Evil Twin by Kati Wilde

6

Bane

He’d never thoughtto be thankful that his brother never authorized repairs to Gocea’s roads. But there was no jostling and rocking now. Only the gentle swell of the Illwind Sea.

Near sunset, they’d boarded the ship that would take them to Crolum’s southern shore in half the time that they could travel the same distance by horse—and they wouldn’t need to journey over the mountain pass that his army had used to reach Phaira’s southern border a year past.

And he was more exhausted than he’d ever been. Perhaps an effect of the poison. Perhaps the inevitable exhaustion following so many orgasms. Or perhaps the fatigue of a body forced to hold still, even as everything inside fought to move.

For the last, Echo had suffered worse than him. No surprise that she was dead asleep in his arms—and had been since even before the poison wore off.

At the end, his cock hadn’t even been able to harden again. But his teeth and fangs had remained until he regained control of his body.

Because she’d been right when guessing the reason they’d appeared. Almost right. It had been a reaction to being helpless. But not because he needed to defend himself.

He’d been helpless to protect her. So his blood was set ablaze. Nothing could have stopped the change from overtaking him. And if some danger to Echo had appeared, Bane wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that the venom could burn even through the poison freezing him in place.

Yet she believed that he loved her sister?

He couldn’t understand why she would. Unless she didn’t realize that he’d come to Tamas’s bedchamber with exactly the same purpose as she had. She must think that he’d gone there for Sapphira herself.

Even though she knew Sapphira. Even though her sister was vapid and nice.

Echo thought that was the kind of woman Bane would fall in love with?

It was insulting. And ridiculous. So ridiculous that Bane might have questioned just how clever his bride really was…if he hadn’t witnessed how her parents had spoken to her.

They’d always taken Sapphira’s side. They’d preferred Sapphira over Echo in every respect. And they’d treated her as a secret, dirty stain upon their royal house.

So of course she assumed that Bane would love Sapphira. Not her.

He knew that assumption too well. He’d had that same reaction himself after seeing all the way his father had preferred Tamas.

And even when he’d begun leading his warriors, hadn’t he distrusted and disbelieved in their loyalty? It had taken years for him to accept they were truly loyal to him.

So it might take years for Echo to accept that Bane wanted her.

It seemed an eternity. But it would be time well spent. He only needed patience…which, truthfully, he’d never had much of. And ever since being infected with the venom, he had even less patience than he’d been born with.

But she was worth the effort. She was worth everything.

The full moon was high when she begin to stir in the cradle of his arms. A low groan hummed against his neck.

Not a groan of pleasure this time.

“Sore?” he asked quietly.

Her answer was a pained laugh. Then another groan as she attempted to stretch stiffened limbs.

“Come.” Though he gave her little choice, carrying her as he was. Bane liked this method of courting very much. It always kept her close. “I know what you need.”

The same thing he needed. Though it was awkward with their hands still bound—him standing outside the privy with his arm stretched through the gap in the door that she’d left open. His was easier. She waited just behind him as pissed over the ship’s side. Together they washed their hands.

Then she paid special attention to scrubbing her lips.

She threw him a glare when he laughed. “None of my schemes have worked like they should.”

Bane had no complaints. “I’ve enjoyed the outcome of them all.”

He would have spoken to her then about Sapphira, but the growl of her stomach made a priority of food. Her hesitant steps told him how stiff and sore she still was, so he overrode her objections and carried her farther along the deck, where his warriors had gathered. Jorin saw them approaching, and the feast from their basket was laid out on a crate. Two small barrels served as seats.

Echo ate as hungrily and as silently as he did, mouths too full for talking. The low voices of the warriors in conversation were broken here and there by laughter, and by the creak and splash of the ship rolling through the water. Overhead, the summer sky was brilliant and clear.

His bride heaved a huge sigh when she eventually pushed away her plate, then lifted a mug of ale. She sipped from it, her dark eyes regarding the warriors one by one.

Quietly she asked, “Are many of your warriors also…?”

