Wicked Charming Cruel

by Emmy Chandler

“—but that was true of Clare, for your late brother. I'll bet he hit her too."

  "He would never—”

  "I met your brother, Maari. I know what kind of man he was. I'm a spanker because it turns me on. Because it turns you on. And I have no problem punishing you if you break the rules or disrespect me. But Gareth was a fucking hitter, because he couldn't control his temper. There is nothing I abhor in a grown man more than a lack of self-control."

  Maari didn’t want to think ill of the dead—especially the brother she’d idolized—but Orlann’s claim was not out of line with other things she’d recently learned about Gareth. So she chose not to argue.

  “Okay, but Jaarod is a king. He’s not getting hit or fucked by anyone. He’s doing the fucking.”

  Orlann gave her an amused look, and for a second, she could swear he was actually going to wink at her. He leaned over the nearly empty tray, as if he had a secret to whisper in her ear. “Sweetness, your brother has, on many occasions, choked on my cock, while I whipped his ass raw. So if taking cock and getting paddled makes someone unworthy of respect, then the new King of Stead Delayne is in the very same boat as you.”

  14

  Maari

  “Maari,” Jude called as he threw open the first-floor entrance to her apartment. She stood from her dining room table, where she’d been sipping her morning coffee, and turned just as her brother followed him into the foyer, leaving a small contingent of guards—from both steads—in the hallway. Both of the kings wore dark suits, rather than their military uniforms, since this was not a formal event.

  It was difficult for Maari to imagine that she would ever again have reason to receive two kings in a formal capacity.

  Orlann’s cock in Jaarod’s mouth, she reminded herself as she smoothed out her skirt. My brother’s ass welted from Orlann’s flogger.

  He had nothing to hold over her, just because that fickle bitch, Fate, had made him a king and her a whore. A few months before, she had been engaged to the crown prince of Stead Edgar and this king had been Orlann’s plaything—a fact she still couldn't quite imagine.

  There was no advantage for Orlann in empowering her with that knowledge, that she could discern, yet like Cecily, he hadn't even hesitated. And his gift was even more valuable to her than what she’d learned about Malac’s parents.

  “Come in.” Maari clasped her hands in front of her skirt—another new dress, from Jude—and extended one arm to invite them into her living room. “Please have a seat. May I get you anything to drink?”

  “I would love a coffee, thank you,” Jude said, and Maari turned to nod at Annah, who stood against the back wall of the kitchen, waiting for instructions.

  “Actually, if you don't mind," Jaarod said, still standing in the foyer. “I'd like to visit with my sister alone."

  Jude frowned, but before he could object, Maari gave a little huff. “What would be the point of that?" she asked. “There's no such thing as privacy here. There are cameras everywhere."

  Jude gave her a warning scowl. “I can't imagine that's any different at the palace in Bannon.” Maari suspected he was wrong—no king of Stead Delayne had ever had a concubine to spy on—but she knew better than to argue. “May I ask why?” Jude continued.

  Jaarod’s gaze narrowed on the king of Stead Camden. “Because she's my sister. You invited me here to see her, but you never mentioned that our visits would be supervised."

  “Fine,” Jude said last. “If that's what Maari wants."

  She hesitated for a second, then she nodded. Though she wasn't sure what would be accomplished by privacy that could be observed in real-time over a camera. And she had no doubt that Jude would be watching.

  “Very well then, I will leave you to it."

  “Take her with you," Jaarod said with a glance at the maid.

  Annah headed into the hall without being asked, and Jude followed her with one more questioning glance at Maari. She gave him another nod, and the king took his leave, closing the door behind him.

  “Hi.” Despite her new knowledge about him, Maari found herself strangely nervous addressing her brother after their changes in status. Mostly because the last two times she had spoken to him, he had refused to rescue her. “How are you?" she said at last, because that seemed like a safe way to start.

  “Is there something you want to say to me, Maari?” Jaarod hadn't yet moved out of the foyer, and the distance he was holding between them made her nervous.

