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FIRELIGHT
THE OMEGA AND HIS MATCH

LOST PRINCES OF MORONA

CLAIRE CULLEN
Copyright © 2023 by Claire Cullen
All Rights Reserved
 CONTENTS

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22

Author's Note
 1

A iden had traveled by airship only twice in his life. The first time,
he’d been brimming with excitement, as children always are when it
comes to new adventures. But the events now unfolding before him
only hammered home that he was no longer a child. He sat by a
window, watching the clouds rush by and keeping an ear out for
footsteps approaching. The last thing he wanted was to be cornered
by his uncle.
There was a time, not so long ago, when he’d been happy. He’d
had a loving father and three good-hearted alpha brothers, though
they could be overprotective at times. Now, his father was long
buried, and his only surviving brother had been sent far away. Aiden
wanted to be there when Jonas eventually returned, fearing what
would become of him. But Uncle Lorgan—King Lorgan, he reminded
himself bitterly—wasn’t giving him a choice.
That wasn’t entirely true, though, was it? Lorgan had made it
clear that he could stay, but Aiden couldn’t accept the conditions
attached to his continued presence in the castle. He knew what he
would become at Lorgan’s hands, and it was worse than what his
alpha brother had been reduced to.
At the sound of footsteps, he tensed and rose from his chair.
Lorgan’s mood had swung wildly since their departure. He acted in
turns pleased at the arrangements he’d made and angry that Aiden
had chosen the only real option presented to him.
 His uncle loomed in the doorway of the room, and it took
everything Aiden had not to flinch.
“So here’s where you’ve been hiding.”
Aiden straightened. “Not hiding, Uncle Lorgan. The pilot said we
were passing over the Ruby Coast. I was hoping to catch a glimpse,
but the cloud cover is too heavy.”
“Hmm.”
Lorgan stepped into the room, and Aiden surreptitiously watched
the door, wondering how easy it would be to dodge his uncle this
time around. Being trapped on an airship with Lorgan was Aiden’s
idea of hell. His only consolations were the fact that their journey
was only a matter of hours and the presence of…
“Lord Fane.”
These days, Aiden was always relieved to see the man. Lord Fane
had acquired a keen awareness of when his presence was most
needed and materialized appropriately. Aiden was sure Fane’s
intervention was part of why he was being married off. An escape
from the hellish future his uncle had in mind for him.
“Your majesty, my prince. The pilot informs me we will begin our
descent shortly. For your comfort, he recommends retiring to your
rooms.”
“In a moment, thank you, Lord Fane,” Lorgan said, smiling
smugly at them. “First, I want to speak to my nephew about his
upcoming nuptials.”
“What about them, Uncle Lorgan?”
He’d done his best to ask as few questions as possible about the
king’s plans for him. It was enough to know that he would be
beyond Lorgan’s reach soon enough.
“I want to assure you that Prince Fagan of the kingdom of Sands
is very excited at the prospect of your arrival. And to advise you not
to take heed of any… rumors… you may have heard about him.”
Lorgan was trying his best not to reveal a wolfish grin but failing
miserably. Hard though he was trying to bury his head in the sand,
Aiden had to ask, “What kind of rumors?”
“Oh, nothing to worry your pretty little head over, I assure you.
Now, I must ask the kitchen for some brandy. I hate to land with a
clear head. All that shaking about.”
He lumbered from the room, leaving Aiden alone with Lord Fane.
Aiden returned to the window, staring at the clouds, aware of Lord
Fane’s gaze on him.
“Rumors?” he asked. Lord Fane was, at heart, a good man. All
too often, his hands were tied by King Lorgan, but he tried. That
counted for something. Aiden trusted him to tell him the truth.
“Prince Fagan is said to have a… cruel streak.”
“Cruel streak?”
“Similar to certain people we both know, his appetites run
toward… pain rather than pleasure.”
Aiden closed his eyes and tried very hard to hold his composure.
He would not cry.
Of course, Lorgan had chosen a kindred spirit to marry him off
to. One who enjoyed causing pain and whose targets were inevitably
the powerless and weaker among them. For his uncle, it was any
omega he could get his hands on. For Prince Fagan, it would be the
omega husband gifted to him by Morona as a sign of their kingdom’s
close ties and newfound cooperation. Aiden was a sacrificial lamb.
“The kingdom of Sands presented several potential spouses for
you, but King Lorgan was insistent that it be Prince Fagan. I tried to
intervene, but he was not to be swayed.”
Because if he couldn’t have Aiden, he wanted the cruelest
bastard he could find to take him in his place. So Lorgan could have
the pleasure of imagining Aiden’s misery and pretending it was at his
own hand.
“And there’s no way out of this?”
“I have protected you for as long as I can, Aiden. I do not believe
our king will tolerate any further interference on my part should you
refuse this marriage.”
“But Prince Fagan… He is a man of Lorgan’s ilk?”
“He is such a man. But as a first prince, he has good standing,
and you will have status and power among his people. You must
make the best of it.”
All that truly meant was that Fagan couldn’t kill or maim him. He
could still make Aiden’s life miserable. And Aiden was very familiar
with the misery of his uncle’s three spouses.
Sighing, Aiden leaned his forehead against the glass, spying land
below. His new home. His new prison.
“Come, Prince Aiden. It is time to prepare for landing. And then
we will get you ready for your wedding.”
With one last look at the land coming up rapidly to meet them,
he turned away and met Lord Fane’s kindly gaze. The man was his
last connection. Not to home, but to the family he’d once had, the
happiness he’d once known. Soon, all that would be far behind him.
He’d lived in dread and misery for years, but from today, he would
know fear and pain just as intimately. There were escapes, of
course. There were always escapes. He just hadn’t yet reconciled
himself to choosing one.
 2

T he spring sun was warm on Davin’s back as he led the patrol back
to the castle. Torin walked by his side, the two sharing a
companionable silence.
As they reached the western gate, Torin remarked, “I guess we
won’t be seeing much of you for the next while. Think about us
slogging through the sand while you’re living a life of idleness.”
Davin laughed. “It’s a week, Torin. One week. A lot of boring
nonsense and eyes everywhere, watching your every move.”
“I’m sure the pretty omegas vying for your attention will be some
consolation.”
“It’s the marriage circuit, Torin, not some spring festival.”
“But you’re looking forward to it?” the other man pressed.
Davin considered his answer before he spoke. He was the only
alpha in the family taking part this year, and they were hosting a
week-long festival right in the middle of the circuit. The overeager
would have paired off already, and a sense of desperation wouldn’t
have yet set in among those who remained unattached. The perfect
time to find what Davin was seeking. A real connection. A chance for
true love.
“This will be my year. I feel it in my bones.”
Torin clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”
They said their goodbyes inside the palace, and Torin moved off
with the rest of the guard to their quarters while Davin headed
toward the inner palace and the wing he shared with his unmarried
cousins.
“Prince Davin?”
He’d barely set foot inside the palace when an attendant stopped
him.
“Yes?”
“The king has requested your presence in his study.”
Davin glanced down at himself, his body sweat-strewn, his
uniform dusty from the sand.
“Is it urgent?”
“He asked for you some time ago. I’ve been waiting for you to
return.”
Davin’s father couldn’t be expected to keep track of his routines,
of course. And he was used to people being at his beck and call. The
attendant wasn’t familiar either. Probably new to the palace and
anxious to make a good impression.
“I’ll head straight there,” he decided.
“Yes, Prince Davin.”
He traversed the corridors with quick strides, wondering why his
father had summoned him. As far as Davin was aware, the king and
his advisers were hard at work on the trade agreement they were
trying to broker with Morona. Some problem must have arisen
regarding the marriage circuit. Likely nothing of importance, but
Lord Wyvern, who was in charge of such festivals, was easily
excitable over the smallest of issues.
He knocked on the heavy oak door of the study and waited until
he heard his father’s voice calling him in. When he stepped inside,
he found every eye on him, which was a little disconcerting. As his
father’s youngest and least important son, he was rarely of much
interest. He cast his mind back, trying to figure out if he’d done
something to cause his father displeasure.
“Davin! Come in, come in,” his father said warmly, dispelling
Davin’s idle concerns. “Leave us, please,” he added.
Davin joined his father at his desk as the advisers filed out. His
father gestured to a chair, and Davin sat. The door closed as the last
of the advisers stepped out, and there was a brief moment of
silence.
“I know you’ve been looking forward to the marriage circuit,” the
king began.
“I have, Father.”
“Well, I’m afraid you won’t be participating this year after all.”
“What? But Father…”
“An issue has arisen in the trade talks with Morona. King Lorgan
insists the agreement be sealed with a marriage.”
Davin stayed silent, his heart a steady drumbeat within his chest.
“He offers the hand of his nephew, Prince Aiden. The only omega
son of the late King Galeran.”
“Prince Aiden?”
King Galeran had four sons, all of them by his first husband.
Which made them first princes, far superior to Davin’s station as
third prince and youngest son. Nothing about this made any sense.
“He can’t want his nephew to wed me.”