“Our warriors.” And Bane knew what she asked—whether they had also been infected with the venom—but he had no name for it, either. Infected was not truly right. That seemed like a sickness. But it wasn’t. “And all of these are.”

“Undying?”

“No,” he said grimly. “We can be killed.”

As too many of his warriors had been while battling the scourge. Even those warriors who burned with venom.

And he was aware of the others falling silent—listening to their king and queen. Not just claws and fangs and strength, but better hearing, too.

“How does it happen? Were you bitten?”

He shook his head. “A bite will turn anyone into one of the undying beasts. We were clawed—then the injury was slathered in a paste of ragwort.”

The same paste that they’d begun coating their weapons in and that had turned the undying scourge into a dead one. Blades that had barely touched the undead beasts killed them easily after being covered in ragwort.

On their wounds, the paste seemed to draw out the most poisonous and horrifying part of the venom—the part that transformed a human into a monstrous, ravenous beast.

With a satisfied little sigh, Echo smiled. “So it was the ragwort.”

“It was.” Jorin joined in. “The weed that we try to eradicate in our grazing fields saved us all. Now there’s not a farmer along that border who doesn’t have the paste in case a beast comes crawling out of the forest.”

“But don’t they travel in packs?”

One big pack, at the end. But not always. Bane told her, “Some might have been injured or left behind the primary scourge. A person missing a leg would become a beast missing a leg, and that beast couldn’t have kept up with the others.”

Her brow creased. “Do you think there are very many left?”

“Not too many, I hope. But we all carry ragwort paste, just in case.”

“And there might be a few left in the Crolum’s city,” Jorin said. “We never got a chance to see if it was cleared out.”

“It was.” And apparently Echo got a second wind. She pulled her plate closer again, began picking at a piece of cake. “The meat was all gone. So they went, too.”

“The meat’s returning,” Bane pointed out, even as his brain started turning over what else she’d said.

She smiled slightly. “So we are.”

Bane stared at her. As was everyone else. Slowly she seemed to realize it, raising her gaze from her plate and meeting his.

Her brow arched.

So he’d just come out and ask. “Were you there—in the city?”

She shrugged. “Yes.”

“When?”

“When I heard you were headed to our southern border.” She poked at her cake and licked icing from her thumb. “The scourge was undying. So obviously there was some unnatural cause behind it. A spell, a curse. And we knew the terror had begun in the city. So I went to see if I could discover anything.”

In a low voice, a warrior said, “There was talk of a dark sorcerer in Crolum before the scourge began.”

“There is always a dark sorcerer when something bad happens.” Echo rolled her eyes. “But most of the time, it is a spell that has scaled wrong.”

Because with magic, there was always a scaling—an effect that mirrored the original intent, but whether the mirrored effect was greater or smaller was impossible to predict. Usually, however, such spells and their effects were contained by magical wards.

Reaching for her ale, she took a sip before continuing. “It seemed clear to me that if a spell had scaled and created something undying, then the original spell was likely to save someone’s life or to prevent them from dying. So I went to the healer’s square in the city—and the last entry in her book was her attempt to heal a boy who’d been mauled by wolves.”

So the healer had tried to save him. But either the wards had failed or the spell had affected the boy differently than intended…and unleashed the scourge.

“She’d recorded the ingredients used in her healing potion. I didn’t know which one—if any—would help against the undying beasts. By that time, the city was dead and there were none of the beasts to test it on. So I sent word to you, instead.”

By messenger crow. Until this moment, Bane hadn’t known where the message came from. Back then, he’d thought it was a joke. But he’d been so desperate, he’d tested each one.

The realization gripped Bane by the throat. So it was Jorin who said hoarsely, “We owe our lives to you.”

Not just them. “Everyone in the three kingdoms owes you.”

“If you wish to think so, please do.” She offered him a wry smile. “But it was not my sword that stopped the scourge. I bear no scars as you all do.”