  “There are a lot of things I want to say to you, but you've already heard them all. I want to go home.” Even after the surprisingly pleasant evening she’d spent with Orlann the night before, that was true. It would always be true. Finding pleasure in something she had no choice but to endure was different than making a choice for herself.

  “Don't start that again. You made your decision, and you have to abide by it. You know what I'm asking you about."

  “About…?” Maari frowned. Surely not. “About Orlann?” Surely her brother didn’t know what his former lover had disclosed.

  Jaarod’s gaze narrowed on her in suspicion. “He’s the one who told me, yes. But I want to hear it from you.”

  Her frown deepened. “I'm not sure what we're talking about, Jaarod.”

  He rolled his eyes and stalked impatiently into her kitchen, where he began opening cabinets. “Where the hell are the whiskey glasses?”

  “There aren't any. There isn't any whiskey either. I'm not sure what you think my life here is like, but they don't give me unfettered access to alcohol. Or to anything else. Or to anyone.”

  “Perhaps they would, if you weren’t always trying to run away and shirk your duty.”

  “Do you blame me?"

  Jaarod turned to face her from the other side of the narrow kitchen peninsula. He sighed, and just for a moment, he looked like the brother she remembered from childhood. The boy she’d grown up tagging alongside in a bid to be included in her older brothers’ games. “I understand that your life here is difficult. But I wish you had more self-control than that. There are a lot of people counting on you. Lives depending upon you.”

  “I know. I— I'm doing the best I can. Still, Jaarod, there has to be another way. There has to be something Jude wants more than he wants me. Something he will take in my place, and consider justice served for his father. For the war.”

  “Well, if you figure out what that is, let me know.” He rounded the kitchen peninsula, evidently disgusted to have found no whiskey. “Until then, we're counting on you, and if the display I saw in our guest suite yesterday is any indication, you're poised to let us all down."

  As angry as she was at him—as fundamentally unjust as it was that in the fallout from their brother’s execution, Jaarod had become a king and she’d become a concubine—his disappointment stung. “I’m sorry. I thought you had come to—”

  “I know what you thought. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. The gift, Maari. Do you really have a gift?"

  The princess blinked at him. That wasn't the question she was expecting. "Orlann told you that?"

  Jaarod give her defensive shrug, which Maari found quite telling. “I met with him briefly last night, as I would with any former colleague. We've known each other a long time, and at one point, I would've called him friend."

  "But no longer?"

  “Now, I am a king. Nothing is as it used to be.”

  Well, that certainly explained why Orlann had to come to her room in a rage the night before. His infuriating encounter had been with Jaarod.

  “I am obviously quite well aware that things have changed,” she said.

  “Why have I never heard of this gift?" Jaarod demanded, refusing to be pulled off topic. Which was likely as much about his reluctance to discuss his personal life as about interrogating his sister.

  Maari shrugged. “If we're going to talk about this, would you like to have a seat? I've never made coffee, but I can probably muddle through it, or I can pour you some juice or ice water. Th
at's about all I have access to without someone here to unlock the wine fridge.”

  “No, thank you." Jaarod huffed in disgust with a look around the small kitchen. “They really do you treat you like a child."

  “More like a prisoner.”

  “At least your cage is gilded,” he said on his way into the living area, where he sank onto the formal couch.

  “As of last week, anyway.” She followed her brother and took a seat on the opposing sofa, fighting not to flinch at the pain in her backside. “Before that, they kept me in a single room. I hardly left it in more than three months.”

  “But they let you keep your handmaid?"

  Another nod. “Annah has been my saving grace." She watched Jaarod closely for any sign that he remembered Annah. That he had any reason to remember her. But he betrayed no reaction, which relieved Maari and made her wonder if there was a good reason her middle brother had never married.

  No matter. He would have to now. A king's most urgent duty was to produce sons.

  “So, why have I never heard about this family gift?”

