Splintered Mirror

by Morgan Hawke

  I stared at him, completely nude and utterly unconcerned by that fact. I should have cared, but my exposure was nothing compared to what I had seen in my parent’s house, and what it meant. Half-mad with the terror beginning to freeze my blood, I grabbed his sleeve. “My family...?”

  Theo looked at me, and his stern expression melted. He closed his eyes and shook his head, solemnly.

  I refused to acknowledge what I saw in his face. “My family? My parents, my brother...?”

  Theo sighed and opened his eyes to look at me. “They’re...gone.”

  Gone? My throat tightened my voice to a whisper. “Wh—where?” Despite what I had seen, I wanted to believe that they had all just run away and hadn’t been found yet.

  Theo heaved another sigh. “The beast...” He shook his head sharply. “They’ve all gone to a better place, Julian.”

  Better place meant... I just stared, my heart beginning to freeze solid in my chest. “A-all of them? My brother too?”

  Theo held my gaze. “I’m sorry, Julian.”

  I didn’t cry. I couldn’t cry. This was much, much too big for tears. Instead, I could feel the ice around my heart closing in to crush it. I suddenly heard the wind howling in my ears. Theo’s face started to go very far away.

  A sharp shake brought me back. “Julian!”

  I blinked up at Theo, completely and utterly numb. “Yes?”

  “Prince Alberic will want you when he awakens.” Theo shoved some of the prince’s old clothes into my arms, then pushed me into my prince’s bathing chamber. The wall candles were lit and the huge marble bath was full and steaming. “Hurry up and bathe.” He left, closing the bath chamber’s door behind him.

  I bathed, and bathed, scrubbing every inch of myself with soap and a cloth until I was red and raw. I had to get the dirt off. I had to get the stains off. I had to get the smell off. When the water had gone too cold to stand it anymore, I drained the tub and scrubbed it too, leaving no trace of my bath behind. Only then did I dress.

  When I came out of the bath chamber, Theo was gone, and so were my ruined clothes.

  I sat on the chair by the window beside my sleeping prince. He was hurt because of me. And my family? I couldn’t accept that they were gone. That everyone I loved... That everyone that loved me... That I was alone. I just...couldn’t.

  I never noticed when I fell asleep, but I suddenly woke with my head pillowed on my prince’s coverlet. I sat up to find my prince staring at me while gripping my hand hard enough to bruise my fingers. That was when I remembered the strange blue-white light that had come from him. I blinked at him in awe. “You saved me.”

  He blinked, then scowled. “Don’t be stupid.”

  I clenched my fingers around his. “You did. That light you made drove the m-monster off.”

  His scowl deepened and he looked away, his cheeks turning pink. “Like I’m going to let a stupid peasant kill my peon?”

  I licked my dry lips. “It was a m-monster.”

  He shook his head hard. “Whatever.” He glanced at me. “Don’t mention it.” He abruptly turned a hard glare on me. “I mean it, that’s an order! Don’t ever mention that I did...that.”

  I nodded sharply. “Okay! I won’t mention it!” However, I wasn’t quite sure if he meant the light he’d made, or the fact that he’d saved my life. I decided not to mention either, just to be safe.

  He looked away briefly, then turned back to me and shouted, “Don’t you ever put yourself in danger like that again! Do you hear me? You don’t get to die until I say you can die! Got it?” He squeezed my hand even harder, glaring at me with narrowed eyes. “And you’re not quitting.”

  I stared at his blushing face, then down at my fingers, gone numb from his grip on my hand. At that moment, I suddenly realized that there really was a human heart within my beautiful but vicious prince, and that someone still alive cared for me, even if it was only a little. That’s when the tears came...in torrents. “Okay, I w-won’t qu-quit.”

  He nodded. “Good.” He rolled his eyes. “And stop crying, idiot.”

  * * * * * *

  I snapped awake in my narrow bed, gasping for breath with tears running down my face. I hadn’t had that dream in years.

  My family had died that night, all of them. Captain Reinhardt wouldn’t tell me exactly what had happened to them, only that yes, the monster had killed them. I could pretty much guess, anyway.

