第3章 Chapter 2

“Is something the matter, Your Highness?”

Jamil flinched and looked at his Master of the Household. “No, Weyrn. Please continue.”

Weyrn shot him an uncertain look and resumed giving his monthly report.

Jamil tried to keep his expression attentive. He didn’t try to be attentive—he knew it was futile—but he couldn’t give his employees a reason to think there was anything amiss about his behavior. Gossip spread among the servants very fast, especially when it came to the royals’ affairs.

It was just… He couldn’t get that man—that incident—out of his mind. Everything about it was so bizarre. Only after returning to his room from the stables had Jamil realized that the persistent headache caused by his torn marriage bond was miraculously absent. Instead, his mind—his entire being—ached with yearning so strong that Jamil shook with it for a long while. Of course, the headache returned a few hours later, and returned with a vengeance, as if punishing him for feeling good. Jamil had hardly needed the extra punishment besides the guilt churning his stomach. How could he feel good with some stranger—some rude, low-bred brute—touching his telepathic point? The mere memory made him cringe, his mortification and self-disgust making it hard to breathe. His husband had been gone for five months. He had no business feeling anything but pain.

And yet, no matter what he told himself, his mind kept going back to that weird, crippling pleasure-need-right feeling that he’d felt for a few sick, blissful moments.

At long last, tired of his own distracted state, Jamil dismissed Weyrn, citing a headache, which was genuine enough.

Once he was alone in his office, Jamil finally gave in and essed the Calluvian database.

Four hours later, Jamil sat back, staring at the holotext in front of him.

As the Crown Prince and second highest-ranking person in the Third Grand Clan, he had the highest clearance for the Calluvian database. He could ess the most obscure, classified information with a singlemand. The research had still been incredibly frustrating.

It had been thousands of years since Calluvians had started practicing childhood telepathic bonds. Any information on any other type of telepathic connection was sparse and frustratingly vague. Several ancient texts alluded to the existence of perfect telepathicpatibility, which allegedly led to two people being inexplicably drawn to each other. That would explain why one look into a total stranger’s eyes might provoke such a strong, strange, sickening reaction.

Except it didn’t make sense.

Every lawful citizen on the pl was bonded. Even widowers like Jamil weren’tpletely bondless: they still had a torn marriage bond, which, theoretically, should prevent Jamil from forming any kind of telepathic connection again. Even if the stranger was a widower himself, they shouldn’t have reacted to each other the way they had: two broken bonds didn’t make a whole one.

There was another possibility, however, and that possibility made Jamil’s blood go cold.

Not all Calluvians were bonded, after all. But the only people who didn’t get bonded were the monks of the High Hronthar—and the rebels. Since it was pretty safe to say that the rude man wasn’t a monk, he could be a rebel. Nothing else made any sense given the way they reacted to each other.

Jamil had to suppress the urge to call for security. He reminded himself that he had no proof. He could hardly tell the Captain of his Guard that a stableman he didn’t even know the name of was a rebel. His Captain would think him mad, and he would be right. All palace employees were thoroughly vetted, their backgrounds checked and double-checked. It was highly unlikely that a rebel would infiltrate the palace.

But it wasn’t impossible.

Pursing his lips, Jamil closed the ancient text and brought up the database on the palace employees.

He paused when he was offered to filter the search.

What did he even know about that man? Jamil could remember very little except for those black, bottomless eyes. The man’s skin was brown, he recalled after a moment, thinking of those dark hands stroking the animal’s quivering side. That was a little strange. The Third Grand Clan was famous for its people’s very fair skin. Although it was possible that the stranger belonged to one of the other eleven grand clans, it was rare that the royal palace employed outsiders. The man also had a slight ent.

Feeling more mystified than ever, Jamil brought up the list of employees working in the royal stables—forty-six individuals—and started scrolling, looking for any men with remotely brown skin.

He frowned when the list ended and he still hadn’t found anyone. “Omer, please get me the security footage of the stables—training enclosure three, I think. Date: the eleventh of Raavenys, a little after midnight.”

It took the palace AI just a few moments to load the relevant security footage. “Do you require anything else, Your Highness?”

