In the King's Service Read Online Free PDF

sons, Sief. I must make certain that Brion has brothers.”
    Suddenly Sief caught just a flicker of subtle evasion: not a lie, but a truth not fully divulged. To his consternation, it sparked a dread possibility that had never come to mind before, but which might make sense of several things in the year since the prince’s birth; but he put such thoughts aside as he forced an uneasy chuckle.
    “Just now,” Sief said, “methinks Prince Brion needs his mother more than he needs brothers. At least have a care for her, Sire. People would talk, were you to take a third queen.”
    Donal shrugged, and his next words again left Sief with the impression that all was not being said.
    “People will always talk about kings. I little care, so long as the succession is secure.”
    “There is Duke Richard, if all else were to fail,” Sief pointed out.
    “True enough. But my brother Richard aspires to a warrior’s fame—and he has the sheer ability to excel at it. He little cares for the finer diplomacies of the council chamber—or even of marriage, at least thus far,” Donal added with a shrug. “Besides that, he is the fruit of my father’s loins; not mine.”
    “Aye, but blood is blood, Sire,” Sief said, echoing the words of the Council not an hour earlier. “Richard is as much a Haldane as you or the new prince.”
    He thought he saw Jessamy stiffen slightly at those words, though her gray-streaked head was bowed over the infant in her arms.
    “Indeed,” the king said mildly. “I trust you aren’t presuming to instruct me in my duties as a husband?”
    Sief raised a placating hand, hesitant to even consider pursuing the subject; but Donal’s manner seemed increasingly evasive, making Sief wonder whether he had, indeed, stumbled on something he would be happier not knowing.
    He ventured a cautious probe, but Donal was tight-shuttered against even a surface reading. That was hardly unusual for the king, for Sief had long ago realized that Donal had shields as good as any Deryni’s—though whether they would stand up to any serious attempt to force them remained an unknown question. What alarmed him was that Jessamy likewise had retreated behind shields far stronger than he had believed her to possess.
    Chilled, he turned to look at her sharply—and caught just a hint of something in her eyes. . . .
    With a little sob, she turned away from him in their bed, shielding the infant Krispin behind her body. In that instant, in an almost blinding flash of insight, Sief knew what more she was hiding—and Donal, as well.
    “You!” He whirled on the king, fury and betrayal in his dark glare. “He’s yours, isn’t he? You’ve made me a cuckold! Was it here, in this very bed?”
    Even as he said it, his clenched fist lifted and he lashed out with his powers, fully aware that he was threatening violence against the king to whom he had sworn fealty—and not caring, in his rage. To his utter astonishment, Donal Blaine Haldane answered with like force: potent and altogether too focused for what Sief had always imagined was the limit of the king’s power. Before he could pull back, power slammed against his own closing shields and reverberated to the deepest core of his being, forcing a breach and starting a tear in his defenses that gaped ever wider, the more he tried to seal it.
    With that realization came fear and pain—more pain than he had ever experienced in his life or even imagined he could feel. It began in his head, exploding behind his eyes, but quickly ripped downward to center in his chest, like a giant fist closing on his heart. At the same time, he felt his limbs going numb, losing all sensation as his legs collapsed under him and his arms flailed like the arms of a marionette with its strings cut. Through blurring vision, he could just see Donal, right hand thrust between them with the fingers splayed in a warding-off gesture, and Donal’s lips moving in words whose sense Sief could only barely