  He did reassure me that they had found the monster that killed my family and destroyed it. He also told me that there had been attacks on several farms that night by the same kind of monster. Half a dozen families had been murdered in addition to mine, but nobody had any idea why.

  I wasn’t allowed to go to my family’s funeral.

  The prince and I were kept practically locked in the castle for two whole months. When Captain Reinhardt finally let us go outside, it was only on the castle grounds and under close guard. That was when the daily weapons and fighting instruction started; guns, knives, swords, hand to hand... Captain Reinhardt showed no mercy. It was like he took it personally.

  I sat up and scrubbed at my cheeks, looking around my room while my breathing went back to normal. The small, rounded door by the fireplace opened to the hallway, but the one on my right side across from the bed opened directly into Alberic’s room. My room had once been a closet for my prince’s clothes. Even so, it was far bigger than the attic space I’d shared with my brother. The small glassed-in arrow-slit window right next to my bed showed signs of gray dawn.

  It was time to begin my day.

  I shoved my way out from under my covers and pulled off my nightshirt to begin the process of binding my breasts, then dressing in male attire. I was my prince’s valet, and I had much to do before he awoke.

  ~ One ~

  While standing in his extravagant white and gold bedchamber, my prince spoke in a voice that was dangerously low, almost a growl. “So, have you taken a lover yet, Julian?”

  Standing toe to toe in the midst of tying my prince’s lace-trimmed neck cloth into a florid bow, I froze. “What?” I steadied my hands to finish. Once upon a time, I had been a full two and a half inches taller. Sadly, that time had long since passed. I risked an upward glance to gauge his expression. What the hell is he going on about?

  The morning sunlight falling from the row of tall dormer windows directly behind him gave his hip-length blond hair a lovely metallic gold sheen, but his emerald green eyes were narrowed under lowered golden brows. A small smile played at the corner of his perfectly sculpted lips.

  I couldn’t quite repress my shiver. My fairy-tale prince was obviously in one of his more dangerously playful moods.

  “A lover.” My prince waved one hand in a lazy circle. “Someone you have sex with. Have you taken one yet?”

  I blew out a sigh and rolled my eyes. “No, of course not!” I was, after all, under my prince’s orders not to reveal my...secret.

  Alberic snorted. “Oh, come on, Julian!” He folded his arms across his rather broad chest. You wouldn’t think a man as slender in build as he was would have such a broad chest, but my prince was a lot more athletic than he liked to let on. He was almost solid whip-cord muscle; a fact he liked to hide under frivolous clothes. The toe of his spit-polished black riding boot tapped. “You’re how old now, and you’re telling me that you’re still a virgin?”

  “I’m nineteen, and yes, I am.” I turned away and walked over to the ornately carved mirrored vanity, wracking my brain for what he could possibly be trying to get at. “Is there something wrong with that?”

  He snorted. “I lost my virginity at sixteen.”

  With my back to him, I curled my lips in disgust. “I know. I was there under the bed where you told me to hide when it happened.” It was the most embarrassing moment of my life too. Who knew that a woman could be so loud?

  I collected his knee-length gold brocaded waistcoat from the back of the chair then turned to face him. “I can’t do that, remember? Not wi
thout revealing the truth about what I am.” I lifted the waistcoat so he could put his arms into the long vest.

  Alberic turned his back to me and shrugged into the offered waistcoat. “Actually, you could, as long as you didn’t get undressed all the way. Say, merely dropping your pants?”

  “That wouldn’t work.” I obligingly straightened his voluminous shirt sleeves, lifted his heavy blond mane from inside the back of his vest, and straightened the black velvet bow that held back his obscenely long golden hair. “Certain things would still be plainly visible.”

  Alberic turned back around to face me, one brow lifted. “One doesn’t need to drop one’s pants that far down for anal sex.” He lifted his gloved hand and casually thumbed an errant strand of my long black hair behind my ear.

  I held his gaze steadily. “I have no interest in...that.”