“He doesn’t. He wants him to marry your brother, Fagan,” his
father said, his expression betraying his distaste.
“Fagan,” Davin repeated, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I’ve spent the past three days offering any and all of my eligible
sons in Fagan’s place, but he is insistent that Fagan, and Fagan
alone, will make a suitable husband for his nephew.”
Davin didn’t know what King Lorgan was playing at. Fagan Atlas
was not a man he’d trust with a rock, let alone a living creature. To
hand a beloved nephew over to that monster would be
unconscionable.
“What is he thinking?” he asked his father.
“That, I can’t fathom. But he will not be swayed, and we need
this trade deal. Our wheat crops have failed for the second year in a
row. The maize we’ve been growing to supplement them will not be
sufficient to feed the people. If we can’t transport supplies through
the Strait of Moro, it will be a long, hard winter.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
He wasn’t usually privy to the ins and outs of these negotiations.
There had to be some reason his father had called him here, but for
the life of him, he couldn’t think what it was.
“We are going to honor the agreement and marry Lorgan’s
nephew to Prince Fagan.”
Davin opened his mouth to protest, unable to conscience such an
action, but his father wasn’t finished.
“Just not the Prince Fagan that King Lorgan expects.”
Davin stilled, his thoughts racing. “He’s never met Fagan Atlas?”
“Never. If he’s heard of him, it’s by reputation only.”
And there was no good reason King Lorgan of Morona would be
aware that the name of his father’s favorite uncle had been
bestowed on not one, but two of his children. His third eldest, Fagan
Atlas, and his youngest, Davinar Fagan.
“But he’ll surely guess the moment he sets eyes on me.”
Davinar was younger than his half-brother by almost a decade.
The king waved that off. “Fagan is known to have a youthful face,
and your beard lends you some maturity. The two of you have the
same coloring, and the right outfit will make you seem older than
your years. It’s a small subterfuge.”
Davin suddenly realized what this meant for him.
“You intend to marry me to Prince Aiden.”
“It has to be you. We must be seen honoring the agreement, at
least on some level. If it should ever be discovered, we can claim an
honest mistake.”
It was a flimsy excuse, but for a kingdom in their position with
starvation on the horizon for their people, they didn’t have a lot of
choices.
“I’ll do whatever you ask of me, Father.”
“I know, Davin. That was never in doubt. We discussed the
alternative, of course. But I could not, in good conscience, hand that
innocent omega over to your brother.”
“No.” Not after everything. Davin could still remember the
haunted looks on his parent’s faces that terrible night. They’d been
forced to confront some uncomfortable truths. But confront them
they had, and Fagan Atlas hadn’t stepped foot in the palace since
that night.
 “Well, then. The matter is settled. I agreed to Lorgan’s terms last
night. The airship carrying your intended has already departed, and
preparations for the wedding are underway.”
“Already…”
Davin had barely gotten his head around the idea. He’d thought
at least he’d have some time to get used to it.
“King Lorgan was eager, and we were afraid to put him off. Now,
go see Lord Wyvern. He’s rounding up the royal tailor. There won’t
be time to make an outfit from scratch, so we’ll borrow one of your
brother’s and have it fitted.”
“Does Papa know?” Davin found himself asking as he stood.
“He’s walking in the gardens,” was his father’s answer.
That was always where Tavis could be found when he was
troubled. Since the plan was settled and there was nothing to be
done, it was best Davin left him to it.
“I’ll see Lord Wyvern and make myself ready.”
His father turned back to his papers. “Good, good. Send the
advisers back in, will you? There is still much to do.”
With that dismissal, Davin stepped out, holding the door open for
the advisers hovering outside. From the looks they gave him as they
passed, which varied from pitying to coolly assessing, it was clear
they already knew. Half the castle knew, apparently. And there was
Davin, the intended groom and almost the last to know. He closed
the door to his father’s study and braced himself against the wall.
He was getting married. No marriage circuit, no connection, no
spark of attraction, no hopeful glances. Just a wedding to prepare
for.
But at long last, he could be of use to his family and fulfill this
duty that no one else could. It wasn’t much, and he mourned his
lost chance at finding real love, but it was something.
 3

U ncle L organ had insisted on being present for the wedding, but he
wasn’t a man with much patience for these sorts of things. Which
was why they’d set off in the dead of night on their airship and why
Aiden would marry a few scant hours after their arrival instead of a
day or so later, as was customary. Lorgan wanted to be there only
until the morrow. Long enough to see Aiden ‘wedded and bedded,’
as he’d emphasized more than once. It made Aiden shudder to think
about it, so he tried hard not to.
Instead, he focused on the practical. The servants drew him a
bath, and he bathed, careful not to stay in the water too long. Once
dry, he was dressed in an outfit hand-sewn by the royal dressmaker
using the Morona colors. His wedding tunic was highly decorative,
with an elaborately embroidered design and jewels that sparkled
when he moved. He stole only the briefest of glances at himself in
the mirror, doing his best to avoid his eyes which he was sure
showed the fear he tried to hide even from himself.
Then the ceremonial veil was settled over his head, hiding his
face from view. It was almost a relief. A gold crown was next,
pressed down firmly to hold the veil in place. A single jewel of
firestone was set in it, glinting in the light of the dressing room and
complimenting the deep reds and oranges of his outfit.
He stood there in silence as the final minutes ticked by, feeling
the weight of his outfit as if it were iron chains.
 “It’s time, Prince Aiden,” a servant said, gesturing toward the
door.
With a sigh, Aiden turned, and there was Lord Fane.
“Beautiful,” the man murmured, his eyes suspiciously bright. “You
will do Morona proud, my prince.”
He was escorted to the door of the airship, and there he and the
rest of the wedding party paused at the top of the ramp. The
contingent from the kingdom of Sands was already waiting outside
to escort them into the castle, but as usual, they were all waiting on
King Lorgan. Another of Lorgan’s little power plays. He liked making
people wait.
The minutes ticked by, and Aiden’s ornate costume quickly grew
uncomfortable. There wasn’t much protection from the elements,
and a cold wind blew in through the open door, making him shiver. A
cloak would have been nice, but it would have ruined the effect of
his outfit, so he knew one would not be forthcoming. As always, he
suffered in stoic silence.
At length, heavy footsteps heralded Lorgan’s arrival, trailed by a
handful of anxious servants. Lorgan looked Aiden up and down once,
and Aiden tried not to tremble under his lascivious gaze. Lorgan
couldn’t touch him. Not here, not now. And after today, he’d never
be able to touch Aiden again. It wasn’t much comfort since Aiden
now knew who and what awaited him in the castle beyond, but it
was something nonetheless.
Their procession across the airstrip and into the imposing castle
seemed to take forever. Aiden was shivering properly by the time
they entered through the huge double doors into the castle proper.
It was quite different from Morona, the architecture having an
unmistakably modern flare.
The castle was located near a fault line, according to Lord Fane’s
rushed history lesson, and it had suffered a series of catastrophic
earthquakes some hundred years before. They’d rebuilt it from the
ground up in the aftermath, their scribes imbuing every practical
aspect of it with runic magic, from the lights to the water. A
hundred-year-old castle? Practically new in royal terms. Morona’s
castle was many centuries old. Parts of it were newer, naturally. Or
patched up as time took its toll. But there was something pleasing
about the high ceilings and clean walls of this place. It didn’t seem
quite so cold and foreboding as Aiden had feared. Of course, it
wasn’t the place he truly worried about. It was the people. Soon, he
would get the measure of them.
They walked along the main thoroughfare for a time. Here and
there, Aiden spotted runes concealed behind drapes and banners
and hidden within intricately carved stonework. Morona’s castle had
few runes and mostly relied on alchemist magic, thanks to the
firestone their kingdom had once mined. He longed to get a closer
look at the runes but didn’t dare step a foot out of line. There’d be
time for that later.
Just when he began to wonder if their procession would walk the
full length of the castle, they turned and entered a small alcove in
front of a set of large doors. There was a brief conversation between
Lord Fane and someone from the castle staff. The doors opened,
and their group proceeded inside. Servants excepted.
The room beyond was small, and Aiden could understand why
everyone didn’t just pile in. It was already quite full as it was. This
was where the wedding ceremony was to take place. More dimly lit
than the hall and crowded with people, he could see next to nothing
through his veil. Lord Fane’s hand on his elbow guided him across
the room and then brought him to a stop rather abruptly. Lord Fane
stepped back, and Aiden tried to peer around without moving his
head. A man standing in front of him began to speak. It was only
then he realized he’d been led to the top of the room and was right
in front of the celebrant. Which meant the man standing to Aiden’s
left was his betrothed. His husband-to-be.
He glanced at him surreptitiously, glad of the veil hiding his gaze.
