Chapter Eight.

The slave's eyes widened, her ice blonde hair

marking her as a prisoner from the island of

Brunia. She did not lower her gaze as she was

supposed to, and Cassia felt something like

respect stir in her heart.

She smiled and beckoned for the woman

to follow. "I need your assistance with

something."

The slave nodded, bobbing into a brief curtsy,

and followed Cassia back to her rooms. She

led her to the bathing room and the Brunian's

eyes widened at the soaked sheets resting on

the bottom.

"Can you get these dried and returned to my

bed today?" Cassia asked.

The female all of sudden smirked and tilted

her head towards the bedchamber, moving

her hips suggestively under her simple

shift-dress. Her boldness startled Cassia.

"What's your name?" she asked, strangely

intrigued.

She blinked, the smirk slipping into a frown

before the Brunian hopped down into the pool,

gathering the sheets in her arms.

"Please," Cassia said. "It's not... I do not favor to

get you in trouble. I just...want to know your

name."

She stared at Cassia for a long, long time,

then began speakme in rapid-fire Brunian.

Cassia was once barely able to choose out even one

or two words. She held up her hands, shaking

her head in bewilderment.

The female sighed and became her attention

back to the sheets.

"Your...name?" Cassia tried again uncertainly.

She was once solely rewarded with a blank look.

Cassia sighed-the lady should have been

captured and sold these days if she didn't have

any draw close of the language.

Not that she definitely blamed the girl for not

caring to research her captors' tongue, however slaves

who couldn't recognize orders didn't last

long.

Cassia extended her hand to assist the slave

from the pool. She only hesitated a moment

before permitting the princess to pull her out of

the pool.

The Brunian girl clutched the moist sheets

to her chest, light blue eyes scrutinizing

Cassia before she became and left the rooms

without some other word, head held excessive and

proud. Cassia didn't say whatever as she went.

There was once no point.

She sighed, flopping down into a chair with the aid of the

window, staring throughout the inexperienced garden of the

outer courtyard.

Cassia blinked slowly, watching as the king

and one of her brothers mounted glossy horses, searching organized for a hunt.

She scowled. Her father had in no way allowed

her to hunt. Never allowed her to choose up a

weapon, which was once ridiculous when he knew

that weak point ought to very properly get her killed.

Then again, possibly it's what he had in

mind. She tossed her head angrily.

Something glinted on the flooring of her

bedchamber, catching her eye.

Slowly, she crossed the room and located that

one of Julianus' medals had fallen from his

coat. Picking it up, she stared down at the red

ribbon with its laurel wreath-a unit citation-

and commenced to smile.

Perhaps Lord Julianus ought to offer her more

than a scandalous affair.

Breathing deeply in an attempt to control his

temper, he removed the general's cloak from

his shoulder and held it out in front of him.

The expensive wool was finely woven, dyed a

bloody shade that would hide the severity of

most wounds. The clasps were not silver, but

rather brightly shined steel, treated to resist

the corrosion of rain, sweat and blood.

It was something he had once longed for.

His temper snapped. He threw the cloak

across the room with a roar, watching it come

to rest on the dark stone before the empty

fireplace.

Everything in him wanted to burn it.

A whore. He was no better than a common

whore, bought and paid for.

That cloak had not been earned. He had

just begun his long climb to that rank last

winter, when Arcturus had come into his tent

grinning, holding a letter that declared him a

centurion after the skirmish at Verna.

Calix jerked himself away from the memory

and shed his coat, placing it carefully over the

back of a nearby chair. His fingers brushed

over the newest addition, his heart darkening.

Sound filled his head first, as it often did. The

clatter of steel against steel. The screams of

men and horses. The squelch and suck of the

mud under his boots. The raven's caw of his own hoarse voice as he called out orders.

Grana had not been a single-handed charge.

Fifty good men had gone with him into hell.

Much to his horror, he and four others were

the only ones to emerge again from those

cursed river caves.