  “My guess is because you didn't inherit it.” Maari didn’t bother to conceal her pleasure at his irritation. It was a rare and satisfying day when she possessed information a king did not. “I didn't know about it myself until three months ago.”

  “Why didn't I inherit it? What is it? Why did you only find out about it once you were given to the Camdens?” His scowl deepened. “Start talking, Maari. I don't have all day."

  “Well, I do. And if you really came to see me, I can't imagine what else you would be doing with your time here. Unless you're planning to see Orlann again.”

  “I am not.” Jaarod’s focus narrowed on her, and Mari marveled at how much their relationship had changed. She’d never been as close to her middle brother as she had been to Gareth, still, she hadn’t considered him an adversary, even when he’d refused to rescue her. She’d understood his choice. As a king, he had to put the entire stead above any individual. Including his own sister.

  Yet today's visit felt distinctly...uncomfortable.

  "You didn't inherit the gift because only women can inherit it. And I suspect you never heard about it because the women in our family have had little reason to ever enlighten the men."

  His scowl deepened as his frustration grew, and he leaned forward on the couch, eyeing her from across the coffee table. “So, who told you, if you only found out a few months ago?"

  "Annah."

  "Who?"

  "My handmaid. When our mother lay dying, our sisters and I were too young to be told, so she explained it to her handmaid, and she asked that the information be passed on when it was appropriate. That handmaid passed the responsibility on to her daughter. Annah. And I assume that is why Annah chose to accompany me, when all my other maids refused. So that she could fulfill that promise to her mother, and, by extension, to ours."

  Jaarod did not appear mollified. "What kind of gift would only be useful to the girls? Makeup that reapplies itself? A figure that stays firm into old age? What good did either of those do our mother?"

  "As it turns out, she didn't need the gift. But she understood that someday one of her daughters might." Maari sat straighter, choosing not to dignify his guesses with a response. "The gift is the ability to refuse to conceive. To literally stop my body from ovulating."

  Her brother blinked at her. Then he blinked again, evidently having trouble processing the new information. "You're serious?"

  "Entirely."

  Rage washed over Jaarod’s face. “The council sent you here for one reason. To provide one service. And our dead mother—from beyond the grave—gave you the ability to shirk that very duty?"

  "Yes." She remained stoic in the face of his anger, despite the sudden, uneasy flutter in her pulse.

  "And you chose to use that gift? What the hell were you thinking?"

  Maari’s temper flared. She stood and crossed the room to retrieve her coffee cup from the table, to avoid shouting at her brother. The king. “I was thinking that fate had finally taken mercy on me. That there was still one aspect of my life that I could control. One thing they couldn't take from me. One thing no one could take for me. Not the council. Not you. Not the Camdens. So yes, I used it. I'm still using it." She sipped her lukewarm coffee on the way back to her seat.

  “Well, that fucking figures.” Jaarod threw his arms in the air. “A woman can do one thing a man can't. She has an inherent duty to provide that service, to keep the species populated. And my sister has found a way around that.”

  “To be fair, I can't take credit."

  Her brother exhaled slowly. “This isn't a joke."

  “Of course it isn't. This is what's left of my life. Although sometimes that does feel like a really bad joke.”

  “Gods below, Maari, do not wage such a dangerous war.” The warning in her brother’s words held a thin edge of fear. He looked like he wanted to stand and tower over her, and if not for the cameras, which he seemed suddenly very well aware of, he might have done just that. “Jude will declare you in default if he doesn’t get what he wants from you, and we will all pay for your failure! More than a million lives lost because you feel the need to exert some control! How could you be so selfish?”

  “I’m not—” Guilt washed over her, a resurgence of the very same helpless impulse that had led her to consent to this arrangement in the first place. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. No idea what I’ve given up for our kingdom. A kingdom that doesn’t even claim me anymore.”