There wasn’t much to tell from the alpha’s profile. Tall, bearded,
strong, but not especially muscular. A royal, certainly, but perhaps
not a man of pure leisure. The alpha turned toward him slightly, and
Aiden froze. Had he spotted him staring? Or perhaps it was Aiden’s
ceaseless shivering that had caught his attention. The alpha wore a
tunic of deep blue and a cloak of charcoal grey that made Aiden
envious. Why couldn’t his outfit have afforded a cloak? Had no one
thought to check the weather in the Sands at this time of year? But
that wasn’t it, of course. As an omega, he was there to be looked at.
A cloak to hide behind would defeat the point.
The celebrant droned on, but Aiden tuned him out. Nothing he
said would be of interest. Aiden had only one line to speak, and only
after the alpha had spoken it first. As cues went, it was hard to miss.
He gave up trying to study his almost-husband and focused instead
on keeping his body still. Cold he might have been, but there was no
point making a show of himself. Or having people whisper about the
scared omega spouse trembling in front of his alpha husband.
When the celebrant’s voice rose, Aiden knew it was time. Taking
a deep, steadying breath, he turned to face his husband. Prince
Fagan held out his hand, and Aiden took it.
The prince spoke. “I take you as my own and give myself to you.”
Aiden repeated those words, albeit in a different order. “I give
myself to you and take you as my own.”
It said everything. An omega gave first and took what was given.
An alpha took first and gave only what they wished.
The celebrant spoke again, but Aiden had long since given up
listening. His focus was on Prince Fagan. The prince’s hands were on
his veil. He lifted it, revealing Aiden’s face to him and giving Aiden
his first proper look at his husband.
At first glance, it was a pleasant face. Deep brown eyes, an
average nose, a strong forehead, and a generous mouth. Yet none
of that told him anything about the man behind the face. The man
Lorgan seemed almost gleeful to be giving Aiden to. The prince who
Lord Fane had called cruel. His nature wasn’t visible on the surface,
but that was the mistake most people made. Believing the outside of
a person reflected the inside. Aiden knew better. As charming and
handsome as Lorgan had always appeared, he was disgusting and
twisted within.
Another shiver wracked Aiden, and he didn’t quite manage to
suppress it. His betrothed—his husband—frowned. With a quick
motion and a sweep of his arm, his cloak was off his back and
settled around Aiden’s shoulders.
 “The banquet hall will be warmer. They will have fires lit in both
fireplaces,” the alpha assured him.
“Thank you, Prince Fagan,” Aiden murmured.
He wanted to feel heartened by the gesture, but he didn’t dare.
Lorgan knew how to act in front of company, too. Out of the corner
of his eye, Aiden could see his uncle speaking to the king of Sands
and his spouse.
“Shall we?” his husband interrupted, offering his arm.
“Of course.” Aiden took the offered arm and let the alpha lead
him on. And if he felt like he was being led to the slaughter? Well,
what was an omega to do but hold their head high and walk with
grace?
 4

D avin let all the fuss of the afternoon wash over him. The tailor’s
frustration, Lord Wyvern’s handwringing, the servants that rushed
about. He rose above it all, knowing he was little more than a piece
on a chess board being moved about. The kingdom of Sands needed
this trade agreement, and he would do whatever it took for his
kingdom and his people. Even if it meant marrying a stranger under
false pretenses.
All too soon, he found himself standing in front of the celebrant
in the small hall they used for ceremonies. There would be no big
fanfare, like when his brothers were married. This would be small,
painted as intimate by his father’s advisers. It had to be so because
too many people involved risked the lie coming out.
The speed at which everything had happened gave him little
chance to consider his situation. It was probably for the best. Too
much time to think about things he couldn’t change wouldn’t help
him get through this day and the days that followed.
The arrival of the group from Morona caused a ripple of murmurs
to spread through the room but little fanfare otherwise. Davin
focused his gaze on the celebrant and stood tall, waiting for the
small crowd behind him to settle as someone was brought to stand
next to him.
The longer he stood there, the more aware he became of the
man by his side. His slighter stature marked him out as an omega.
And the veil he wore told Davin in no uncertain terms that this was
his intended. It was almost impossible to make out anything beneath
the veil, but then he didn’t have the luxury of more than a few
sideways glances. He couldn’t glean much past the shivers the
omega was doing his best to suppress. Davin wasn’t surprised. The
hall was drafty, and beneath the veil, the omega wore an outfit more
suitable to summer than spring.
It was almost a relief when the celebrant began to speak. The
words washed over him—words he’d heard a dozen times before.
Davin said his piece, and his intended echoed him, his voice soft.
And then it was done, and Davin got his first proper look at the
omega he was now bound to.
Pale blue eyes stood out on an even paler face framed by curly
blond hair. It was a prettier face than Davin had any right to expect
given the rushed circumstances of their marriage, though there was
an air of frailty and fatigue about him. Sleepless nights in
anticipation of the wedding, perhaps? When the omega shivered
again, Davin offered him first his cloak and then his arm. It was time
for the hardest part of this ruse—the wedding dinner.
His father had warned him to behave as his brother Fagan Atlas
would have. It was easy to draw on the memories of his older
brother. Fagan had a charm about him that drew people to him, but
he never had much conversation for omegas when in public. So
Davin said little to his new husband as he guided him into the dining
room and to their table but effusively greeted their guests as they
took their seats.
Davin didn’t have much of an appetite, but Fagin always cleared
his plate at a meal, so he did the same. Prince Aiden ate little, taking
small bites that wouldn’t satisfy a mouse. Davin wondered what
wasn’t to his taste—the food, the celebration, or his new husband. It
was a good marriage on paper. First prince to first prince. Fagan
wasn’t in line to inherit the crown—that fell to the oldest of their
brothers. But before his banishment, he had been intended to inherit
the principality of Ides, a small group of islands in the southernmost
part of their kingdom. It wasn’t much, but it would have ensured a
good life for him, his spouses, and their children.
 Given the danger inherent in this plan of his father’s, Davin kept
most of his attention on their honored guest. King Lorgan seemed to
be having the time of his life. He ate, he drank, he told jokes and
stories. Now and then, his gaze strayed to Prince Aiden, and a smile
lit his face. Anyone else might have said he was happy for his dear
nephew, but the look in his eyes spoke of something far less
pleasant. Did Lorgan know what kind of a man Fagan was? If he did,
how could he countenance giving his nephew to him? Why not
accept one of the many other sons that Davin’s father had offered in
his place?
Something more was going on here, and Davin wasn’t sure who
was playing the trick. Was it them, putting one prince in place of
another, or was it Morona, handing off an omega who was, in many
respects, an unknown quantity? Maybe they were hiding something.
A secret, a reputation, a scandal. That would make more sense than
taking all this at face value.
He couldn’t ignore his husband entirely, even though he’d seen
Fagan do the same more than once. Now and then, he offered a
comment, an explanation. No questions, though. He didn’t want to
start a conversation. He couldn’t risk being overheard saying
something that might put a question in anyone’s mind. His new
husband seemed equally as taciturn, which was a relief.
The talk turned to trade and politics. Most discussion was about
the Royal Alliance’s attempts to rally after the difficult years since the
failed siege of Stormshield. Many kingdoms, both inside and outside
the alliance, were struggling. Some, like their kingdom, suffered
from repeated failed harvests, their people facing starvation once
winter came.
The music started not long after. Davin was glad the custom in
their kingdom didn’t expect him and his new husband to dance. That
would have given the game away within seconds since Fagan Atlas
had a reputation as an excellent dancer, and Davin had two left feet.
He restrained himself to a single cup of wine but let the servants
refill it each time they went around the table to give the impression
he was drinking more than he was. It didn’t escape his notice that
Prince Aiden hadn’t touched a drop. He couldn’t blame him for
wanting his wits about him in a strange place.
With the music little more than background noise and the chatter
a mere murmur in his ears, the dimming lights of the hall would
have told him it was time to retire, even without the significant
glances his father kept sending his way.
In one way, the hardest part of the scheme was over. They were
married, and no one had raised any suspicions all through dinner.
Lorgan and the rest of the contingent from Morona would depart in
the morning, and everything would be settled. In another way, the
difficult times were just beginning. For better or worse, Davin was
married to Prince Aiden. And now he had to figure out what that
would mean for them both.
 5

T he food was delicious , or it would have been if Aiden had been able
to do more than nibble at it. His stomach rebelled at even the
smallest bites, and he did his best to soothe it with sips of water. No
one had told him what to expect of the evening, but it was a relief
when he realized there wasn’t any dancing planned. Instead, music
was played, and a dance troupe entertained them.
“It’s customary to hold a ball a month after the wedding day.
We’ll dance then,” his husband explained as they watched the
dancers pirouette about the floor. Aiden was relieved not to have to
hold himself together enough to survive a waltz or whatever else
was on the kingdom’s dance list.
Now and then, he heard Lorgan’s laughter or the odd ribald
comment. His uncle was restrained for the most part, but there were
a few hints about newlyweds and wedding nights. Aiden ignored
them as best he could, aware of the glances being exchanged
around him. He wasn’t sure whether it was Lorgan’s presence or the
royal family’s own unease since they presumably knew well what
kind of man they’d just wedded him to.