But they were common men, so their lives

had meant nothing to the other commanders,

to his father, to the king. Only Arcturus had

understood why he'd broken down crying, on

his knees in the freezing mud and stinging

rain when he'd heard the news. Only Arcturus

had been brave enough to dare approach him

when his sorrow had turned to rage and he'd

begun screaming, cursing the gods and their

cruelty.

Calix quickly shed the rest of his clothes

and went into the bathing room. Sitting on

the low bench running along the edge of the

pool, he let the sound of rushing water hitting

red marble fill the spaces in his mind. The

spaces prone to horrific memory and worse

imaginings.

The burning water lapped at his feet, then his

ankles. Only when the pool was filled nearly

to overflowing did he turn off the faucets.

He leaned his head back against the hard

stone, letting the water soak in-imagining the

roiling darkness always so present within him

seeping from his skin and staining the water.

The princess had helped-in more ways than

she knew.

Two days in the castle with nothing to occupy

him had left him feeling close to madness.

She had been the first engaging thing he'd

seen since arriving in the capital.

Not to dismiss the simple fact that he hadn't

seen a woman in nearly six months, much

less touched one. The swell of her breasts

and the graceful curve of her neck had all but

made his mouth water. Then she'd opened

her mouth to reveal a sharp mind and a clever

tongue.

Beautiful, and soft, she had a core of steel he

wanted badly to test.

All it had taken was a smoldering glance from

beneath those long lashes after the dining

room had cleared out and he'd let her pull him

up to her rooms like a dog on a leash.

She had been so deliciously willing too, even

after he'd told her why he had been happy to

warm her bed. Calix smiled at the memory of

the wicked delight on her face when he'd told

her why he didn't mind being used, and he'd

been just as pleased to realize she wanted

something ridiculously similar to his own

desires.

Disobedience. To be as frustratingly

disobedient as possible.

He let his fingers trail through the water. The

king and his father had left him thoroughly

fucked, it only seemed right that he return the

favor via the king's daughter. His smile fell.

"They will hate me," Calix murmured to no one,

then was ashamed by the tears that stung his

eyes.

They would hate him, and he would be unable

to blame them.

All the work he had put in to the company

his father had chucked him into nearly ten

years ago, gone. The hours spent spilling

blood, sweat and tears with men who had at

first thought him little more than a pampered

bitch, gone.

The men of the Seventh Legion would see him

as one despicable thing.

A fraud. The rich son of a richer father. An

arrogant lord. A boy playing soldier.

A whore-selling away his hard work and

scarred skin for a rank not earned, but

bought.

Calix ducked under the water and screamed

until his throat was raw and he was a breath

away from drowning himself. How dare his

father take those men away from him! How

dare he rip him from the front lines and force

him into this self-important cage of a castle.

He surged back to the surface of the pool,

gasping in a great breath, water pouring down

his face and getting caught in his eyelashes.

It blurred his vision. He shook his head, spraying water droplets, then surged out of

the water, snatching up a towel and drying off.

Action. Movement. He wanted a distraction.

He needed a way to work off the rage roiling

in his blood.

His new sword, the solely excellent thing to come

of this whole disaster, was sitting on a low

table between two cozy chairs in

front of a hearth flanked via leaded-glass

windows. He went into the dressing room off

his bedchamber to discover his matters had been

already neatly stored, his armor placed on a

cross in the far corner.

Calix did not assume that would be necessary,

instead pulling on a pair of worn leather

trousers. He stamped into boots that still

had mud and blood in the creases of the

leather and in the laces. He tucked the ends

of his trousers into the boots and laced them

tightly. Finally, he observed a belt-he was still

attempting to get better from those closing two

months of fighting with only quarter rations.

He would have been glad to go away like that,

but did not prefer to scandalize some poor

serving woman, or provide any of the courtroom ladies

something to giggle and blush over every

time they noticed him. So he dragged a loose

white shirt over his head and snatched up the

sword.

It wanted a desirable breaking in.