towel from him, gently knocking his hands away when Sabre tried to cover himself. “I don’t think it will…work, being under. I…” He shuddered, hands migrating toward his back again, twisting his fingers together.

Laurent wondered if the only time he’d ever gone under, truly under, was when the noose was around his neck and the drumroll sounded, when he thought he was going to die on the gallows. Had it put him under for the first and only time in his life, being dragged through the crowd, demeaned, his clothes torn and his hands bound? The man who made a living out of catering to the strange desires of others filed that away for future consideration.

The man who was once just as vulnerable, just as helpless, submitting with a smile to a graceless noble who didn’t know Laurent was a dominant and didn’t care...that man understood.

Laurent said, “Has anything ever gotten you close?”

“Yes. I was flogged, once. It almost, almost worked.”

“Good. Lay on my bed, and I’ll see to you.” Laurent had to help him do it, of course, lay sideways across the bed with his arms in the proper position, head turned to the side, braid pushed gently over one shoulder so it was out of the way. “The first lesson you learn in the House of Onyx is that no one, no one, comes without asking.”

“I don’t want to come,” Sabre said, in a small, miserable voice. “I want to sleep, and I…don’t want to dream.” His fingers curled into Laurent’s bedding, and he took a deep breath, tense and waiting, naked save his collar.

That might be impossible, but Laurent would do his best.

* * *

The first strikeof the lash was always too light.

Sabre didn’t move when the strips of leather brushed his skin. He held himself still, fingers tense in the soft cotton of Laurent de Rue’s bedsheets, and grit his teeth against the gentle warmth of his shoulders under the flogger, a comfort he didn’t deserve.

He’d experimented some with other young nobles, gamely kneeling for them after fencing bouts or behind the gates of the Lord’s Council, where noble liaisons were overlooked by their peers. He’d been flogged a few times, and spanked by Ginnie Halson, who complained that he wasn’t enough of a brat to be worth the trouble.

“You’re too well-behaved,” she’d told him, with a groan of disgust that made Sabre smile. “Can’t you say no for once in your life?”

Laurent flicked the lash cleverly, striking Sabre hard across the shoulders, and Sabre let out a faint gasp. Not enough. Not yet.

He held still as the strikes sharpened, as the pain turned from mildly pleasant to a burn that stirred Sabre’s cock, pushing up against the sheets. He was only half hard, but the thought of giving in to pleasure with Elise dead in her shift in some unmarked grave was enough to keep him quiet, keep him still.

Most dominants stopped at this point, when the pain would make other submissives cry prettily into the sheets, rutting into the bed while they begged for more, for it to stop, for them to be fucked pliant. Sabre waited.

The next blow was strong enough to push a sound out of him, soft and helpless, and Sabre hissed in a short breath as the ends of the flogger slid down his back, over the curve of his ass. The soft lashes returned, but his overheated skin was sensitive, and his arms strained with the effort of not moving against the bed, arching into the pain.

“Is there a reason you’re so still?” Laurent asked, and Sabre moaned at a bright flare of pain, twisted his hands in the sheets.

“You said I was to lie like this,” Sabre said. “My lord. I wasn’t given an order to move.”

Laurent seemed to take a moment to consider this, and Sabre trembled beneath him, desperate for the lash.

“Next time you need this,” Laurent said, “we’ll try a cane.”

“Yes, my lord,” Sabre said, and bit down on his lower lip as Laurent fell on him, relentless and fast and sharp, pushing out short, broken cries of pleasure until the pain became almost too much. Sabre groaned as it fell over that edge, and his hips moved involuntarily, grinding a small circle into the bed. He stopped, panting into the mattress, and cried out as Laurent ran sharp nails down his back.

“Your body wants the release,” Laurent said, lifting Sabre by the braid, and the pain of it left him dazed, staring up at him with his mouth gone slack and his hands still fisted on the bed beneath him. “But you won’t ask for it.”

Laurent twisted Sabre’s hair in his grip, and Sabre moaned, ragged and broken.

“No, my lord,” he said, and gasped when Laurent slapped him across the face.

Laurent dragged him off the bed by the hair, throwing him onto the rug, and Sabre lay where he fell, staring up at him. He could feel the fog in his mind closing over, the pain rolling through it like lightning in a summer storm, and he watched as Laurent fetched the cuffs, padded leather that fit too comfortably around his wrists and ankles.