  “Is that so?” He turned away. “Theo says you’ve gathered quite a bit of interest among the courtiers—the male courtiers, and more than a few of their valets.”

  Interest? I hadn’t thought anyone had noticed me beyond the fact that I was the drab valet to the temperamental heir to the crown. Theo, on the other hand, or rather Magister Alistair Theodoric, court alchemist and royal physician, was the only other living person that knew about my...unusual situation. Could he have said something to someone?

  Doubtful. Highly doubtful. He favored the prince far too much.

  My prince turned back to me with narrowed eyes. “Are you sure your...situation hasn’t been compromised?”

  I reached up to fasten the prince’s gold waistcoat buttons from top to bottom, carefully avoiding his sharp gaze. “I sincerely doubt Theo has said anything to anyone.”

  He leaned close, his breath ghosting across the top of my hair. “I’m sure he hasn’t, which is why I’m asking if you’ve taken a lover.”

  My fingers shook, but I continued with my prince’s buttons. “I already told you, no, I have not taken any lovers.”

  Very casually, Alberic lifted his hands into my line of sight and tugged on his black calfskin gloves, stretching his fingers out very like a cat flexing its claws. “If you want sex, I’d be happy to fuck you, Julian, or should I say, Julianna?”

  I swallowed hard. “No thank you.” He had more than enough paramours already. I had no intention of being yet another notch on his proverbial bedpost.

  “I think you missed my point.” His voice was light and his smile sweet, but his green eyes were narrowed to slits. That was bad. It meant he was planning something, or worse, he’d already set a plan into motion.

  Even as a shiver slithered down my spine, I felt a spark of annoyance. “Then what, exactly is your point?”

  A smirk curved his lips. “You’re a female, and females have needs.”

  I felt the blood leave my face. Yes, I was a female, and yes, I occasionally had...needs, but I also had a hand that I was perfectly happy to use. “I am fully in control of my needs, thank you very much.”

  Alberic moved toward the windows, stopping at the side of his blue-velvet-draped canopied bed. “I’m not so sure about that.” He lifted a discarded neck cloth from the leopard skin draped across the coverlet of his bed and looked over at me. “Your bedroom is only one thin door away from mine, you know.”

  I winced. In other words, he’d heard me dealing with my...needs. Apparently keeping my face in the pillow hadn’t been quite enough. “Are you sure I wasn’t just using the chamber pot?” Which was a painfully embarrassing thought in its own right.

  Alberic snorted. “You never use your chamber pot. You use the pull-chain toilet in my bath, and I have never heard you moan like that in there.”

  My face burning, I looked away.

  Alberic snorted. “Julian, do you honestly think I don’t know what a woman sounds like when she’s being pleasured?”

  I barely contained my flinch. Of course he knew. Despite the fact that most people were utterly terrified of the painfully beautiful and gleefully brutal prince, and with good reason, Alberic was also known for being...creative in bed.

  I lifted his long black dressing gown from the end of his bed, intending to hang it in the huge wardrobe that occupied the entire back wall to give my shaking hands something to do. “What I do in my own bedchamber at night has nothing to do with you.”

  “Oh, but I think it does.”

  “What?” I practically threw his dressing gown into the wardrobe and turned to stare at him. “In what way?” I waved my hand at nothing in particular. “It’s my body! I can do with it what I like!”

  “Whose body?” He twisted the silk neck cloth around both hands, pulling it taut between them, and then he smiled. “Did you forget that I own you?”

  I stiffened. I hadn’t forgotten. There was no way in hell I would ever forget how he’d bought me from my parents. Sheer bravado had me straighten my shoulders and lift my chin. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  He pursed his lips and let the neck cloth slide through his fingers. “It means that it’s time we added a few new games to our...arrangement.”

  “Games?” That was bad. That was really bad. His games were always painful—for me. “What kind of games?”

  Alberic rolled his eyes dramatically. “Don’t be dense. I’m a male; you’re a female. What games do you think I’m referring to?”

  My jaw went slack with horror. “You don’t mean s-s-s...” I couldn’t even say it.