Prince Fagan didn’t make much effort at conversation with Aiden,
asking no questions, his comments sparse. With the rest of the
guests, he was far more engaging, smiling, talking, and laughing
with ease. The contrast was enough to cement Aiden’s fears about
what was to come. The few times Prince Fagan did catch Aiden’s
eye, he offered a strained smile. Aiden suspected the alpha was
impatient for the evening to come to an end. Wedded and bedded,
that was the expectation. No matter how Aiden felt about it.
The night came to a surprisingly early close as the servants
rounded the hall and doused the candles, leaving only a handful to
light the room. Most of the guests rose and departed, and shortly
after, Prince Fagan’s hand touched his.
“It is tradition for us to retire before the king,” the alpha
murmured, nodding to where his father and King Lorgan were
speaking in undertones and casting significant glances their way.
“Of course,” Aiden said. He rose to his feet when the prince did,
offering a quiet goodnight to the gathered royals.
One or two more lewd comments were made but quickly shushed
by the older members of the family. Without meaning to, Aiden
caught Lorgan’s eye. The man’s gaze dragged down his body, and he
licked his lips. It was all Aiden could do not to shudder.
Prince Fagan’s hand came to rest on the small of his back as the
alpha guided him from the banquet hall. Aiden caught a brief
glimpse of Lord Fane by the door, but there was no time for
conversation. The corridor outside was almost empty, a lone servant
waiting there. She curtsied and led them through the halls, a lantern
in her hand. The halls themselves were dimly lit, the main lights
having been extinguished. It lent the castle an eerie, foreboding air
for all Aiden suspected it was supposed to be romantic.
They entered a wing, the maid showing them to a door.
“Your things were brought in earlier, Prince Aiden. If you need
anything, just pull the cord above your bed, and someone will be
right with you. Prince Fagan can show you. Goodnight, my princes.”
She curtsied again and hurried away, leaving nothing for Aiden to
do but step inside, very aware of the alpha at his back.
The room was barely brighter than the corridors, a small lantern
on the dresser and a candle on each nightstand. Aiden took a few
steps inside and stopped. Fagan followed and shut the door behind
them. Aiden couldn’t quite conceal a flinch at the sound.
“These will be our rooms,” Fagan said. “The bathroom is just
through here, and there’s a parlor through there. Beyond that is a
study. I like to read when I’m not too busy with my duties and
obligations.”
Aiden knew he should say something. Remark on the comfort of
the room or ask about the alpha’s taste in literature. But he was
staring right at the bed, the one he and this stranger of an alpha
were about to share, and he couldn’t force a single word past his
lips.
“I’ll return in a moment. Make yourself at home.” With that, the
alpha stepped past him and into the bathroom, shutting the door.
Aiden took a breath, but it almost seemed to seize in his chest,
his ribs constricting painfully. He forced himself to exhale, his heart
thudding hard as he considered his situation. There was no way out
of it that he could see. He was here, he was married, and the
marriage bed and all that it entailed awaited him. It would be best,
easiest, to get it over with.
The servants had taken the time to lay out a night gown. That
would be more comfortable to wear than his wedding tunic. If the
alpha wanted him naked—well, he could easily divest Aiden of it.
Taking slow steps toward the end of the bed, he reached for the
collar of his tunic and drew it up and over his head. His hands shook
as he tried to fold it, and they shook worse as he reached for the
night gown. It was only as he held it up that he realized it wasn’t
one of his own. Made from a gauzy, practically see-through material,
it was almost obscene. A gift from his uncle, no doubt. The thought
of wearing it, of it brushing against his skin, of his uncle picturing
him in it…
He let it fall as he sucked in a breath. He wanted to scream, but
that wasn’t what was expected of him. And he couldn’t defy
expectations.
He picked the hateful gown up again, the material rough against
his hands. Before he could put it on, the door opened behind him.
Aiden let the gown fall onto the bed. The alpha would tell him what
he wanted him to wear. If he wanted him to wear anything at all.
Aiden shouldn’t presume, not with a man like this. The shaking in his
hands spread up his arms to his shoulders, and he hugged himself,
closing his eyes as he waited.
 Slow footsteps approached him, followed by a sharp intake of
breath.
“Gods of the heavens. Who did that to you?”
His mind went blank, and then he remembered the bruises. Lord
Fane had quietly seethed at realizing what King Lorgan had done,
especially since there was no way Aiden would be healed before the
wedding. Perhaps Lorgan thought Prince Fagan would be pleased.
Aiden wondered if, instead, the alpha might be incensed by the idea
of another man’s marks on his new, ‘untouched’ husband.
A hand settled lightly on his shoulder. “Aiden?”
He flinched, and the touch was gone. He held himself still, his
eyes fixed on the bed, remembering belatedly that the alpha had
asked him a question.
“My uncle, Prince Fagan. I… I...” He couldn’t remember what he’d
done or said this time to earn the king’s wrath.
The prince hissed in a breath. “He had you beaten?”
Bolder than he had any right to be, Aiden replied, “I believe my
uncle thought you might have some appreciation for his work.”
Fagan’s voice was cold. “Is that so?”
Oh, gods. Aiden cursed himself for not keeping his mouth shut.
He’d gone and done it now. He could picture the gleam in his uncle’s
eye, the cruel smile on his face, as he imagined what the night held
in store for his nephew. At least now, Aiden would know how bad it
would be.
He heard Fagan moving around behind him, opening drawers and
shuffling things about. He picked up the gown and turned to face
the alpha, seeking some way to make amends. A chance to prove
he’d be obedient for all that his mouth might have a mind of its own.
“Prince Fagan, do you wish me to undress? Or should I put this
on?” He held out the gown, unable to lift his head and meet the
alpha’s eyes.
Prince Fagan stepped forward and took the gown from him. A
heavy silence followed, and then, “You’d probably be more
comfortable without the trousers. They look… tight.”
Aiden obediently unlaced them, pushing them off and stepping
out of them. He folded them neatly and set them on top of his tunic,
followed by his socks and underwear. His undertunic was last, and
he had the irrational urge to cling to that simple piece of clothing like
it might somehow protect him from what was coming. But that was
a wish befitting a child, and at twenty years of age, he was most
definitely a man.
When he turned back to the alpha, he found Fagan had moved
away, his back to Aiden as he rummaged through a dresser. He
made a sound of triumph, and Aiden froze again, wondering what he
was about to reveal.
Fagan turned around, a bundle of clothes in his arms, and Aiden
stared at them in confusion. Was that all?
The alpha closed the distance between them with slow,
measured steps and held the bundle out. “You should put these on.”
Oh, so that was it. His new husband didn’t want Lorgan or
anyone else to dress him for their wedding night. He wanted to be
the one to do it.
“Yes, my prince,” Aiden murmured. Should he turn his back? Or
would Fagan want to watch? He took a chance and turned, setting
the clothes down on the bed. The first piece of clothing was a tunic,
soft and large, and… clearly meant for someone bigger and taller
than Aiden. Nevertheless, he tugged it on. It was only as the soft
material fell down along his body that he realized how cold he’d
gotten standing naked in the bedroom.
The pants were next, too long in the leg and too wide at the
waist but with a tie that just about kept them on Aiden’s hips. They
were as soft as the tunic and warm to boot. There were soft woolen
socks, too, which he quickly donned. Covered from neck to toe, he
turned to Fagan, confusion briefly overtaking his fear. Did the alpha
intend to bed him while he was dressed like this?
Fagan waited, not with a leer or wandering hands, but with a
blanket. He laid it over Aiden’s shoulders, wrapping it around him
before pushing him to sit on the end of the bed.
The prince then knelt on the floor in front of him, wide brown
eyes staring up at him before he took Aiden’s hands in his.
“You’re frightened, and you have every reason to be. You are
aware of the reputation that comes with the name Fagan.”
 It wasn’t a question, but Aiden nodded nonetheless. He knew
what sort of alpha he’d married.
“Do you know why your uncle insisted on this marriage and
refused any other offers?”
“To punish me.” There was no point hiding the truth.
The prince closed his eyes for a moment, his fingers tightening
around Aiden’s hands.
“I’m sorry, Prince Aiden. It is not within my power to change
anything that has happened. All I can do is explain and ask for your
forgiveness.”
Forgiveness? Fagan didn’t need Aiden’s forgiveness. Aiden was
his now. He could do almost anything to him without rebuke.
He gave a small shake of his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Your uncle, King Lorgan, was adamant that you marry Prince
Fagan. My father did his utmost to convince him that others of his
children would be more suitable, but he would not be moved.”
“And now we’re married,” Aiden said with a choked-off sigh,
staring at their joined hands.
“Well, yes. And no.”
Bewildered, Aiden lifted his head.
“Your uncle intended you to marry my father’s third-born son.
The first prince, Prince Fagan Atlas. I’m afraid that Prince Fagan was
banished to a small island on the outskirts of our territory for
behaviors unbecoming of any man, prince or no.”
Aiden didn’t quite believe what he was hearing, but his husband
kept talking, kept saying the impossible.
