Igniting Darkness (Courting Darkness Duology #2) - Robin LaFevers Page 0,182

I were lovers before I ever came to your bed. Were lovers, and then parted, as lovers often do. I did not think I would see him again. When we came upon each other”—in Paris—“in Brittany, we realized we had unfinished business between us.”

He fingers the tapestry that covers the wall. “I thought we meant something to each other.”

“We do. We are friends.”

He grimaces. “Is that what we’ve become over the last months?”

“A friend is nothing to scoff at, Your Majesty. Indeed, our friendship is one of the truest things between us. You have had so very many lovers, and a veritable army of advisors and councilors and courtiers seeking something from you. Influence, favors, table scraps of your power. But I, ever since our first night together, have asked nothing of you, only listened and offered my insight where I thought it could help.”

He turns from the tapestry to stare back out the window.

“I like to think we understand each other better than most. We have seen each other at our most private, unguarded moments. Not of passion, but of temper and melancholy, uncertainty and remorse. And through all of that, we have maintained our connection, our mutual respect.” I pray that it is so, even as I utter the words. I still respect what I know him to be deep down, and will respect him even more when he finally embraces it. “Which is something no mere lover can provide. Surely you can see the truth in that?”

His face holds equal measures of contemplation and sadness. “That is one thing you have always done, Genevieve—tell me the truth. At least such truth as is convenient for you to tell.”

It is hard not to wince. “That is a personal failing, sire, and not something I reserve exclusively for you.”

“And so I will call on the friendship you offer and ask you to tell me the truth once more. Do you know if General Cassel did what Sir Crunard accuses him of?”

“I was not on the battlefield that day, so cannot give you an accounting of what transpired. What I can tell you is that when I first came across Sir Crunard, he was chained in an oubliette and left for dead. Even then, the one thing that shone brightest in his mind was the injustice visited upon his brother. It was his thirst for justice that kept him alive those long, dark months. It was one of the first things he spoke of to me, well before he knew who I was.”

“And how did you come to know him?”

I shrug. “I was bored. Lonely. Grieving for Margot.” I recognize now that I was grieving for her even before she was dead. Mourning the loss of our friendship, mourning that it was never what I thought it to be. “I came upon him—”

“In the oubliette?”

“Yes, and we began to talk.”

“Of what?”

“At first, he thought I was the ghost of his brother. Bringing him food cured him of that notion. The more we talked, the more I began to wonder if he had been unjustly imprisoned, as he asserted. When Count Angoulême was away, I went through his correspondence.”

The king scowls.

“It is what I was trained to do,” I remind him. “And in that correspondence was a note from the regent, ordering Angoulême to make him disappear.”

“You are certain it was the regent?”

“She was not so foolish as to sign it, but I have seen her writing many times and recognized it instantly.”

“But why?”

“Because she did not want you to know she had blackmailed the chancellor of Brittany into betraying the duchess. Because once she had, she did not want you to know that she reneged on her promise to return his only son. Whether that was to protect General Cassel from his crimes or for her own political gain, I do not know.”

The king’s mouth flattens into a hard line. “It is near impossible to recognize the truth among all the lies.”

“Who has lied to you the most in the past, Your Majesty?”

He jerks his head up at that. “You know from your own experience with him that Viscount Rohan’s loyalties are more fleeting than the wind. General Cassel has been accused of acting dishonorably on more than one occasion, by knights who are held in high regard. And your sister lies to you as easily as she breathes.”

He clenches his fist and returns to the window, his eyes staring unseeing at the courtyard below. “But my father trusted her.