“Climb onto the bed,” Laurent said, when he was done leashing the ankle and wrist cuffs together. Sabre struggled to obey, stumbling over his own feet, but he finally made it to the foot of the bed, where he curled up on the cotton sheets and stared down at his hands.

Laurent tied the end of the leash to the footboard. Sabre was still too warm, but the pain in his back tingled every time he shifted, lulling him into the fog.

“Sleep,” Laurent said. “It’s inevitable.”

Sabre thought he might have laughed at that, but then he was drifting, Laurent was no longer standing before him, and Sabre was curled up on his side with the ends of a blanket tucked under his arms. A pale light glowed in the distance, and there were voices, like the murmur of a dinner party at the manor.

“Poor bastard,” someone said.

“And they just let him in? I had to give references. I had to fuck someone just to get them to give out references.”

“It’s not like it’s a privilege to the likes of him,” someone else said. Sabre squinted his eyes open. There was a woman lounging on the floor, dressed in a gauzy, diaphanous nightgown and fake pearls in her hair. She took a bottle from Yves, who had changed into a leather outfit with too many straps and not enough cloth to cover anything, and passed it to a younger woman with short-cropped black hair and nothing but trousers. No one seemed to mind her exposed breasts, or the smudged writing in ink over one of them, a refined script signed with a flourish. She rubbed at it, and her thumb came away blue.

“The king vouched for his innocence,” Laurent said. He was sitting on his desk in the corner, feet propped up on his empty chair. “But he can’t let the son of a traitor walk free after an execution. So he’s been made an example for any other hapless nobles who might follow the de Valois’ example. He’s of the House, now, for better or worse, and no amount of, hah, patriotic zeal you feel regarding traitors will live up to what he’s seen today.”

“I never slept on your bed when I joined up, my lord,” Yves said, flashing a smile. He met Sabre’s gaze, and Sabre looked down.

“Because you gave me a weak lie about a sick brother and a two-legged dog,” Laurent said. The others grinned and pushed at Yves, who lay a hand on his heart.

“I could’ve had one, my lord. You never know, my dear old Jacques—"

“I thought it was Michel,” said the woman in the pearls.

“Oh, fuck off, Simone. I have a sick brother, you know.”

“And a two-legged dog,” said the woman with the bottle. “Definitely not a dear old mother in the country, doing perfectly well for herself while her son runs around calling nobles daddy.”

“If I never have to milk a cow again, I will die happy,” Yves muttered.

“Is he getting the storage room, then?” asked the courtesan Sabre had seen earlier, with the golden hair. “I have things in there.”

“He’ll be staying here for now,” Laurent said. Someone whistled. “Unless one of you wants to make sure he doesn’t strangle himself on his bedsheets.”

“Poor lamb,” said Simone. “He paid me for a night, once, did you know? I remember thinking he looked so like the king. Shaking like a newborn fawn when he was dropped off at my door, didn’t know where to put his eyes.”

“Was he good?” asked Yves.

“He paid me and apologized,” Simone said. “Then he went outside to stand with the horses.”

“Oh, no,” said Yves. “They’ll eat him alive.”

“I’m not certain they haven’t already,” said Simone, and Sabre felt himself starting to drift again, their voices blurring together in a soft unintelligible murmur, as though Sabre were at home, a child falling asleep on the stairs as a dinner party faded into the distance below him, warm and bright and familiar.

He woke at dawn, tied to a stranger’s bed in an unfamiliar house, heart in his throat. Just a day ago, Elise had stormed into his room to announce she was finally a woman, and therefore old enough to borrow Sabre’s horse, thank you. He’d refused to even think about it until she stopped tugging at the bit like a beast, and had stolen her ribbons when she whirled round to report to their mother.

He curled in on himself, thinking of the way she’d shaken when the executioner cut the gown from her back, and jerked when a bare foot kicked him in the side.

“No,” Laurent said, in a voice still thick with sleep. The bed rustled, and Sabre ducked his head as Laurent leaned over him. His silvery violet hair brushed Laurent’s arm as he undid the cuffs one-handed, and he was close enough that Sabre could smell the oils he used on his skin, soft and vaguely sweet.

“Put on a robe and go downstairs,” Laurent ordered. “Eat something. Then bring me something. You’re in training, now, so you might as well be useful.”

