A Rake Of His Own (Stariel Book 5), page 1
Copyright © 2022 by AJ Lancaster
All rights reserved.
978-0-473-62480-4 (ebook)
978-0-473-62479-8 (paperback)
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design © Jennifer Zemanek/Seedlings Design Studio
Created with Vellum
CONTENTS
Content Advisory
A Frustrating Prologue
1. Three Months Later
2. His Highness Rakken Tempestren
3. Full Moon Rising
4. There’s Been a Murder
5. Official Inquiries
6. Afternoon Activities
7. The Hedgehog Fae
8. Truly Appalling Methods of Transportation
9. The Thistledown Creature
10. Yet More Traipsing Back and Forth
11. One Angsty Fae Prince
12. A Misshapen Woollen Hat of Love
13. Unsolicited Advice
14. Who Cares About Fae Princes Anyway?
15. Even More Terrible Fae Turn Up
16. Mild Kidnapping, for His Own Good
17. The Seductive Powers of Water Lilies
18. Rakken Abandons Subtlety
19. Hints of Tragic Backstory
20. The Awkward Morning After
21. Antagonistic Acquaintances to Lovers
22. Voyeuristic Spell Casting
23. Inconvenient Jealousy
24. To the Goblin Market
25. Is It Even a Goblin Market if No One Gets Abducted?
26. Wait, Another Murder?
27. Botany Nerds Unite
28. Finally, Some Progress
29. This Is Your Rake on Drugs
30. Everyone Gets Sentimental
31. Sausages for Justice
32. Outstanding Decision-Making, Everyone
33. A Review of the Case So Far
34. A Stakeout
35. Even More Bad Things Happen
36. Time for Some Comfort
37. Sappiness All Round
A Note From AJ
Also by AJ Lancaster
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CONTENT ADVISORY
This story contains:
• period-typical homophobia
• references to past sexual assault
• mind-altering drugs
• coercive magic
A FRUSTRATING PROLOGUE
They kissed in the shadows. It felt like the exhalation of a breath held for too long, an inevitability, as his shoulders hit wood panelling behind him. A voice at the back of his mind murmured that perhaps this wasn’t wise, that he’d made terrible mistakes before and didn’t think he could survive making them again. He wasn’t sure whether he even liked this man. This fae.
But tonight, he was past caring. The muted sounds of merrymaking hummed in the distance, but here there was only the thunder of his heart and their harsh breaths comingling. They kissed feverishly, hands moving and bodies hard. He was so tired of being alone, and he didn’t want to think anymore. It had been building for months, this magnetic push-pull between them. Why not finally give in and let the sensation drag him under for a while?
“My room,” he gasped when they broke apart.
Rakken’s eyes were molten, his lips flushed scarlet. He stared at Marius for a long, long moment, and then desire slid from his face, leaving only a cold hardness.
He gave a soft, contemptuous laugh. “No. No, I think not. This was sufficient. Let us not repeat it.”
He pushed Marius away as if burned and stalked out without a backwards glance, leaving Marius open-mouthed and aching, too shocked at the sudden reversal to call after him.
1
THREE MONTHS LATER
Marius had taken only two steps inside the makeshift pub before deciding he was going to strangle his cousin.
“Oh, come on, Em,” Caro had wheedled last week. “It’ll be fun—just a casual get-together with a few friends. You’ve been hiding in that greenhouse for too long; you’ll start growing roots yourself soon!”
Her resigned expression was what had done for him. In it, he’d seen that she took his refusal as a foregone conclusion. He never did anything fun anymore; he’d been moping about for months now for reasons she didn’t know. She was worried about him.
Not that she’d said any of that aloud.
But he’d heard her thinking it, so of course he’d said, yes, actually, he would come along, thank you very much for asking, and damn the probably dire telepathic consequences. Also, he had not been moping; he’d just been keeping busy and certainly not avoiding anything. Or anyone.
Not that he’d said that aloud either.
“You just going to stand there, mate?”
With a start, Marius got out of the doorway, mumbling an apology. The noise of the packed rooms engulfed him. Someone had hired an illusionist to make coloured dancing lights hover above the dance floor, and raucous laughter and conversation mingled with the music from the phonograph.
‘A few friends’, eh, Caro? he thought wryly.
It was certainly a casual get-together, though, in this rabbit warren writhing with people mostly younger than him. He felt himself withering into dust at the grand old age of twenty-nine.
Where was Caro? He began to search the teeming mass for a glimpse of his cousin’s distinctive red curls. Several minutes and no successes later, he washed up against the bar.
A woman perched on a stool next to the bar was dressed like a man, hair cut short, wearing exposed braces over her loose linen shirt. She wasn’t the only woman here dressed so. Students from the sole women’s college in Knoxbridge? They had a certain reputation. As he watched, she laughed uproariously at something the woman next to her was saying. Yearning stabbed through him. How did you live that comfortably in your own skin?