“I am Prince Davinar Fagan. Tenth-born son and third prince. So,
you did marry Prince Fagan of the kingdom of Sands. Just not the
Prince Fagan your uncle intended. My father and his omega husband
could not in good conscience agree to that match, but our kingdom
is in great need of the trade agreement with Morona. This was the
only solution they could think of to save our people from starvation.
When the situation was explained to me, I was duty and honor-
bound to do my part.”
Aiden stared down at his hands for a long moment, trying to
make sense of it. He looked back up at the alpha, a sudden,
desperate hope rising within him.
“So you’re not Prince Fagan? I mean, the one who…”
“Who has a reputation for being cruel? For hurting omegas? No,
he is very far away from here with nothing but rocks, seals, and a
few guards to keep him company.”
“Then who are you?”
Who, exactly, had he married?
“Prince Davinar Fagan, like I said. Most people call me Davin. I
had planned to take part in the marriage circuit when it arrived this
year, but as you can see, my plans have changed.”
“Was there someone you…?” Would he be an object of
resentment, having kept Davin from his true intended?
“No, no. There wasn’t. You have no fears on that score. My heart
belongs to no one.”
“Then… what happens now?”
They were married. Their marriage bed awaited, and Aiden was
wrapped in enough clothes to weather a blizzard.
“It’s been a long, trying day for both of us. I suggest we sleep
and try to make sense of things in the morning.”
“But…”
There were expectations that came with a wedding.
The hands holding his squeezed gently. “I’m not in the habit of
forcing frightened people to do things they don’t want to do.
Especially not for the sake of tradition. You are safe here, Aiden. It is
as much in my interests for this marriage to be a success as it is in
yours. What goes on in our marriage bed is no one else’s business
but ours, but I will happily lie come morning if it sends your uncle
away satisfied with our union.”
Could the alpha really be saying what Aiden thought he was
saying? That he wouldn’t bed Aiden. That he’d lie about it.
“Come. Get under the covers. I’ll take the side nearest the door
and sleep on top.”
Aiden’s fear gave way to exhaustion, and he let the alpha guide
him into bed and douse all but one of the lights. True to his word,
the alpha lay down on top of the blankets, sitting propped up
against pillows.
 “You sleep, and I’ll keep watch,” he said.
Aiden didn’t know what the alpha was guarding him from, but he
was grateful nonetheless. Sleep seemed like an impossible feat, yet
his eyes refused to stay open, and he slipped into darkness.
 6

D avin had known the moment he saw the fear lurking in Prince
Aiden’s eyes that the omega was very aware of his brother’s
reputation and what that would mean for him. Yet, by some miracle,
Aiden actually fell asleep next to him and slept soundly through the
night. Perhaps it was accumulated exhaustion from the dread and
worry that had surely plagued him on learning who his intended
husband was.
Or maybe it was relief. Davin’s admission the night before—that
he was, in fact, not that Fagan—seemed to have lifted a terrible
weight off Aiden’s shoulders. Davin, on the other hand, slept little.
He kept one eye on the door and one on Aiden. If anyone had asked
him what he was protecting the omega from, he couldn’t have given
a coherent answer. There was only certainty in his mind that while
Lorgan still resided in this castle, Prince Aiden would not be safe.
He drifted into a light sleep just before dawn and woke to find
Aiden’s eyes open, the omega studying him. As soon as their eyes
met, Aiden glanced away, a blush spreading across his cheeks.
“Good morning,” Davin offered. He took pains to keep his voice
quiet, his tone gentle. Aiden’s fear the night before had been hard to
stomach, and he was determined to put the omega at ease as best
he could.
“Good morning,” Aiden replied, voicing it almost as a question.
Davin was about to make some teasing remark about breakfast
in bed when he remembered with a jolt that they didn’t have that
luxury. Their ruse wasn’t over yet. The wedding breakfast was still to
come.
Aiden pushed back the blankets and began to sit up, but a knock
on the door made him freeze.
Davin swung around and set his feet on the floor with a groan as
the knock came again.
“Yes?” he asked, his voice still gravelly with sleep. He caught
sight of himself in the mirror, chagrined to see his hair mussed and
his clothing rumpled.
“Good morning, my princes. The king asked me to ensure you
were awake. Breakfast is in the great hall in an hour.”
“We’re awake,” Davin called back, rubbing at his eyes.
“Do you require any assistance dressing or bathing?”
Davin glanced over his shoulder at Aiden in question, just in time
to see the omega shudder and stare at the door in horror. He was
right, of course. The last thing they needed was servants poking
around the room. They’d take one look at the bed—and Davin half-
dressed and on top of the blankets—and draw conclusions that
neither could afford.
“We can manage, thank you,” Davin said, his voice a little
stronger as he stretched.
“Of course, my princes. Ring the bell if you need anything.”
Silence followed, and Davin turned around to face Aiden. The
omega opened his mouth to speak, but Davin pressed a finger to his
lips and shook his head. Despite what his countenance suggested,
he wasn’t sleepy enough to be unaware of the wiles of their
servants.
It was another few moments before the sound of footsteps finally
moved away, heading back down the corridor.
“She was listening at the door?” Aiden’s eyes were wide with
horror.
“Don’t they do that in Morona?”
“Yes, but…”
The fear was back in Aiden’s eyes, and Davin felt he was missing
something. He sought to assuage Aiden’s fears, whatever their
cause.
 “Ah, I don’t blame her. She doesn’t mean any harm. The staff are
always excited about a wedding. They want to be the first to know
everything, and they forget themselves sometimes.”
“Unless my uncle paid her to spy on us,” Aiden said bitterly.
Davin frowned but didn’t immediately refute the notion. Their
servants prided themselves on their loyalty, making it unlikely but…
not impossible.
“If he did, I’ll find out.”
Aiden opened his mouth to speak, but Davin anticipated his
words of caution.
“After he’s departed, of course. Can’t have divided loyalties within
the palace, but I wouldn’t want to insult your uncle nor alert him to
our suspicions.”
Davin swung his feet to the floor and stood. Aiden got out of
bed, too, and stood there awkwardly in his borrowed clothes. Davin
felt a surge of something—pride? possessiveness?—at seeing the
omega dressed in his clothes. He quickly shoved down the emotion
and focused on the task at hand. He didn’t want to delay their
breakfast, though, for appearance’s sake, it would be best if they
arrived just a little after everyone else. It was important to give the
impression of distracted newlyweds who had better things to think
about this morning than breakfast.
He turned his attention to Aiden once more.
“We should get ready. Do you want to take a bath? I can make
do with a quick wash in the sink.”
“You can go first. I don’t mind.”
“I do. You couldn’t have had a comfortable sleep last night, not
with all those bruises and your long day of travel yesterday. A soak
in a hot bath will do wonders and make this morning a lot more
bearable.”
Aiden bit down on his lower lip, regarding Davin warily before
replying. “Thank you. That’s very kind. About this morning…”
“What about it?” Davin asked, crossing to the dresser where his
outfit for breakfast had already been laid out. Aiden’s outfit would
have been chosen beforehand, too, giving them one less reason to
let the servants into their bedroom this morning. The longer they
stayed away from prying eyes, the better.
“My uncle will be watching us closely. I don’t want to give away
that…” The omega rocked back and forth on his feet, trailing off.
“…That I’m not the monster he thinks I am?”
Aiden flushed and nodded slowly.
Davin gave it some thought, frowning as he turned the problem
over in his mind.
“Well, it’s all in how we act, isn’t it? He’ll expect me to be the
smug, satiated alpha, strutting around like a peacock, and you the
cowed omega I’ve brought to heel. I’m not the world’s best actor,
but I can pull that off. You’ve got the harder job, I’m afraid. Let’s
keep it simple. Keep your eyes down, stand close to me, and I’ll
make sure to keep a hand on you at all times. That’ll give the
impression that I’m possessive and you’re meek. If someone asks
you a question, look to me instead of answering. And I’ll answer for
you or nod as if I’m giving you permission. It’ll be a bit of a
performance, but I think we can pull it off. What do you think? Will
that work?”
Aiden’s eyes widened in surprise as if he wasn’t expecting Davin
to ask his opinion.
“I… I think so. He likes it when I’m scared. When I’m… cowed. I
guess I could play up the physical side. Wince a few times, like I’m
in pain…”
Davin realized with dawning horror what his parents would think
of that.
“Is that necessary?”
Aiden shrugged. “It’s why he agreed to this marriage, after all.
So when he thinks of me now, he’ll picture that, and it will give him
pleasure.”
There was no inflection in the omega’s voice as he spoke. No
anger, no shame. Even his fear was masked with a blankness, the
cause of which Davin was afraid to muse on.
What he did think about was what would happen to Aiden should
the agreement be broken. If Lorgan insisted on his return, there was
little their kingdom could do to stop him. Lorgan had the ear of
certain influential kingdoms, and the kingdom of Sands did not. And
there were his own people to think of and the food they’d need to
survive the winter that would only arrive courtesy of this treaty.
“Whatever we need to do to keep suspicion from King Lorgan’s
mind,” he promised.
