Though those days were some of the happiest that Lucas had ever known, they were not without discontent. Occasionally, he had to involve himself in gang business, which he was rgely content to leave in the hands of Kar’gandin and Huragh. That part wasn’t so bad. Though it was a distraction from his b, he was starting to feel like a bit of a legend the way that some of the men treated him when they talked about shipping product around the city.

  It wasn’t hard to do anymore, of course. Lucas thought they could probably stop paying any sort of protection money to the Knights of Brass, but that could wait until after he had a sit down with their leader to let them know the Prince’s new stance on everything, and before he could do that he had to brush up on his swordsmanship, because he knew that there was no way in hell he was getting out of the small courtyard without a dual or two.

  No, the only real thorns in his side were Adin and Skyra. For Skyra, at least he'd at least figured out a pn for the short term. He’d whipped up a foul potion of lesser toxicity, complete with nausea as a side effect that he pnned to dose himself with at the party. He’d make some moves on her, then make himself sick and see what happened. That would certainly get out of whatever getaway she had pnned for them this time, and with any luck, it would make her lose interest in him altogether.

  Adin, though, was a bigger problem, given that he had to see and interact with the man several times a day, and to date, he hadn’t given Lucas a reason to kill him yet. Well, he had. He’d given him plenty, but none that Danaria would accept.

  So, for now, he had to endure the man’s condescension at every dinner, and eventually, he decided that of the two, Arissa was the more personable one, which he would have never thought, considering she’d tried to kill him before. She wasn’t any happier than her husband, but she was more politic about it. Whether that was because she was smarter than Adin or because she didn’t want to get cut off from Blue, he couldn’t say, but eventually, with rumors that she might be pregnant, he had to confront her about it.

  While Lucas definitely didn’t want to let her off the leash, he didn’t want her ending up with a crack baby even more than that, and when he took her aside and expined that to her, she cracked almost immediately. He expected her to bme him or to vow her revenge. Instead, she started sobbing on his shoulder, which was more than a little awkward.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she confessed, “You’re right, this can’t be good for the baby, but… I can’t stop… I can’t go through what Adin did. It was pure hell, do you know that?”

  Lucas nodded. He didn’t know what it was like to quit Blue, but compared to a couple of the other things he’d tried, he could easily imagine.

  “Quitting cold turkey wouldn’t be good for the baby either,” he told her, “but you still need to stop. Maybe we can get you on methadone or something.”

  “Methi-what?” she asked.

  “Forget it,” he sighed. “The point is… we need to fix this.”

  “How?” she said, on the verge of tears again. “I can’t just stop. Not after all this time.”

  “I’ll make you a special batch,” Lucas promised her as he did the math in his head. “As soon as we get back from the ball. It will be purer, so there will be less bad this in there to harm the baby, and then we’ll control the potency to try to ween you off slowly; how's that sound?”

  “Even if you do that, you know I’ll still hate you, right?” she said, her tone moderating to something more typical of her. “Not just for what you’ve done to me or Adin, but for what you’ve done to my father.”

  “Yeah, well, we can have our feud in nine months if you want to fight about this again,” Lucas countered. “This isn’t about you or me. This is about your child.”

  That shut her up, and even before Lucas left the room, he had a pn. He’d make one dose in every five water of life, and the rest he’d make with an empowered batch of Blue that removed every st trace of poison. Then he’d ramp the potency down over the next few months from the eight she was used to to a two or a three and see how it went. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was the best he could come up with on short notice.

  The rest of the day, as he got ready for the ball, he wondered if she’d tell Adin, but given that he didn’t look at Lucas with daggers in his eyes when they were getting into the carriage that evening, he assumed she’d decided not to. That made sense. If Adin found out she was cutting her habit the easy way, he’d probably hate her for that as much as he’d hate Lucas.

  That wasn’t something they talked about much, though. In fact, there was almost no conversation between the two of them at all on the half-hour ride to the pace. It was one of the most awkward moments of Lucas’ life as the two men sat there silently, loathing each other the whole way.

  The only time that seething hatred blossomed into anything like conversation was when Adin gave him a hard time about leaving Danaria at home. “Yeah, well, I don’t see you taking your wife with you either,” Lucas shot back.

  “My wife is pregnant and would rather stay home than squeeze into a corset,” Adin smiled. “That’s a perfectly acceptable excuse in any circle. Yours, though, I wonder what it could be? Maybe you’re just embarrassed to be seen with your cousin.”

  “The only one I’m embarrassed to be seen with is you,” Lucas countered. “Not everything that’s going on has been made apparent to you and your scheming friends. I’m sure if you ask the Prince, he will expin that he’s asked me not to make a big deal out of our announcement until the time is right.”