“Ah.” Sabre sucked in a sharp breath. His stomach was twisted in knots, caught between anxiety and ravenous hunger. “Yes, my lord.”

“Mm. Leave.” Laurent flapped a hand and sank back into the bed, looking like a reclining nymph in the gallery at the palace.

Sabre climbed out of bed, uneasy on his feet, and headed for a closet at the far end of the room. He found a whole rack of robes, each more elaborate than the last, and dug through them until he found one that looked a little older, the dye faded and the shoulders stretched out. He slipped it on, but it only just covered his waist, leaving his chest exposed.

Well, that seemed to be a trend, there. He slipped out of the door and closed it carefully, then slowly made his way down the stairs.

The House of Onyx was quiet in the early morning, still recovering from the debauchery of the night before, and the only sound came from the occasional clank and clatter of pots far below. Sabre followed it to a small, functional kitchen with strings of dried peppers and baskets of fruit, with the short-haired woman from the night before moving pans around while another one, closer to Elise’s age, sat on the counter with an apple.

The girl looked at Sabre and smiled. She had skin so dark she looked like she’d stepped out of a painting herself, one of the ones about the goddess of the night painting the stars, and her hair was pinned back out of her face, which was still round with baby fat. She swung her bare feet off the counter, and Sabre spotted her shoes just beneath her, pale blue like her dress.

“Oh,” she said, setting the apple down. “Nanette, is this…”

Nanette—who was wearing men’s clothes, a striped shirt rolled to the elbows and black trousers—gave Sabre a once-over. “Yep. Morning, uh...do we call you Sabre, or my lord, or...”

“I’m not a lord,” Sabre said, hovering awkwardly at the kitchen doorway. He could smell the sausages cooking on the griddle, and a plate of scones with jam was already dotted with crumbs.

“Okay. Then hey, kid, I’m Nanette.”

“Rose,” said the girl. “But I’m trying out Violetta, or Tempeste.”

“Just call her Rose,” Nanette said. “She’s an actress, it’s a whole thing.”

“Only an understudy so far,” said Rose, reaching for a scone. She held it out to Sabre, who gingerly took it.

“So. Do you work here?” Sabre searched for a plate to eat on, sighed, and took a bite.

“What, officially? No.” Rose took another scone for herself. “I help with the mending, sometimes. And the laundry. I fetch orders from the tailor. And Laurent lets me do the books on weekends.”

“It’s called nepotism,” Nanette drawled, tipping sausages and mushrooms into a basket. “She’s Laurent’s little urchin.”

“Urchin!” Rose cried, outraged. “No, I’m his put-upon, woefully unappreciated sister.” Sabre raised his brows, and she sighed. “Yes. I know. He’s so hideous, it’s hard to see the resemblance.”

“He adopted her,” Nanette said. “Or she adopted him. It’s hard to keep their stories straight with a thespian thrown in the mix.”

“I’m just saying, it would be far more interesting if I did save his life from a jealous noble,” Rose said, picking a mushroom out of the basket. “Are you hungry, Sabre? I’ve never seen someone inhale a scone before.”

“I’ll bring a mirror, next time,” Nanette said, and they both smiled at each other. “Come on, kid, grab a plate. Haven’t eaten since the, uh, thing, have you?”

“Oh,” Rose said, softly. “I’m sorry. Here, sit down.” She patted the counter next to her, and Sabre’s chest ached. She would have been right at home with Elise’s friends.

“Don’t actually sit on the counter, we aren’t heathens,” Nanette said, grabbing a plate for Sabre. He tipped a few sausages onto his plate, and Rose passed him another scone.

“I said sit,” Rose said. She had none of Elise’s dominance, but Sabre was used to being bossed around by fashionable little sisters, so he climbed up onto the counter next to her. Nanette sighed.

“He’s not being a bear about it, is he?” Rose asked. “He can get kind of growly with the ones in training, at first.”

“It’s a little too early to tell,” Sabre admitted. “All he’s asked me to do is bathe and get him breakfast.”

“Well, that’s easy.” Rose swung her feet back and forth. “Since you were a noble, is it true you all have lessons on how to kneel properly and bow right?”

“Hypothetically, yes, but I never attended one.”