He could explain it all to his parents after, lest they start fearing
he was more like his half-brother than they’d ever believed possible.
“Thank you,” Aiden said, and there was a hint of emotion in his
voice this time. A scrap of desperation that made Davin’s heart hurt.
“You don’t need to thank me,” Davin assured him. “It’s the least I
can do. You should never have been forced into this situation. I can’t
do anything to change that, but I will do what I can to make things
better for you from here on out.”
His words didn’t hit their mark. The smile Aiden sent his way was
as empty as his eyes. But it was asking a lot to expect Aiden to take
him at his word when they were no better than strangers. Time and
kindness would prove to the omega the sort of man he’d married.

Breakfast was a far more awkward event now that Davin was aware
of what was really going on. He was conscious of all the attention on
him and his new husband, most especially that of King Lorgan. Now
that he knew what to look for, he saw the leers the alpha barely
tried to conceal and the satisfaction on his face when his nephew
ducked his gaze and didn’t quite hide a wince.
Davin’s parents were their normal social selves, but he saw the
concern in their glances when they looked between him and Aiden.
Davin would have a lot of explaining to do once they saw King
Lorgan’s airship off.
The meal seemed to stretch on agonizingly long into the morning
before Lorgan pushed his seat back with a grunt of satisfaction and
stood.
“A fine meal and a fine treaty. I’m glad things have worked out to
everyone’s satisfaction.”
 His eyes lingered on Aiden and Davin’s hand, which rested
possessively on the omega’s arm.
“Yes, indeed,” Davin’s father agreed, pushing to his feet.
Everyone else followed his lead.
“And now we must depart,” Lorgan said loftily, surveying the
crowd as if they were his own adoring subjects.
Almost the whole group trailed the contingent from Morona out
of the castle and onto the field where Lorgan’s airship waited.
They stopped at the foot of the ramp, Davin resting a hand on
Aiden’s back. He was conscious of the omega’s shivering. The outfit
he’d been given for breakfast was just as light as his wedding outfit
had been—far too thin for spring in the Sands. He had no cloak to
offer this time, so he could do nothing but hope some of the heat of
his body warmed the chilled omega.
Just when he thought they were in the clear, Lorgan strode
toward them purposefully. Davin pulled Aiden a little closer, moving
his hand from the omega’s back to around his waist. Lorgan’s keen
eyes didn’t miss the motion, or the way Aiden shuddered.
“Nephew, when you reflect on your new life and the happiness
bestowed on you, I hope you’ll think of me.”
To anyone else, it would have sounded innocent enough. But
knowing who Lorgan believed Davin to be, the sentiment was all too
obvious. Lorgan wanted Aiden to be very clear he was the cause of
the suffering Lorgan anticipated for him.
“Thank you, Uncle,” Aiden murmured.
With a smirk that made anger boil beneath Davin’s skin, Lorgan
turned and strode up the ramp, his small contingent of lords and
guards hurrying after him.
As soon as the ramp was closed, Davin dropped his hand from
around Aiden’s waist but stayed close. There was always the chance
they were being watched.
He turned back toward the castle, and Aiden moved with him,
keeping up with his quick footsteps. The rest of the group followed
more sedately, and there were a few good-natured comments about
eager newlyweds. Davin let them pass over him, his mind already
three steps ahead.
 Inside the castle, he stopped the first servant he saw. “Emma,
please escort Prince Aiden back to our room.”
He turned to Aiden, unsurprised to find the omega watching him
with wary eyes.
“I must speak to my parents and make some arrangements.
Emma will see to it you have everything you need.” He looked to the
servant. “A hot drink from the kitchens, perhaps. It was cold out,
and my beloved is not dressed for the weather.”
The endearment fell easily from his lips, just another part of the
act he was now realizing did not end with Lorgan’s departure. It was
not beyond the realm of possibility that Lorgan had spies in their
castle. Unlikely among the staff that saw to the royal family, most of
whom Davin had known all his life. But there were always new
people, unfamiliar faces, and those whose loyalty wasn’t more than
skin deep.
“I will not be long,” he said, meeting Aiden’s eyes and willing the
omega to trust him just a little longer. “And then I will rejoin you.”
“As you wish, husband,” Aiden said, giving a little bow. A
performance just like the one Davin was giving.
Aiden and the servant went one way, and Davin went another,
heading for the morning room that his parents liked to frequent after
breakfast. He arrived first, but the writing table was already laid out,
as was his omega father’s embroidery, which meant they were
expected.
Standing by the tall doors that led into the courtyard, Davin
steeled himself for a difficult conversation. He’d been certain
yesterday would have been the hardest part of this marriage. Now,
he could see that the difficult days were countless, stretching out
endlessly before him. But at least he had the benefit of his home
and his family. Poor Prince Aiden was far from home, among
strangers, with nowhere safe to turn. What must the days ahead
look like to him?
 7

A iden watched the airship depart from his bedroom window, his
chamomile tea cooling on the dresser behind him. Lorgan was gone.
His uncle had ceded control of him to his new husband. But what
kind of man was Prince Davinar Fagan? That he wasn’t Fagan Atlas
meant Aiden’s misery had shifted from a foregone conclusion to a
roll of the dice. He knew nothing about Davin. Hadn’t heard any
whispers or gossip among the omegas of Morona’s court. But then,
as a third prince and the youngest of King Riallon’s many alpha sons,
he was beneath the notice of most people.
He watched until the airship disappeared from view and then
went to sit on the end of his bed, his tea untouched. Davin would
return soon, and then… and then Aiden would begin to learn how it
would be here in the Sands. He couldn’t muster up much fear. His
body was drained after weeks, months, and years of it. Nor could he
scrounge up even an ounce of optimism, for all that Davin had been
kind to him so far. They were still married, and there were still
expectations Aiden would have to meet. No matter how hard, no
matter what it cost, no matter…
He drifted into idle contemplation, reciting in his head some of
his once-favorite poems. They’d long since lost any meaning except
to help him pass the hours and stop the crawl of fear up his throat.
The morning sun surged ever higher, the scent of chamomile and
honey from the tea began to fade, and still, he sat.
 He jolted back to awareness at a knock on the door, his heart
mustering a brief gallop before settling again.
“Come in,” he called, anticipating the servant’s return. Was it
lunchtime already?
But when the door opened, it was Davin who stepped inside,
strands of his dark brown hair falling over his forehead. He brushed
them back as he turned to close the door, pausing for a moment
with his hand on the handle.
Aiden had only a moment to consider how strange it was that the
alpha had knocked on his own bedroom door before Davin turned
back toward him and smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile, but Aiden had
the sense it was supposed to put him at ease.
“I’ve spoken with my parents and explained… the situation.
They’d had suspicions that there was more to your uncle’s request
than they knew, and they want me to extend their apologies for
involving you in our subterfuge.”
Aiden stared at the alpha, bewildered, and wondered just what
response was required. He settled on, “Thank you.”
“I’ve gone ahead and made some arrangements with their
blessing. I hope they’ll meet with your satisfaction.”
Aiden’s words stuck in his throat. What sort of ‘arrangements’
could the alpha mean?
“Are you able for a short walk, do you think? I’m sure you’re tired
after everything.”
It had been a long time since such kindness and consideration
had been extended Aiden’s way. He pushed to his feet, ignoring the
ache in his body from holding himself so tensely for so long.
“I’m refreshed after my rest,” he told the alpha, even though he
wanted nothing more than to sit right back down.
Davin’s expression dimmed at his words, but all the alpha said
was, “Then if you’ll follow me…”
Aiden trailed the prince from the bedroom, and they walked side
by side along the corridor.
“That room was only intended to be ours for the wedding night.
My parents had made arrangements for us to share the southeast
wing with my brother Julio and his husband, but after speaking with
them, I think it would be far better if we had our own space. A little
annex in the upper levels of the castle. The servants are still getting
everything ready. There hasn’t been anyone in residence there for
quite some time.”
The ‘little annex’ turned out to be in the northernmost part of the
castle. They had to climb up a steep set of stairs to reach it and
were rewarded with an inner courtyard surrounded by a semicircle of
rooms. The furnishing looked dated, and there was layer upon layer
of dust, which an industrious group of servants was attacking with
fervor.
Davin led him past the first door before pausing to open the next
and peer inside.
“This is… No.”
He tried the next door. “Wrong again.”
At his third attempt, he made a sound of triumph. “Aha. Here we
are.”
He stepped inside and held open the door, motioning for Aiden to
enter.
A servant was busy making the bed, though they stopped,
bowed, and hurried out when they realized who’d just entered.
There were no curtains on the windows, and the furniture looked
worn, but it was a bright and large bedroom.
“This will be your room,” Davin said.
“My room?” Aiden repeated, certain he’d heard wrong. Surely
Davin meant ‘our room’?
“There’s an adjoining bathroom and a closet,” the alpha added,
pointing to two doors on the same wall. “And through here…”
He walked to the third door on the opposite wall and opened it
with a flourish to reveal another bedroom. “…my room.”