  “I had no more choice in that than you did. Do you truly think I don’t sacrifice for Stead Delayne? Don’t you think I’d rather be back in Valemont, living my own life, than stuck in the palace, surrounded by guards, my every movement analyzed and criticized while I pick out a wife I don’t want from a list of women I’ve never even met? Do you think I wanted to give you up? To capitulate to Jude Camden’s demands?”

  “I think…” She took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing pulse. “I think your sacrifice is not the same as mine. Not even close.”

  “And yet it is a sacrifice. Every royal family is expected to forfeit their personal desires and comforts for the good of the kingdom, and—”

  “Don’t lecture me!” She threw one arm out toward the door, to indicate the Camdens living beyond, in the palace proper. “They don’t sacrifice anything.”

  “They won!” Jaarod finally stood, pacing in the narrow space between the sofa and the coffee table. Clearly struggling to keep his voice low. “They fucking won, and to the victor goes—”

  “The spoils. I am aware.” Just as she was aware that in this case, she was the spoil of war.

  “And this war isn’t really over, Maari. It won’t be until you give them a kid or they march across Bannon. You're playing a very dangerous game, gambling with lives you swore to protect.”

  “You’re wasting your breath, Jaarod. You’re not saying anything I haven’t already thought myself, a million times. And the truth is that at this point, it isn't even about some choice I’m making. I have to want to get pregnant, and I don’t know how to make myself want that. I'm sure that's why Jude asked you to come. He probably thought that if he could make me happy, I might want a child.”

  “Wait.” Confusion blinked behind eyes that were a paler shade of brown than Maari’s. “You don’t know how to let yourself get pregnant? Is this a gift, or a curse?”

  She sighed as she sank onto the couch again. “I swear, they’re one and the same.”

  “Fuck. And how did he and Orlann—and presumably Malac—come by this information about our family?”

  “Geneva told Jude.”

  “How did she know?”

  “I told her.” Maari took a deep breath, fighting back tears with the memory. “I had to. I had to reassure her that I wouldn’t be having Jude’s children, because she swore that she’d kill any child I give birth to in its crib.”

  “Maari—”

/>   “She told me I’d have to end my pregnancies. In any way possible. Because if I didn’t, she’d—”

  “Maari.” Jaarod rounded the coffee table to sink onto the couch next to his sister.

  “Take me home. Gods, please, Jaarod, take me home!” She threw her arms around him, crying on his shoulder, her tears soaking through his shirt, despite the fact that unlike her captors, her own brother hadn’t once tried to offer her comfort. Not ever, as far back as she could remember. Yet he was her best hope. Her only hope.

  It would take a king to negotiate with a king.

  Slowly, his arms closed around her. Finally, he seemed to remember that she should be more than a political pawn to him. That the blood pumping through their veins came from the same source.

  “Maari, you know I can't do that. I know this is difficult, but we need you. We're counting on you.”

  “Difficult? This is difficult?” She pulled out of his embrace and stood, pacing angrily across the room. “You have no idea.” The princess turned, leveling a pain-filled gaze at him. “You're asking me to choose between my children and my kingdom. How am I supposed to make that choice? Well, I have made that choice. I’ve chosen not to have children, so they can't be taken from me. Or used against me. Or used against you, or against their fathers, whoever those may be. Which we'll never know.”

  “Maari. Sit down.”

  “No! This is my apartment! Don’t tell me what to do! Not here!”

  “Fine.” Jaarod took another deep breath. “Sit with me. Let’s talk about this rationally,” he continued, resorting to the civil political discourse that had been his bread and butter, before he’d inherited the crown. “I’m sure we can discuss this rationally, like civilized people. Like the brother and sister we were, once.”

  And that was what moved her. The acknowledgment of what they had once been, and the hope that they might be something like that again, some day. Somehow. Cruel though he had been to her, Jaarod was the only family she had left. At least, the only family she would likely ever see again, since Clare could not bring the children, and she would not ask Jared to bring their younger sisters. She didn't want the girls to see her like this. To know the details of her captivity.