Perfect Master by Ann Jacobs Page A

settled and, with the gods’ blessing, to see my first grandsons.”

Chapter One
     
    “You’ve arranged a marriage for me with one of Eli the jeweler’s beautiful daughters? I’d sooner take a whore from
one of the sex slave markets on the Street of Pleasure.” Arik, newly named
Crown Prince of Obsidion, clenched the fist on his remaining hand and shoved
his right arm with its vicious-looking hook practically into his father’s face.
“A sexbot would be an even better choice.”
    King Gawain shuddered, obviously pained to
have to look upon the ravagement he had caused. “You cannot mean that, my son.”
    Arik took pleasure in the way his father
cringed when he had to look into Arik’s remaining eye. It gave him fiendish
pleasure when the old man quickly looked away and focused his gaze on the
priceless carpet at his feet. “At least a whore would close her eyes and give
me my money’s worth. And I would walk away satisfied, with no obligation to
provide her pleasure in return. A bot would care nothing about anything, even this sight that makes you look away.” Arik lifted his hand and touched the empty
eye socket and a mass of scars that crisscrossed that side of his face and
neck.
    The king’s eyes dimmed when he glanced up
Arik’s body, his gaze settling this time on the hideously scarred surface of
his son’s cheek. “The one named Emerald will not dare reject you.”
    Arik curled his lip in disgust. “So you’ve
bought me a princess with Obsidion’s gold. Do you think that will buy my
forgiveness for you having sent a horde of mercenaries to chase me through the
galaxy and destroy me?”
    “There can be but one heir to the Diamond
Throne. Tradition dictates that its heir be my eldest son.” The king’s
expression softened. “The palace physicians told me I was dying. After you fled
to avoid being made a royal eunuch along with your cousins, I ordered your
death to prevent the battle that would have been inevitable between you and
Tabor if both of you were alive and whole at the moment of my death. The gods
must have foreseen that I would recover and that Tabor would fall in battle, to
have looked over you and nursed you back from what must have been certain
death. I am grateful I still have a son to continue Obsidion’s rule.”
    “A son for whom you must buy a
consort since your thugs failed to kill me.” Arik pondered the irony of it all
as he limped across his tower chamber, the translucent robe that indicated his
princely station flapping against his legs. “If you had left me to live my life
peacefully in exile rather than hiring mercenaries to kill me, you would not
now find yourself with an heir no woman will willingly take to her bed.”
    “I did not buy a woman for you, though I
would gladly have done so had it been necessary. Meredith the matchmaker
brought me much gold from Eli. Apparently his spoiled eldest daughter insists
she must have a prince for her mate.”
    “I take it I was the only prince in
Meredith’s inventory of possible mates for Obsidion’s sheltered beauties.” Arik
made no effort to disguise his sarcasm as he looked out toward the twinkling,
multicolored lights from businesses on the Street of Pleasure.
    The king followed Arik. As though almost
afraid to touch him, he reached out and laid a hand on Arik’s damaged shoulder.
His gaze fastened on the scarred arm and the hook Arik now used after losing
his hand and the lower part of his forearm on Eastphalia, where more modern
prostheses weren’t available. He realized that while the device functioned
reasonably well, it looked more beastly than human.
    As beastly as his scarred face and missing
eye, more so than the scars that ravaged his body. Wearing the hook gave Arik a
perverse sense of satisfaction, every time he saw the regret and horror
reflected in his father’s eyes. No way would he allow the king to salve his
conscience by submitting to the lengthy plastic surgery the surgeons had
proposed to