Before Aiden could muster up a response, Davin was already
moving, heading back out into the corridor. They walked back the
way they’d come to one of the doors Davin had already opened.
“This parlor is yours, for your own use. You can take meals here
if you wish. No one will disturb you.”
Aiden peered inside the small but comfortable room, taking in the
armchair and the little table that would barely seat two. Warm light
spilled through the window, softening everything it touched.
Davin was still talking, gesturing further along the corridor and
saying something about another parlor and a study. Aiden was too
busy putting all the pieces together. A bedroom of his own. A private
parlor where he could take meals. A marriage in name only, then.
He glanced at Davin’s earnest face. A kindness. From an alpha
who no more wanted him than he wanted any of this.
“Thank you, Prince Davin. It’s perfect.”
Davin’s smile dimmed. “It isn’t much of anything yet, but we’ll
soon make it comfortable. And you won’t be bothered in here by
people coming and going. Fewer eyes and less need to…”
He trailed off, but Aiden knew exactly what he meant. They
wouldn’t have to spend much time playing the happy couple living
up here. No one would know what went on behind closed doors,
especially if Davin chose their servants well.
“Thank you,” he said again, feeling nothing. Not even relief.
 8

A iden had anticipated many calls on his time during the first few
weeks of his marriage. It was customary, or so he thought. Lunches
and dinners, events to introduce him to the court and the family. But
if any of that had ever been planned, it didn’t come to pass.
That first day of his new life, after Lorgan’s departure, had set
the tone for everything that came after. There was very little
pressure put to bear on him. It was as if the whole castle had taken
a step back.
Perhaps it was a tradition of the kingdom to let a new couple
settle into their marriage. But if that was so, then for Aiden, it was
missing one key component—his husband. Oh, he saw Davin almost
every day. For a few moments after lunch, which he took alone in his
parlor. Or sometimes in the evening, when he finished dinner and
walked the few steps back to his room and they passed in the
corridor. Breakfast he never seemed to manage, owing to sleeping
so late that the sun was well risen by the time he struggled out of
bed. And his eyes rarely stayed open long after dinner, his bed
calling to him again mere hours after he’d relinquished it.
Food did not excite him, though after the first visit by the palace
doctor, he choked down enough so that the servants didn’t grow
concerned. The opportunity to explore his new home similarly did
not grip him. Sometimes, even the walk from his bedroom to the
parlor seemed like a momentous effort. As did bathing, dressing, or
the mere act of existing. And though Davin’s appearances were
fleeting, Aiden had a vague awareness of the alpha hovering in his
periphery. If not literally, then figuratively, if Davin’s gentle inquiries
into how he was doing were any indication.
If this was married life, Aiden thought he could survive it.
Certainly, it was far easier to sleep through his existence than to face
it and all he’d lost. Especially now that Jonas was far beyond anyone
but Lorgan’s reach.
And then, one afternoon, something changed. He dragged
himself out of bed, unable to muster up the energy to do more than
wash his face, and made the onerous journey to his parlor to eat so
the servants wouldn’t suggest calling the doctor again.
He stepped through the door, expecting to see the small table
laid for one, and instead found someone already there. His husband
stood by the window, his back to Aiden, though he turned at the
sound of the door opening.
“Prince Davin?”
He blinked in surprise, half-expecting the alpha to be a figment
of his imagination.
“You should probably call me Davin, seeing as we’re almost a
month married,” the prince said brightly. “Good afternoon, Prince
Aiden. I hope you’re well today.”
Aiden broke the alpha’s gaze and tugged on his rumpled clothes,
shame burning his cheeks. He knew what Davin would see when he
looked at him. His unwashed state, his disheveled appearance. A far
cry from what an omega husband should be.
“I’m sorry, Prince Davin. I wasn’t expecting you.”
Davin’s tone was gentle when he spoke, which somehow made
things worse. “Of course, you weren’t. I should have left word with
your servants.”
“Is there… something you need?”
Davin stepped away from the window and gestured to the small
table, which, for the first time since Aiden had been here, had been
set for two.
“Sit, please. I don’t want to delay your first meal of the day.”
Aiden’s cheeks got hotter at the implication that Davin was all too
aware of his slovenly habits.
Another random document with
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hard striving to live according to the light that is in them, but
admiration for their outer graces and decencies—in brief, confidence
that they will always act generously and understandingly in their
intercourse with us. We must trust men before we may enjoy them.
Manifestly, it is impossible to put any such trust in a Puritan. With the
best intentions in the world he cannot rid himself of the delusion that
his duty to save us from our sins—i. e., from the non-Puritanical acts
that we delight in—is paramount to his duty to let us be happy in our
own way. Thus he is unable to be tolerant, and with tolerance goes
magnanimity. A Puritan cannot be magnanimous. He is
constitutionally unable to grasp the notion that it is better to be
decent than to be steadfast, or even than to be just. So with the
democrat, who is simply a Puritan doubly damned. When the late Dr.
Wilson, confronted by the case of poor old silly Debs, decided
instantly that Debs must remain in jail, he acted as a true democrat
and a perfect Puritan. The impulse to be magnanimous, to forgive
and forget, to be kindly and generous toward a misguided and
harmless old man, was overcome by the harsh Puritan compulsion
to observe the letter of the law at all costs. Every Puritan is a lawyer,
and so is every democrat.

4.
Corruption Under Democracy
This moral compulsion of the Puritan and democrat, of course, is
mainly bogus. When one has written off cruelty, envy and cowardice,
one has accounted for nine-tenths of it. Certainly I need not argue at
this late date that the Ur-Puritan of New England was by no means
the vestal that his heirs and assigns think of when they praise him.
He was not only a very carnal fellow, and given to lamentable
transactions with loose women and fiery jugs; he was also a virtuoso
of sharp practices, and to this day his feats in that department
survive in fable. Nor is there any perceptible improvement in his
successors. When a gang of real estate agents (i. e. rent sweaters),
bond salesman and automobile dealers gets together to sob for
Service, it takes no Freudian to surmise that someone is about to be
swindled. The cult of Service, indeed, is half a sop to conscience,
and half a bait to catch conies. Its cultivation in the United States
runs parallel with the most gorgeous development of imposture as a
fine art that Christendom has ever seen. I speak of a fine art in the
literal sense; in the form of advertising it enlists such talents as,
under less pious civilizations, would be devoted to the confection of
cathedrals, and even, perhaps, masses. A sixth of the Americano’s
income is rooked out of him by rogues who have at him officially, and
in the name of the government; half the remainder goes to sharpers
who prefer the greater risks and greater profits of private enterprise.
All schemes to save him from such victimizations have failed in the
past, and all of them, I believe, are bound to fail in the future; most of
the more gaudy of them are simply devices to facilitate fresh
victimizations. For democratic man, dreaming eternally of Utopias, is
ever a prey to shibboleths, and those that fetch him in his political
capacity are more than matched by those that fetch him in his rôle of
private citizen. His normal and natural situation, held through all the
vicissitudes of his brief history, has been that of one who, at great
cost and effort, has sneaked home a jug of contraband whiskey,
sworn to have issued out of a padlocked distillery, and then finds, on
uncorking it, that it is a compound of pepper, prune juice and wood
alcohol. This, in a sentence, is the history of democracy. It is, in
detail, the history of all such characteristically democratic
masterpieces as Bryanism, Ku Kluxery, and the war to end war. They
are full of virtuous pretences, and they are unmitigated swindles.
All observers of democracy, from Tocqueville to the Adams
brothers and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, have marveled at its corruptions
on the political side, and speculated heavily as to the causes thereof.
The fact was noted in the earliest days of the democratic movement,
and Friedrich von Gentz, who began life as an Anglomaniac, was
using it as an argument against the parliamentary system so early as
1809. Gentz, who served Metternich as the current Washington
correspondents serve whatever dullard happens to be President,
contended that the introduction of democracy on the Continent would
bring in a reign of bribery, and thus destroy the integrity and authority
of the state. The proofs that he was right were already piling up, in
his day, in the United States. They were destined to be greatly
reinforced when the Third Republic got under way in France in 1870,
and to be given impressive support when the German Republic set
up shop in 1918. In 1919, for the first time since the coronation of
Henry the Fowler, a German Cabinet minister crossed the border
between days, his loot under his arm. The historians, immersed in
their closets, marvel that such things happen, and marvel even more
that democracy takes them calmly, and even lightly. Somewhere in
“The Education of Henry Adams” you will find an account of the
gigantic peculations that went on during the second Grant
administration, and melancholy reflections upon the populace’s
philosophic acceptance of them as inevitable, and even natural. In
our own time we have seen the English mob embrace and elevate to
higher office the democratic statesmen caught in the Marconi
scandal, and the American mob condone almost automatically the
herculean raids upon the Treasury that marked the Wilson
administration, and the less spectacular but even more deliberate
thievings that went on under the martyred Harding. In the latter case
it turned upon the small body of specialists in rectitude who ventured
to protest, and in the end they found themselves far more unpopular
than the thieves.