He ordered a drink. The beer was cheap and the publican suspiciously fresh-faced. Not great omens. His head gave a warning twinge, an even worse omen. He ignored it. He was determined to stick it out, at least until he found Caro. That would show her.
Is it really her you’re trying to show, though? his relentless inner voice piped up. Or is it yourself?
I’m showing… someone, he retorted. So there.
Taking his drink, he retreated through the crowd. The building was probably five hundred years old, and the layout suggested it had been built as a family home rather than a public house. Some of the walls between rooms had been knocked out, and the overall effect was an endless series of alcoves. He had to keep ducking to avoid the wooden beams. By the tenth time, he was swearing under his breath. He might be taller than average, but this was ridiculous. Either people five hundred years ago had been substantially shorter, or the building had been originally occupied by dwarves.
Do dwarves exist? he couldn’t help wondering on the heels of that thought. After all, the fae turned out to be real. Could dwarves be just another type of fae? The re-connection of the Faerie and Mortal realms after a three-century separation was still so new that it was hard to know which bits of folklore remained only that.
He stepped out of the way of a merry couple and narrowly avoided banging his head again. Time for a new strategy. Diving for the safety of the nearest free seat, he found himself on a bit of bench along the wall, in a no-man’s land between two other tables.
He felt as out of place as a tussock in a flower bed, although now that he’d reduced the risk of braining himself, he began to warm to the atmosphere. The cheapness of the drinks had put Caro’s hundred or so friends in good spirits. Loud conversations clamoured with opinions and politics. People wore devil-may-care personal fashions, and men and women mixed with complete disregard for convention.
At the table to his left, three girls were arguing about the merits of some poet. From the group on his right, he caught the edge of a more worrying conversation.
“—said she saw them in Meridon, at some palace function. Ambassadors from different fairy courts.”
“Do they really have wings?”
Marius could have told them that fae varied greatly in appearances. Greater fae were shapeshifters besides, so that even those who had wings didn’t have them all the time.
“Some of them did.” The first speaker laughed. “Bunty waxed rather lyrical in her descriptions. ‘Tall, dark, and handsome as sin, with eyes like cut emeralds and wings of beaten bronze.’ I told her she’d been at the gothic novels too long.”
Everything in Marius went quiet and cool. Then he shifted deliberately away along the bench. He didn’t want to think about the fae prince who met that description, who he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of since Hetta’s wedding but who apparently had had time to swan about to soirées or whatever it was Rakken had been doing at the palace.
Not that he cared.
He focused on the crowd, checking faces in case Caro had slipped in. His head gave another twinge. A sensible man ought to leave now, before the worst could happen, but a flicker of rebelliousness curled in his stomach. He fixed his gaze on his drink. Maybe it would help?
Why would a substance known to make people lose control help you keep yours? his inner logician pointed out.
We don’t know that it doesn’t, he returned. Alcohol interfered with coordinati
Right—that logic definitely held up to scrutiny.
You have a nine o’clock tutorial to give tomorrow, remember? his sense of responsibility reminded him.
The restless, uncomfortable parts of himself currently in the majority voted strongly for inebriation.
Someone brushed past him on their way towards the bar, a large fellow with rugby shoulders, and Marius heard his thoughts clear as a clarion bell. Rugby-shoulders was wondering what were the chances of getting his oar in later that night with a large-breasted woman.
Marius put his glass down and strongly considered placing his forehead beside it. If you’re hearing other people’s thoughts, it’s time to leave. But maybe he hadn’t heard anything; maybe it was all his imagination. He lived in a state of interminable uncertainty now. His own head was tangled enough that it was always possible he’d simply projected his own thoughts onto reality.
Besides, he still had to find Caro. He pinched the bridge of his nose, pushing up his spectacles, and imagined a wall around his brain. Wall, wall, wall. If only he knew where the bloody off-switch was for this telepathy business.
“Valstar?” Found him!
Marius found himself being surveyed by a short, vaguely familiar young man with dark eyes, ruddy-brown skin, and rolled-up shirtsleeves displaying the sort of muscular forearms that had no business belonging to an academic. The stranger smiled down at Marius as if he expected to be recognised, and Marius tried hurriedly to place him. A touch too young to be one of his old classmates from before his years of enforced absence from university life; a touch too old to be one of the undergrads he tutored now. Another post-grad from the college? Yes, that was it; he’d seen this fellow in the dining hall of Shakif College on occasion. Now, what was the chap’s name? He didn’t think they’d ever spoken. Had they? The name was on the tip of his tongue. Come on, come on—now would be a great time for telepathy—
“Thomas Bakir,” the man said, correctly divining the problem. He had a trace of a Dumnonic accent, from the southernmost tip of Prydein. “Floor above you. Literature.”
“Botany,” Marius said reflexively.