  Alberic’s smile broadened to show his teeth. All things considered, one would expect they’d be serrated. Nope. They were perfectly even and snowy white. “Yes, sex.”

  ~ Two ~

  Of all the nightmare scenarios I thought might come about upon being the prince’s valet, being seen as a bed-partner had not been one of them. I shook my head, thoroughly confused. “But I’m not your type!” The prince’s taste ran toward women who were, and I quote, ‘full in the bosom, narrow in the waist, delicate of demeanor, and pretty in the face.’

  I wasn’t any of those things. “I don’t even look female!” Well, my black, wavy hair was long enough to brush my waist, but that was only because my prince refused to let me cut it.

  Alberic snorted. “So you don’t have breasts...”

  “I do so—!” I slapped both hands over my mouth and turned away from him. God, sometimes I was a real idiot! He did not need to know that I had a full complement of female curves hiding under my tight waistcoat and very full-skirted frock coat. I turned back around and threw out both my hands. “Look, I don’t have any feminine graces at all. I don’t sing, or dance, or wear fancy dresses. I have no clue how to use cosmetics...” I struggled for something more to add. “There is not a damned thing delicate about me at all!”

  Alberic snorted, but there was a smile playing at the corner of his lips. “You do take punishment rather well.”

  “What?” Anger sparked and burned in the back of my skull. “Forget it! No way in hell! I have no intention of being one of your...paramours! Unlike you, I am not a deviant, thank you very much!” I already had more than my share of bondage, domination, and humiliation just catering to his whims on a daily basis.

  “Julian, don’t get above yourself.” Alberic tossed the neck cloth he’d been toying with on the bed, and set his hands on his hips. “My paramours are of noble birth. You are a lowly peon. You don’t deserve my more specialized forms of play. No whips for you.”

  I curled my lip in a sour smile. “Thank you. I think.”

  A spectacular smile graced his lips, and his green eyes practically gleamed. “You are, after all, still a tender virgin.”

  My blood turned to ice water. Oh shit... Damn, maybe I should have claimed at least one lover?

  Alberic raked his fingers through the tail of his long golden mane. “Very well, then...” He lifted a finger. “Our first order of business is contraception.”

  I tilted my head in mystification. “Contra-what?”

  “Contraception. I can’t have you getting pregnant. That woul
d ruin everything.” Alberic strode past me, heading for the door. “Come along, Julian, you have an appointment with Theo.” He opened the bedchamber door and stepped through into the hallway beyond.

  I was rooted to the spot. Pregnant...? He was actually serious about doing...that with me? I looked over at the window. Perhaps I could sneak out and hide in another kingdom?

  Alberic ducked back into the chamber and grabbed the bow of my neck cloth. “Now, Julian.” Hauling me after him by my neck cloth, he towed me through the doorway and down the hall.

  I grabbed onto my prince’s wrist with both hands and dug my boot heels into the carpet, trying to slow him down. “Why this? Why me?”

  Alberic kept walking, dragging me along behind him. “Because I want to. Why else do I ever do anything?”

  He had a point. I tugged harder, not that it did a damned bit of good. Alberic was unnaturally strong. I could have just punched him—I’d actually paid attention to our Oriental hand-to-hand fighting instructor—but I wasn’t sure I wanted to take that chance. As I said before, my prince was creative...even more so when it came to revenge. “But I’m not feminine in any way!”

  Alberic stopped at the end of the hall before the palace elevator. He slammed open the wrought-iron folding gate. “But you are female.”

  “So what?” I threw myself back, using all of my weight in hopes of breaking his grip on the bow of my neck cloth. “Like that’s ever mattered to you before?”

  He grunted, but kept a firm hold on my neck cloth and lifted an elegant brow. “True, I have been remiss. My apologies.” He shoved me bodily into the elevator car.

  I slammed against the back wall, my butt impacting with the iron bars of the back gate. “Ow!” That was going to leave a nice bruise. I hissed in pain and rubbed my butt. “Damn it...”

  My prince rolled the elevator gate closed and grabbed the brass lever on the left wall. “Oh, quit whining.” He shoved the lever up. “I’ve done worse to you.”