  Truthfully, Lucas felt bad he couldn’t take Danaria with him. He wanted nothing more than to show her off. For now, at least, that was impossible. When he’d expined to her that the Prince still had him wrapped up in things that he’d rather she not be a part of, she’d been very understanding. At least she had after he asked her to help him practice his dancing. The two of them had spent many hours just dancing in her drawing room over the st week while she hummed softly in his ear and reminded him of everything he’d forgotten.

  Well, she’d reminded him of more than that, too, but this world wasn’t much for pre-marital sex, at least among the aristocracy. So, for now, that would have to wait.

  Still, if the night went well, then he hoped that in a couple of months, he could bring her to court. If they were married by then, well a little drinking and dancing could lead to almost anything else.

  He’d probably need to go by some other name than Parin unless he wanted to start weird rumors, but then Royalty was known for marrying their own retions, so that might just be a hang-up in his own head.

  By the time they arrived at the pce, Lucas had already braced himself for another miserable night. At least this time, though, no one’s clothes are going to be coming off, he reassured himself as he patted the row of small vials he had in his vest pocket. He’d brought not just his vomit potion, as he liked to think of it, but an antidote for it once the need for theatrics was over with, and also a couple of odds and ends just in case something unexpected happened.

  Really, he wanted to bring more. However, aside from the case of ultra-strong Blue that he’d brought for his real patron in the carriage, that was all he could manage without making his suit bulge in an obvious way.

  No one could bme him for that. Guards didn’t do pat downs here, and he’d had more than one attempt on his life, so precautions only made sense.

  Still, as he and Adin were announced when they entered the grand ballroom, the rgest threats were a swarm of swirling skirts and a barrage of conversation. Adin immediately went to seek out the Prince to resolve his own beef. Lucas considered joining him just for the ughs but decided he’d better join Lady Skyra instead. As much as he didn’t want to spend time with her, he had to, though, so he could act like he enjoyed her company until it was time to bow out as ungracefully as possible.

  It wasn’t hard to find her. She had a knot of hangers-on that was nearly as rge as the Princes. In fact the way the two crowds were on opposite sides of the dance floor, the entire thing looked a bit like two pnets made of suits and gowns orbiting the white wood of the rge circur dance floor that dominated the room.

  Skyra’s face lit up as soon as she saw him, though she took her time working her way through the throng to greet him. To make matters worse, almost as soon as she deigned to grace him with her presence, it was to pull him onto the dance floor.

  “My dear, dear Mister Blue,” she whispered as she grabbed him by the elbow. “Even if the Prince hadn’t told me about your discovery, I swear I’d know just by looking at you. You seem like a new man, and…” she nuzzled briefly against his neck, “I can practically smell the divinity on you.”

  Lucas’s first impulse was to fight it, but as soon as she started commenting about divinity, he decided that distracting her was almost certainly the best policy. He suppressed that, though, and forced himself to smile wider as he led her out himself. “My dy, I thought you’d never ask,” he whispered, trying to be charming enough to keep her mind from going down any strange paths as they found an empty space near the center of the floor and began to step and whirl in time with the other dancers.

  The night started out like that, and truthfully, for the next few hours, it didn’t deviate much. Every few songs, they would stop to drink and chat, but no matter how hard Lucas tried, he wasn’t able to turn the conversation much away from him. Had he tried the test batch? Did he know how truly divine it was? Was it meant to make her aroused, or was that just a pleasant side effect from the earlier versions?

  Lucas deflected as well as he could, but eventually, when they were alone on one of the balconies, for ck of any other option, he finally asked. “So, the elves keep a pretty tight lid on all of this stuff. How is it you ever got to try Lwynthenll in the first pce?”

  “Oh, now that is quite a story,” she said with a distant look that made her look like she was reminiscing. “It was a night of blood and fire when I burned down Quar’valn… And when it was done, and I strolled into that burning temple, it was just… right there on the altar, and I knew I had to try it.”

  Skyra went on then, offering lurid, bloodthirsty descriptions of those piles of burning bodies as the tree city colpsed and fell to ruin around her. That was when Lucas finally figured out why he was so profoundly unattracted to her despite her banging body. It wasn’t that she was a little past her prime or even that she was a dragon in disguise. It was that she was dead inside. All of her joys and piques floated there, skimming the surface of a bottomless void where her heart should have been.

  It repulsed him on a primal level, but he didn’t let any of that show. Instead, he just smiled and nodded as she expined to him how the stuff was meant to allow the priests to commune with their Goddess. Lucas knew that wasn’t quite right, of course, but it wasn’t a point he ever pnned on criticizing. Instead, he just counted down the hours until he could pop his potion and become as sick as a dog.

  Hello everyone, this week I have updated my Patreon output, increasing the tiers from 10 or 20 chapters ahead to 15 or 30 chapters ahead. So if you need a pile of chapters, or just want to support me and my quest to be a writer, enjoy! I will make a pretty banner soon. Uploading that many chapters takes time!