She did. Because her parents had repaid what they owed by threatening to lock her away. Her scars just weren’t as visible as his. Neither were her claws and fangs and strength.

But she had them, just the same.

* * *

“Did you go alone?”he asked her later, when they were in their cabin and she was wrapped up in his arms with her back against his chest. His cock was half hard, but no thought of fucking did he have now. Not after the carriage. She was still too sore. Better that he wait for a week or more.

And she still believed he wanted Sapphira.

“Where?” she answered sleepily.

“Crolum. Before. Did you come alone?”

“I did.”

“To a kingdom plagued by undying beasts.” His voice was hard and rough.

“They’d already killed everyone. There was nothing left to eat, so they’d left, too. There was no threat to me.”

“Unless the spell that changed the first one in that healer’s square also changed you.”

“It obviously did not. Stop criticizing me.”

“I’m not criticizing.” Though the roughness of his voice likely sounded as if he was. “I’m admiring you. Despite the danger, you went.”

She stiffened slightly, as if deciding whether to believe him. Finally she said, “I’m evil and cursed. When you’re the worst of all things, you do not fear much else.”

“Liar.”

Her glare burned through the dark.

He smiled against her hair. “If you had kissed me at our wedding and left me there, would you have still gone to Crolum as queen?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Probably. I don’t like people.”

“You seem to get along with my warriors.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I get along with people who aren’t related to me—or who aren’t assigned to guard me and keep me locked in chambers that I’d rather not be locked in. Also if they feel they owe me their life, I’m vain enough to enjoy being a hero.”

“I thought you didn’t care what people thought of you.”

“I don’t.” She paused. “But apparently, I’m not opposed to people pledging their lives to me.”

“As I have. I pledge everything to you.”

“Don’t ask the same of me.”

He knew why. “Because you fear loving anyone. Or trusting anyone.”

“It’s not because I’m afraid. It’s because I’m not a fool.”

“Are you not?”

“No.”

“I am.”

She said nothing to that, but moved restlessly before scratching her cheek with their bound hands. He would be sorry when they removed the ribbon at dawn.

Finally she broke the silence again. “What is it like, being the good twin?”

“The good twin?”

“Strong and admired.”

“You think I am the good twin?”

“You clearly are.”

“I’m not.” He began laughing. “I’m violent and vindictive and greedy. On her deathbed, my mother begged me not to kill my brother.”

“On her deathbed? But she died twenty-five years past.”

“She did.”

“You would have been…five? She made you vow not to kill him at five years of age?”

“Because she knew I was the bad, violent twin.”

Echo scoffed. “Because she knew Tamas would eventually deserve it and her tender mother’s heart wanted to spare him.”

He shook his head. “No. I was always the dangerous one.”

“You are everything that is kind and good and brave.”

His laughter shook the whole bed now. “No,” he managed to choke out. “You were told that you were the evil twin. I was the expendable twin.”

“Expendable?” Outrage raised her voice. “Your brother is the useless one.”

“I’m glad you think so. But I will tell you a secret.” It was not a secret he cared to keep, anyway. “My plan was the same as yours. I wanted a kingdom, but since I’d vowed not to kill my brother, I couldn’t take Gocea. So I planned to take Phaira.”

“By all rights, it should have been offered to you instead of your brother.”

“And I would have stripped your sister and parents of all their power.”

He felt her body jolt in surprise. “But you love her.”

“Love her? She’s as useless as my brother. I spoke all of five words to her at one dinner—and even as I planned to claim her, I wondered if my cock would be too limp to fuck her. Then I saw you in the gallery outside my brother’s quarters. I didn’t know it was you, but I knew something was different. I thought the woman at dinner had worn a mask, because in that bed, I saw you were cunning and glorious and driven. We are much the same, you know.”

“Oh.”

“And I am fool. For you.”

“But…if you are like me, I cannot trust you at all.”

“Not now. But I can be patient.” He kissed her hair and gathered her close again. “And whether you trust me or not, my wife…you are not alone anymore.”