Jamil leaned forward, watching the footage of that man trying to tame the zywern. The footage started before Jamil’s appearance and it was shot from a different angle than the one Jamil had watched them from.

He zoomed in on the rider’s face and stopped the footage, eyeing the man and taking in the details he’d missed the other night. Chiseled jaw, straight nose, honey-brown skin, closely cropped black hair, and those black eyes… The top of the stranger’s muscular chest was visible through his half-unbuttoned black shirt, and Jamil pursed his lips at such aplete disregard of the employee dress code.

“Omer, run the facial recognition program,” he said.

“One moment, Your Highness. One result is found.”

An employee profile appeared in front of Jamil.

Jamil frowned as he read the sparse information in it.

Name: Rohan di’Lehr.

Age: Thirty-five standard years.

Origin: Colony Tai’Lehr of the Third Grand Clan.

upation: Certified zywern trainer.

Bondmate: Camirynn Seg’bez

Apparently, that man wasn’t a permanent palace employee, but a zywern trainer contracted for just three months.

Jamil frowned and racked his brain for everything he knew about Tai’Lehr. It was about one hundred and eighty light-years away from Calluvia, a fringe industrial colony that specialized in mining the invaluable deposits of korviu and breeding a rare breed of zywerns. Although the colony was technically part of Jamil’s grand clan, it was independent in all but name. Transgalactic teleportation to Tai’Lehr was impossible because of the unique maic field around the pl caused by its large korviu reserves, and that sector of space was too dangerous to get to on spaceships because of the ongoing war between two neighboring pls.

As a result of these circumstances, the colony had been essentially cut off from Calluvia for centuries, themunication between them sporadic and space travel to the pl long and dangerous. The colony still managed to transport their goods via independent tradingpanies willing to travel into a war zone. It was part of the reason Tai’Lehrian zywerns were so expensive and so sought-after.e to think of it, the magnificent black zywern from the other night must have been from Tai’Lehr. Black zywerns were extremely rare, bred only on a few pls, Tai’Lehr among them.

It still didn’t explain why Rohan di’Lehr had been employed by Jamil’s stable master. Running a thorough background check on a Tai’Lehrian citizen was obviously problematic given the circumstances, so Rohan di’Lehr presented a huge security risk.

“Omer, do we have an up-to-date database on Tai’Lehr’s citizens?” Jamil wasn’t sure, since the Queen was the one who dealt with their clan’s colonies.

“None that are in my memory storage, Your Highness,” the AI replied.

Jamil suppressed a sigh. At times like this, their palace AI was next to useless. He wished Omer were as advanced as the Second Royal House’s AI, ’gorn, who was one of the most powerful artificial intelligences in the galaxy.pared to him, Omer was just a glorified butler.

“Do you want me to ask the Queen, Your Highness?”

“No,” Jamil said. His sudden interest in Tai’Lehr would seem strange and right now he didn’t want his mother’s scrutiny.

Jamil looked at the man’s profile again. Rohan di’Lehr. Rohan. It meant ‘black’ in one of the Calluvian dialects. The simplicity of the name indicated that its owner wasn’t of noble blood. The fact that the man just carried the name of the colony indicated that he was an orphan without any lineage to attach to. It explained why there was no information on his family. As for the fact that Rohan supposedly had a bondmate… it just confused Jamil. A bonded man should have never reacted to him the way Rohan had the other night. It just wasn’t possible.

He was thinking in circles.

Sighing, Jamil pinched the bridge of his nose. Clearly he wasn’t going to figure anything out without asking his stable master why Rohan di’Lehr had been hired and why his employee profile was so iplete. Except such interest from him would look very strange: the Crown Prince didn’t involve himself in hiring servants. Although he didn’t have to explain his actions to his staff, such uncharacteristic behavior would make servants gossip and Jamil would rather avoid that.

He could also confront the man himself.

Jamil’s stomach clenched at the thought. He didn’t want to do it.

Liar.

Jamil bit the inside of his cheek. All right, he might be lying, a little. He did want to see that man. Part of him itched to see him again.

That was the problem.