A Beast's Tale

Chapter 10

Clavis started his apology the moment I opened my office door.

"I've already heard it from everybody else," he said as I strode toward him. "It was inappropriate; I was out of line; and it won't happen again. But in my defense, I—"

I grabbed his cravat and yanked his head down to waist level, cutting his words off with a choking sound. Nokto chuckled as I dragged Clavis to a small desk in the corner, then released his cravat and shoved him into the chair. He loosened it and gasped for breath while I crossed the room to my desk, laden with all the usual paperwork each day accumulated. I picked it up and carried it back to him, dropping it in front of him with a solid thud.

"I get the feeling you made King Highness mad," Nokto commented from where he stood, leaning against a bookcase with arms crossed over his chest and a lazy smirk on his lips. "If you want to punish Jin, he's next door, cleaning Leon's office from top to bottom under Evie's strict supervision."

"The party," I said. I'd deal with Jin later.

"Ah yes, the party." Nokto shifted his weight to his right foot and crossed his left foot over his ankle. "The guards Leon caught playing at banditry cooperated nicely, and while the maids were surprisingly unhelpful, the duke's visiting niece doesn't like her uncle and was all too happy to tell me why. Two sets of books, tax evasion, black market dealing—and it's all carefully documented and locked in a safe. Well, it was all locked in a safe. I slipped two of the older books out so he wouldn't notice anything was amiss until you had a chance to look at them. We have plenty of evidence to arrest him now."

I had already picked up one nondescript, leather-bound volume from my desk and was flipping through it as Nokto spoke. It was indeed all there.

"What is this 'special order'?" I asked, my finger hovering over the line. "It appears multiple times, seemingly at random."

"And this is where I get to make Clavis feel even worse," Nokto said, wearing a smile that didn't reach his dark crimson eyes.

Clavis groaned. "Now what?"

"It seems the maids weren't forthcoming with me because the duke has them all scared. He expects them to fulfill his every need without question, and his disciplinary measures can be quite harsh. And I do mean his every need."

"You know I didn't—"

"And?" I interrupted Clavis, knowing there was more.

"And rumor has it His Grace sometimes gets bored and seeks his carnal pleasures elsewhere, even requesting certain traits in female companions. He's much more careful about covering these activities up, but I suspect that's what the special orders are referring to. I'll have to do more digging to find the name or names of his sources."

"I hesitate to ask, but how is this supposed to make me feel worse?" Clavis asked. "Other than generally feeling rotten about taking advantage of a maid?"

"Oh, didn't I mention it already? His most recent 'special order' was for a young woman with black hair and green eyes. It's in a set of books I left in the safe."

Something hot and violent surged in my chest.

Clavis groaned again and put his face on the desk, grabbing his midnight blue hair. "Please don't tell me..."

Nokto shook his head. "He put in the order and prepaid, but there's no note about the order having been fulfilled yet, and no reason to think he has a specific woman in mind."

"But she's vulnerable and fits the bill, and we already know somebody has been following her lately. You're right, I feel worse," Clavis moaned. "It was supposed to be a joke! How was I supposed to know—"