“What a waste.” Rose took a piece of scone off his plate. “I would have. I’ve already decided, I’m going to be a perfect submissive when I’m of age, and I’m going to be an actress, and I’m—"

“Going to have ten children,” Nanette said.

Sabre blinked. “Why ten?”

“Because eight’s an ugly number,” Rose and Nanette said, at the same time. Rose rolled her eyes and dropped to her feet. “Come on, I’ll help you bring breakfast to his royal highness. I’ve been feeling neglected lately, anyways.”

* * *

Ten years ago,Laurent was an apprentice at the House of Gold, walking back from the market with an order for the house chef. He’d seen a woman with a young girl talking to one of the disreputable recruiters for the whorehouses of the lower city, called minnow-catchers since they tended to take in people who were too young to even be considered by the pleasure houses.

They weren’t picky, but apparently, they weren’t interested in whatever the woman was offering. She was getting angry, but the recruiter shook his head and pushed by her, leaving the woman tearing at her hair and staring in fury at her young daughter.

She was four, with big dark eyes and a dirty dress, and Laurent had seen a thousand little kids like her before, since he started venturing into the city. But she was also smiling sweetly up at the woman—her mother, Laurent assumed—and trying to reach up for her in the gesture that all kids used for pick me up and hold me.

“No! You brat, I didn’t want you anyway and—four more years before I can get rid of you?”

Laurent knew that Staria’s social system was fucked, and it was hard especially on women—particularly those who found themselves solely responsible for children and no way to take care of them. It was how so many children ended up like his fellow trainees did, living in little gangs and stealing for someone ruthless enough to take advantage of small children’s desperation to feel safe. He thought that would probably happen to her, this little one. Her mother would probably walk away, too fast for the smiling little girl to keep up, and she’d end up lost and alone on the streets crying for someone to help her.

Except as Laurent watched, the mother did something even worse than turn and leave—she waited for one of the heavy carts bringing in the marble from the quarry to trundle by, and pushed the little girl directly in its path.

Then she turned and ran.

Laurent could stop her, probably. Drag her before the courts, and then she’d end up hanged and her daughter would still be dead. Or he could save the child. So Laurent dropped the order he’d picked up, dashed into the street, and pulled her out of the way before she was run over like trash someone threw away.

She’d been confused, terrified, screaming for her mama—but she’d let Laurent pick her up and carry her, and while his order for the house was already snatched and carried off by opportunistic pickpockets, he’d had enough left to buy her some freshly-baked, warm flatbread with almonds and goat cheese rolled up inside. She’d eaten it like she was starving, then fallen asleep in his arms while he carried her back to the House of Gold.

Adding the order he’d lost to his debt added a couple of months. Adding a young girl who was too young to be a maid or a cook or a laundress, added two years. But he’d paid it without comment, because he remembered what it had been like, being unwanted and alone. And the girl, who took two weeks to speak to him, was sweet. Pretty, with her dark skin and dark eyes, and affectionate once she accepted easily enough that Laurent was her new big brother and responsible for her.

She’d had a different name, but she’d asked him if she could have another one, so he’d told her to go right ahead and choose one. She picked Rose, and a month after he’d brought her with him back to the House, she was telling him all kinds of stories. She’d climbed in the bed with him in his small room and snuggled close. “It’s a good thing you found me, Laurent,” she’d said. “Because the truth is, I’m really a princess. I’m here in secret. I was sent here, from the moon. By. By a turtle.”

“A turtle, huh,” Laurent said, charmed.

“Um-huh. And, I. One time my Mama, the nice one, the other one. She was made out of.” Rose yawned. “Stars. Big ones, all bunched up together.”

“Stars, huh.”

“Uh-huh.” Rose was silent for a minute. “The turtle brought me, and told me to find my brother. That’s you. Because you’re from the moon, too. You can tell who moon people are, because we’re alone, and we have to find each other. And the turtle said, it said when I found you, I could live in a nice, beautiful big room in a castle.”

The room they lived in was the smallest in the whole house, and this little girl thought it was a castle.

The little girl was now fifteen, fancied herself Laurent’s personal assistant, and had yet to learn how to knock.

“Laurie, get up.”

Laurent groaned. “Don’t call me that.” He sat up, smirking and pushing his hair out of his face. “You met our newest house member, did you? Sabre, come in. This is my sister, Rose. I’m sure she had a wonderful explanation about how that worked.”

