Sometimes being her queen’s strength was Mina’s own vile challenge.

Seven

“You’re late.”

Leo paused in the door of his father’s study. “Father,” he said, stripping off his coat and handing it to one of the hovering maids. “I’ve missed you too. The trip was successful”—only one assassination attempt by a Russian duke—“and the weather remained uneventful for our voyage, thanks for asking.”

The Duke of Caine turned away from the fireplace, light flickering over his pale skin before he dragged the hood of his cape up, hiding his face. “Do you think yourself amusing?”

“Frequently.”

The drapes were drawn, the room a smoky, heated den that Leo suspected the duke rarely ventured away from. A woman sat in the corner of the room, her fingers stilling on her needlework.

“Madeline,” Leo murmured, crossing to press his lips against her cheek.

She was his father’s oldest thrall, faint lines now forming around her dark eyes. A beautiful woman still, and one of the few who suffered Caine’s temper with any sense of aplomb. “Leo,” she replied, patting his cheek. “Look at you. You look like some dashing corsair.”

He raked a hand over his hair, where it touched his collar. “So I’ve been told.”

“Can you not do that elsewhere?” Caine snapped, gesturing to her.

Madeline’s smile faded, her dark gaze locking on the duke. “Perhaps I should leave you both to your chess game,” she demurred, though the faint lift of her brow indicated what she thought of Caine’s rudeness. Gathering her things, she smiled at Leo. “You know where you may find me.”

He’d much rather she’d stay. Her company was preferable to Caine’s. “Later,” he agreed.

His father owned six thralls, a sign of prosperity and influence, though, perhaps due to his illness, he’d begun to retire three of them. They were rarely kept in the manor house anymore, Caine having set them up in style in various houses around the city.

Leo himself supported two of his father’s thralls. They’d been a generous gift for his eighteenth birthday, though now he wondered if that hadn’t been his father’s attempt to hide the onset of his mysterious illness. Caine had become more reclusive not long after.

The only thrall that remained in the house was Madeline, though Leo wasn’t certain whose idea that had been.

He knew for a fact that Madeline refused Caine her flesh rights. She might have signed a thrall contract giving him unlimited access to her blood, but tradition dictated that a woman’s body was hers to give as she desired. A gift that was seldom spoken of in society.

That left him somewhat uncertain why she tolerated the old bastard.

“Send for me when you’re done,” she told Caine, drawing his chair back for him in front of their chess game. “You’ve not fed today.”

“I’ll drink my blood from a bottle,” the duke snapped.

“As you wish,” she replied, making her way toward the door and closing it behind her with the faintest slam.

Leo stared at Caine for a long time. His father was many things, but seldom rude. “If I were Madeline, I would have slapped you for that. You owe her an apology.”

“She’s not my wife.” The duke was peevish, settling in his chair and drawing his cloak around him as if he still felt the cold, despite the raging inferno that was the fire. “She needs to remember that.”

“Perhaps you need to remember your manners.” Leo crossed toward the chessboard. He took little pleasure in these visits; they were simply a duty to be performed. “Or are you forgetting them in your dotage?”

Caine’s jaw tightened.

“Your illness?” Leo inquired. “Does it make you peevish?”

“I am not ill.”

Leo sank down opposite him. A few years ago he might have still cared. Caine had burned away most of the empathy Leo had felt for him as a boy. Trying to please the old bastard had been an impossible task but one which Leo had set his mind to in every instance. But setting up Blade’s duel with Vickers had caused a rift between them that seemed impossibly wide. Leo had…stopped caring. Or no, not completely, though he often wished he had. Perhaps he’d finally come to the realization that he would never truly please the man he called a father.

They had nothing in common in face or appearance. Leo took after his mother—and the man who’d sired him. The dark eyes he’d been gifted with were remarkably similar to Honoria’s. Sometimes he wondered if Caine thought of that every time he looked at his wife’s bastard son. The thought sent a vicious wave of emotion through Leo. Another way to twist the knife in Caine’s chest.

They stared at each other across the chessboard.

“Don’t the Russians have valets? Or scissors?”

“I’ve grown fond of my hair longer.” At least he had now.

“Mmm.” Caine leaned forward over the board, studying the pieces that were already in play. “Talk to me about the Russians.”

So Leo did, falling back into the game they’d left off a month ago. He cut out all of the details Madeline might have enjoyed—the icy slash of wind against his cheeks as he peered over the prow of the dirigible, watching the Baltic pass by far below; the wonder of a foreign court; and the fiery burn of blood-laced vodka down his throat. He’d grown far too fond of that, sharing bottles of it with Captain Alexi as they laughed about the dangers of hunting boar in the Russian autumn and the far more dangerous pursuit of hunting Russian women.

Instead he named alliances, power plays, the puppet masters of the Russian Court, and discussed the treaty that the prince consort was intent on forging with the blood-thirsty Russians.

Caine was silent for a long time after he finished, staring at the chessboard Leo was halfheartedly negotiating. “You’re not trying.”

I haven’t been trying for years. Still, his jaw twitched at the rebuke. Too many years of trying to please the man were ingrained in him.

Caine slammed his rook into place and glared at Leo over the board. “Check.”

“So it is.”

His bland acceptance seemed to enrage the duke. “Perhaps your attention’s elsewhere, hmm? On something it shouldn’t be.”

He knew exactly what his father was suggesting. “Do tell.”