Bakir cocked his head. “I don’t think we met at the time, but I started off reading law. I knew John Tidwell. You used to be… friends, didn’t you?” The deliberate pause held a world of meaning.
Anxiety pulsed through him. Bakir knew. The knowing came with a spike of pain in his temples. Bakir knew what John had been to him, and more than that, Bakir was… like Marius. And wanted him to know it. Which meant… he didn’t dare speculate.
He’d known there were others like him out there, a casual network of lovers, dark alleys, private rooms, coded phrases and implications. Knoxbridge wasn’t the more conservative North where he’d grown up. If such things weren’t exactly accepted here, a lot more of a blind eye was turned. But Marius had never been part of those networks, unable to find his way in and too anxious to take the risk of being wrong.
What were the chances that he’d stumbled on them now? But this was an unconventional gathering if ever he’d seen one—and just why had Caro invited him to it? As far as Caro knew, Marius was as conventional as they came.
Bakir watched him with dark eyes, still waiting for a response.
“He and I are not friends anymore,” he said shortly, gripping his glass so tightly he had to force his fingers to relax. Of all the sodding luck, running into one of John’s friends—but Bakir was already shaking his head.
“Oh good, that means I can admit I never cared for Tidwell either.” Bakir gestured at the space on the bench next to Marius.
Marius shuffled back out of instinctual politeness. “No?” he asked warily as Bakir sat down.
“Always got the impression I wasn’t useful enough to be worth bothering with.” Bakir gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Scholarship student, you know. No money or connections to speak of.”
“I—” wasn’t useful enough to him either, as it turned out. John had cut things off the moment Marius had failed to inherit his father’s estate, and then, feeling aggrieved at being denied such rewards, he’d tried to blackmail Marius’s family. And then, when that hadn’t worked, he’d tried to ruin the Valstars in other ways.
It had taught him not to trust a pretty face. Rakken had merely been a small remedial lesson after the major course of study, since he was apparently a slow learner. Never again, though.
“So… from law to literature? How did that happen?” he asked.
“A bit of a switch, yes.” Bakir took the change of subject gracefully. “It was the chance to pursue professional obscurity, unreliable employment, and bore people senseless at parties that appealed, naturally. You?”
Marius smiled. “Oh, the same, naturally.”
Bakir returned the expression. He had a pleasant smile, white against dark skin. “Though as to that, times are changing. I’m specialising in folk tales, which my parents had originally despaired of, but now I look like a veritable genius of foresight.”
All Marius’s muscles locked up. “Folk tales,” he repeated. “Fairy stories.” His younger sister Hetta had recently married a fae prince, the first such union since the Iron Law had been revoked. Creatures living under rocks now knew the Valstar name and their association with fae.
His reaction didn’t go unnoticed, but Bakir didn’t stop smiling. “Not the same thing, actually. For those not keen to read an 800-page monograph on the difference, all fairy stories are folk tales, but not all folk tales are fairy stories. Of course, nuances aside, I thought of shamelessly cosying up to you for information, but my professor doesn’t think it’s an admissible form of literary analysis.” Bakir gave a deep, put-upon sigh. “Into each life some rain must fall.”
Marius gave a grudging laugh but didn’t entirely relax. People had tried to use him too many times before for him to treat it as much of a joke.
Bakir eyed him speculatively. “If only there were some other comfort to be had from cosying up to you.”
Marius nearly knocked his glass over. Honestly! he thought with internal exasperation. You’d think a telepath wouldn’t be so easily shocked! Heat rose in his cheeks. Fear spiked in a disorienting counterpoint, freezing his limbs and heart with an ice-cold anxiety on the edge of nausea.
What was wrong with him? What was he afraid of? Wasn’t this what he should want? Bakir was perfectly nice to look at, had enough confidence for both of them, and, and… why did Bakir even want him, anyway? Did he see the same weakness that John had? The same thing that had made Rakken curl away from him too, when it came to it?
He’d taken too long to respond, and he heard Bakir’s frisson of anxiety: I haven’t misjudged, have I?
The instinct to reassure was so ingrained that he acted without thought, resting a hand lightly on Bakir’s knee where it was hidden beneath the table. Bakir smiled again like the sun had come up. Marius snatched his hand back, belatedly realising he hadn’t just soothed Bakir’s anxiety but indicated he welcomed his advances. And now it seemed horribly awkward to clarify matters. How did he get himself into these tangles?
Maybe he did welcome Bakir’s advances? He was sick of his own company, of the spinning anxiety of his brain, of the ache of loneliness sitting lump-like in his stomach. Maybe this was the way to erase the sense-memory of the last person to touch him, which he kept returning to even though he’d rather not think of it.
Memories assaulted him: heat, citrus, sweat, and the brush of feathers… Not helpful, he told himself. Say something normal! “Er, I’ve an interest in folklore myself. With plants. Plants and folklore,” he said hurriedly.