Sabre didn’t smile, but Laurent wasn’t surprised. He didn’t imagine he would see Sabre smile for a long time, not after yesterday.

“Saved you from an evil noble,” Sabre said, a little dully. “We brought you breakfast.”

“Scones. Get up! How can you still be sleeping, I’ve been up for ages.”

Laurent got out of bed and grabbed his robe, slipping it over his silk pajamas. “Rose, I need to speak with Sabre and it’s not appropriate for you to be here. But if you want to help, you can go and tell Charon to meet me in the Crescent Chamber in an hour. Then, you can go see about a wardrobe for Sabre, here.”

“Oh! Okay, that’s at least not boring. But later, you and me, we’re gonna talk. I have to show you the lines I’ve been running. I’m getting so good, Laurie.” Rose beamed, hugged him and waved shyly at Sabre before she ducked out of the room.

Laurent sat at his dressing table and motioned to Sabre. “Bring that tray over. Did you eat something, like I told you?”

“Yes.” Sabre brought the tray over and placed it on the dressing table. He had that wild-eyed look again, but there was something different about it than yesterday. Something both more present and more horrified.

Laurent took one of the scones. “Kneel. Hands behind your back.” He ate his scone. “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

Sabre went to his knees, and there was no real finesse there, not like Laurent would have done it back when he was serving in the House of Gold. But that wasn’t going to be Sabre’s draw, for the nobles that hired him. They would want him to shake, to tremble. To cry. They’d want him imperfect and falling apart, to see their own security in the way Sabre trembled and shook in their presence.

Maybe I would have done better by him, if I’d left him for quarry carts. None of the other houses had bothered to barter for him, but Laurent knew his was the only house that could take Sabre and help him actually pay off his debt. His clients would request Sabre, and pay handsomely for the privilege, but the challenge would be if Sabre would survive it, mentally, enough to have some kind of a life once the ledger under his name reached zero.

“Rose. She says she’s your sister.”

“Did she tell you how she’s better looking?” Laurent laughed. “She says that, I’m sure. I adopted her, officially, once I left the House of Gold.”

Sabre’s shoulders were shaking. “I—she reminded me of—”

“Don’t say it.” Laurent wiped his fingers on the linen napkin and reached out, tugged Sabre’s hair. “Keep something for yourself, of them. They’re going to take all the rest from you.”

“Who,” Sabre whispered, and oh, this beautiful creature. If only he’d been free to come there, kneel for Laurent and beg so sweetly for the lash, to cry. He was going to break every time for all of them, every single client, and that was the horror of it. Laurent would make thousands of crowns, his house would flourish, and Sabre would one day earn enough to leave this world behind.

A broken shell of a man, made to live his family’s death over and over again, for the cruel pleasures of nobles who might have been eager enough to throw their lot in with his family, if only they hadn’t been caught.

Laurent smoothed Sabre’s hair back, tipped his chin up, caught his breath at the tears spilling crystalline and beautiful over Sabre’s sharp cheekbones. He wondered if that’s what swayed the king, that this noble cried too prettily to be wasted on the hangman’s noose. “The nobles who will pay me for a night with you. They will make you suffer it, over and over, and take their pleasure of you while they do it. They will want you to come, too. Degrade you in the worst way. I won’t lie, Sabre. You’ll make back your debt, but it might drive you mad.”

Sabre’s breath caught, and he made a noise too broken to be a laugh. “I think I. Already...did you ever read that story. About the man they caught for, for something, I don’t remember, but they. They. Hanged him, and. He thought he escaped, ran home, and before he embraced his wife...realized it had all been. Just a fantasy as he fell, the seconds before his—his neck—”

Sabre started to weep.

“I missed that one,” Laurent said, who hadn’t learned to read until he came to the House of Gold. If he hadn’t been beautiful and strange, exotic, he would have gone somewhere worse than the most exalted of the pleasure houses. “It sounds like something they’d write in Katoikos. They do like their melodrama, I’m told.” The top earner in the House of Gold, Absolon Sonnerie, had been fond of Katoikos melodramas. They usually involved an Arkoudai soldier carrying them off and ravishing them to the death, at the end. Literally.

