The King(105)

And then it came.
The phone on the desk, the one that had been made to appear “old-fashioned,” rang with an electronic bell that sounded as close to real as anything not actually brass could get.
“I’ll leave you,” Saxton said, taking a step back.
His father stared at the carefully hidden digital display … and appeared to forget how to answer the thing.
“Goodbye, F—” Saxton stopped himself. Ever since his orientation had been revealed, that was an f-word worse than fuck—at least when used by him.
As his father just waved him off, he had a passing relief. Usually, the worst part of any in-person visit was the departure: As he’d leave, and his father confronted yet another failed attempt to bring his son around, it was the walk of shame all over again.
Saxton hadn’t come out to his family. He’d never intended his father to know.
But someone had blabbed and he was fairly sure he knew who.#p#分页标题#e#
So every time he left, he relived getting kicked out of this very house about a week after his mother had died: He’d been booted with his clothes on his back, no money, and nowhere to stay as dawn approached.
He’d learned later that all of his things had been ritually burned in the woods out behind the manor house.
One more handy use for all the acreage.
“Shut the door behind you,” his father snapped.
He was more than happy to obey that one: Closing things silently, for once he didn’t waste a moment on all the pain. Looking left and right, he listened.
Silence.
Moving quickly, he went back to the parlor and through into the library, pulling the doors shut behind him. Taking out his phone, he started snapping pictures, his heart beating as fast as he was tapping. He didn’t bother to arrange angles or do anything sequentially—the only thing he cared about was that the focus and the lighting were good and that he didn’t move—
The rumbling of doors opening directly behind him had him spinning around.
His father seemed confused as he stood in the doorway that led out of his study. “Whate’er are you doing?”
“Nothing. I was just looking at your volumes. They’re quite impressive.”
Tyhm glanced at the doors Saxton had shut behind himself—as if wondering why they were closed. “You should not have come in here.”
“I’m sorry.” Surreptitiously, he slipped the phone into his pocket, tilting his torso to the side as if to nod at the books. “It’s just … I wanted to marvel over your collection. Mine are cloth covered.”
“You have a set of the Old Laws?”
“I do. I bought them from an estate.”
His father went forward and touched the pages of the closest volume open on the round table. The loving way with which he stroked those words, that paper, that inanimate object … suggested that maybe Saxton wasn’t the biggest heartbreak in his life.
If the law let him down? That would break him.
“What is this all about?” Saxton said softly. “I heard the King was shot, and now … this is all about the succession.”
When there was no reply, he began to think he needed to leave in a hurry: There was a high probability his father was in with the Band of Bastards, and it would be folly to think Tyhm would hesitate for even a second in turning his gay son over to the enemy.
Or in his father’s case, the allies.
“Wrath is no King for the race.” Tyhm shook his head. “Nothing good has come since his father was killed. Now, there was a ruler. I was young when I was at court, but I remember Wrath, and whereas the son cares not for the proper way … the sire was a stellar King, a wise male with patience and majesty. Such a failure of this generation.”
Saxton looked at the floor. For some absurd reason, he noted that his own loafers were perfectly polished. All of his shoes were. Neat and tidy, arranged.
He found it difficult to breathe. “I thought the Brotherhood was … taking care of things rather well. After the raids, they have killed many slayers—”
“The fact that you use the word after to modify raids is all one needs to know. A shameful commentary—Wrath did not care to rule until he married that half-breed of his. Only then, when he sought to contaminate the throne with her bastard human genes, did he see fit to try to be King. His father would hate this—that human wearing the ring of his mother? It is a disgrace that cannot…” He had to clear his throat. “It simply cannot be supported.”
As the implications dawned on Saxton, he could feel the blood drain out of his head. Oh, God … why hadn’t they seen this coming?
Beth. They were going to take him down through her.