“I feel as if that is me,” Sabre said. “And any moment, the rope will snap. And at least it will be dark enough that I don’t see them, anymore, when I close my eyes.”

“Ah, pretty thing, but you should have been taken from your family long ago, given to someone who could keep you as you deserve. Hurt you, fuck you, break you and put you under, then put you back together again.” Laurent stroked his fingers over Sabre’s mouth. “Would you like me to send you to them? Your family. I will mix the herbs myself, I swear you will feel nothing. You will sleep and it will be over.”

Sabre hauled in a shaking breath, and somehow, even that was still beautiful. “Yes. I want that so badly I ache.”

Something clawed at Laurent’s chest, kicked around inside him, hot and unpleasant. “If that is truly what you desire, I’ll see it done.” He knew how, he’d mixed them before once or twice and heard about it, every so often. There were courtesans in the houses who could not make their debt, and when they fell out of favor with the nobles their houses would release them by selling their debt elsewhere. Faced with the choice between either the harsh labor of the quarry camps, or the brutish whorehouses in the lower cities, they chose the drink that sent them sweetly into death.

“Why? You should have no love for nobles, not after that long serving them.” Sabre blinked up at him, face wet, copper eyes so lovely and bright. “I heard what happened, the exploitation you undergo, here.”

“Sabre, we’re not talking about me.” Laurent’s voice was gentle, but full of dominance. “I’m no monster and you’re no traitor, but I would have you understand what it means, to stay in my house, to serve clients. The kind we have, they want the things that skirt the darker edges of pleasure. And the thing is, I think you might like those things. And I’m not sure that won’t make it worse.”

Sabre turned his face into Laurent’s head, because he was clearly eager for touch. “And you’d let me…leave? Wouldn’t they, wouldn’t you be charged with murder?”

Oh, this poor little fawn, thinking he mattered enough for that. “No,” Laurent said, stroking his face, his jaw, ignoring the slow burn of heat at how Sabre responded to his touch. “But there is something you should consider. The nobles, they talk. Learn to break for them and put yourself together again, and you’ll learn things. Secrets. They hand them out like candy, thinking you harmless. If you want to die and join your family, I’ll help you. If you want to live and find out the truth...I’ll help you do that, too.”

“That is treason,” Sabre said, shaking.

Laurent shrugged. “I may be a noble, but too many of them will never think of me as anything other than a whore. The truth, Sabre, is that I’ve found whores to be far more honorable.” He smiled. If Sabre were a little less traumatized, he’d lean down and kiss him.

“Do you know what happened to my family,” Sabre whispered. “Who framed them.”

Laurent wasn’t entirely sure that they were framed, but he’d prefer Sabre at least try and put some distance between himself and his mother and sister’s execution before choosing to follow them into the dark. “I don’t, sweet thing. But I know some who might, nobles who talk in their sleep, you might say. There is no better way for you to find the truth, if you really want it. But keep in mind, bright eyes. It might not be the truth you want.”

“I know it wasn’t true. I know they weren’t guilty.” Sabre might have been a submissive, but he was the son and heir of a noble line, and for a moment Laurent saw the shades of it there, the mysterious noblesse oblige that gave some the right to rule. “If I could prove it.”

It was unlikely that it would matter, but at least he’d be alive at the end of it. “Earn out your debt and search for your answers. They want you to choose an easy death, and I cannot say I’d blame you if you did. But if you want to try, I’ll do what I can to help you.”

“Why?”

Laurent smiled. “A good question. Maybe one day I’ll tell you. You’ll have to choose to trust me, Sabre. Let me guide you. I’ll teach you how to make it better, how to survive it. If nothing else, it will make them all angry. Spite is a powerful motivator.”

Sabre breathed out, then tilted his chin up. Something sharp flashed in his eyes. Some untempered steel, but it would be enough, Laurent thought, to start with. “Save your herbs. For now, anyway.”

“A wise choice,” Laurent said, then gave in, leaned in, and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. “Now, let’s go. I’ve got someone to introduce you to. He wasn’t here last night, because he’s one of my most popular courtesans. Charon is a dominant, a sadist, and the best, most amazing cuddler I’ve ever met.”

“What,” said Sabre, blinking as he got to his feet. “Did you say—cuddler?”

“You’ll see,” said Laurent, and went to dress. “But first, we’ll have to make sure you apologize profusely for waking him up.”