Such phenomena, as I say, puzzle the more academic
pathologists of democracy, but as for me, I only say that they seem
to be in strict accord with God’s invariable laws. Why should
democracy rise against bribery? It is itself a form of wholesale
bribery. In place of a government with a fixed purpose and a visible
goal, it sets up a government that is a mere function of the mob’s
vagaries, and that maintains itself by constantly bargaining with
those vagaries. Its security depends wholly upon providing
satisfactory bribes for the prehensile minorities that constitute the
mob, or that have managed to deceive and inflame the mob. One
day the labour leaders—a government within the general
government—must be bought with offices; the next day the dupes of
these labour leaders must be bought with legislation, usually of a
sort loading the ordinary scales of justice in their favour; the day after
there must be something for the manufacturers, for the Methodists,
for the Catholics, for the farmers. I have exhibited, in another work,
the fact that this last class demands bribes pure and simple—that its
yearnings for its own private advantage are never ameliorated by
yearnings for the common good. The whole process of government
under democracy, as everyone knows, is a process of similar
trading. The very head of the state, having no title to his office save
that which lies in the popular will, is forced to haggle and bargain like
the lowliest office-seeker. There has been no President of the United
States since Washington who did not go into office with a long list of
promises in his pocket, and nine-tenths of them have always been
promises of private reward from the public store. It is surely not
regarded as immoral, by the democratic ethic, to make and execute
such promises, though statesmen of lofty pretensions, e. g., Lincoln,
sometimes deny having made them. What is reproached as immoral
is making them, and then not keeping them. When the late Dr.
Wilson made William Jennings Bryan his Secretary of State the act
brought forth only tolerant smiles, though it was comparable to
appointing a chiropractor Surgeon-General of the Army—a feat
which Dr. Harding, a few years later, escaped performing only by a
hair. But if Wilson had forgotten his obligation to Bryan there would
have been an outburst of moral indignation, even among Bryan’s
enemies, and the collapse of Wilson would have come long before it
did. When he blew up at last it was not because, after promulgating
his Fourteen Points, he joined in swindling a helpless foe at
Versailles; it was because he tried, at Paris, to undo some of the
consequences of that fraud by forcing the United States into the
League of Nations. A democratic state, indeed, is so firmly grounded
upon cheats and humbugs of all sorts that they inevitably colour its
dealings with other nations, and so one always finds it regarded as a
dubious friend and a tricky foe. That the United States, in its foreign
relations, has descended to gross deceits and tergiversations since
the earliest days of the Republic was long ago pointed out by Lecky;
it is regarded universally to-day as a pious fraud—which is to say, as
a Puritan. Nor has England, the next most eminent democratic state,
got the name of perfide Albion for nothing. Ruled by shady men, a
nation itself becomes shady.
In its domestic relations, of course, the same causes have the
same effects. The government deals with the citizens from whom it
has its mandate in a base and disingenuous manner, and fails
completely to maintain equal justice among them. It not only follows
the majority in persecuting those who happen to be unpopular; it also
institutes persecutions of its own, and frequently against men of the
greatest rectitude and largest public usefulness. I marvel that no
candidate for the doctorate has ever written a realistic history of the
American Department of Justice, ironically so called. It has been
engaged in sharp practices since the earliest days, and remains a
fecund source of oppression and corruption to-day. It is hard to recall
an administration in which it was not the centre of grave scandal.
Within our own time it has actually resorted to perjury in its efforts to
undo men guilty of flouting it, and at all times it has laboured valiantly
to nullify the guarantees of the Bill of Rights. The doings of its corps
of spies and agents provocateurs are worthy the pen of some
confectioner of dime novels; at one time they were employed against
the members of the two houses of Congress, and the alarmed
legislators threw them off only by threatening to hold up their pay. As
Mill long ago pointed out, the tyranny of the majority under
democracy is not only shown in oppressive laws, but also in a
usurped power to suspend the operation of laws that are just. In this
enterprise a democratic government always marches ahead of the
majority. Even more than the most absolute oriental despotism, it
becomes a government of men, not of laws. Its favourites are, to all
intents and purposes, immune to criminal processes, whatever their
offences, and its enemies are exposed to espionage and persecution
of the most aggravated sort. It takes advantage of every passing
craze and delusion of the mob to dispose of those who oppose it,
and it maintains a complex and highly effective machine for
launching such crazes and delusions when the supply of them lags.
Above all, it always shows that characteristically Puritan habit of
which Brooks Adams wrote in “The Emancipation of Massachusetts”:
the habit, to wit, of inflicting as much mental suffering as possible
upon its victims. That is to say, it not only has at them by legal
means; it also defames them, and so seeks to ruin them doubly. The
constant and central aim of every democratic government is to
silence criticism of itself. It begins to weaken, i. e., the jobs of its
component rogues begin to be insecure, the instant such criticism
rises. It is thus fidei defensor before it is anything else, and its whole
power, legal and extra-legal, is thrown against the sceptic who
challenges its infallibility. Constitutional checks have little effect upon
its operations, for the only machinery for putting them into effect is
under its control. No ruler, indeed, ever wants to be a constitutional
ruler, and least of all the ruler whose reign has a term, and who must
make hay, in consequence, while the sun shines. Under republics,
as under constitutional monarchies, the history of government is a
history of successive usurpations. I avoid the banality of pointing to
the cases of Lincoln and Wilson. No man would want to be President
of the United States in strict accordance with the Constitution. There
is no sense of power in merely executing laws; it comes from
evading or augmenting them.
I incline to think that this view of government as a group of men
struggling for power and profit, in the face and at the expense of the
generality of men, has its place somewhere in the dark recesses of
the popular mind, and that it accounts, at least in large part, for the
toleration with which public corruption is regarded in democratic
states. Democratic man, to begin with, is corrupt himself: he will take
whatever he can safely get, law or no law. He assumes, naturally
and accurately, that the knaves and mountebanks who govern him
are of the same kidney—in his own phrase, that they are in public life
for what there is in it. It thus does not shock him to find them running
true to the ordinances of their nature. If, indeed, any individual
among them shows an unusual rectitude, and refuses spectacularly
to take what might be his for the grabbing, Homo boobiens sets him
down as either a liar or an idiot, and refuses to admire him. So with
private rogues who tap the communal till. Democratic man is stupid,
but he is not so stupid that he does not see the government as a
group of men devoted to his exploitation—that is, as a group external
to his own group, and with antagonistic interests. He believes that its
central aim is to squeeze as much out of him as he can be forced to
yield, and so he sees no immorality in attempting a contrary squeeze
when the opportunity offers. Beating the government thus becomes
a transaction devoid of moral turpitude. If, when it is achieved on an
heroic scale by scoundrels of high tone, a storm of public indignation
follows, the springs of that indignation are to be found, not in virtue,
but in envy. In point of fact, it seldom follows. As I have said, there
was little if any public fury over the colossal stealings that went on
during the Wilson administration, and there was still less over the
smaller but perhaps even more cynical stealings that glorified the
short reign of Harding; in the latter case, in fact, most of the odium
settled upon the specialists in righteousness who laid the thieves by
the heels. The soldiers coming home from the War for Democracy
did not demand that the war profiteers be jailed; they simply
demanded that they themselves be paid enough to make up the
difference between what they got for fighting for their country and
what they might have stolen had they escaped the draft. Their chief
indignation was lavished, not upon the airship contractors who made
off with a billion, but upon their brothers who were paid $10 a day in
the shipyards. The feats of the former were beyond their grasp, but
those of the latter they could imagine—and envy.
This fellow feeling for thieves is probably what makes capitalism
so secure in democratic societies. Under absolutism it is always in
danger, and not infrequently, as history teaches, it is exploited and
undone, but under democracy it is safe. Democratic man can
understand the aims and aspirations of capitalism; they are, greatly
magnified, simply his own aims and aspirations. Thus he tends to be
friendly to it, and to view with suspicion those who propose to
overthrow it. The new system, whatever its nature, would force him
to invent a whole new outfit of dreams, and that is always a difficult
and unpleasant business, to workers in the ditch as to philosophers
in the learned grove. Capitalism under democracy has a further
advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and
weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against
the other half, and thus dispose of both. That is precisely what
happened in the United States after the late war. The danger that
confronted capitalism was then a double one. On the one side there
was the tall talk that the returning conscripts, once they got out of
uniform, would demand the punishment of the patriots who had
looted the public treasury while they were away. On the other side
there was an uneasy rumour that a war Katzenjammer was heavily
upon them, and that they would demand a scientific inquiry into the
true causes and aims of the war, and into the manner and purposes
of their own uncomfortable exploitation. This double danger was
quickly met and turned off, and by the simple device of diverting the
bile of the conscripts against those of their own class who had
escaped servitude, to wit, the small group of draft-dodgers and
conscientious objectors and the larger group of political radicals, who
were represented to be slackers in theory if not in fact. Thus one
group of victims was set upon the other, and the fact that both had a
grievance against their joint exploiters was concealed and forgotten.
Mob fears, easily aroused, aided in the achievement of the coup.
Within a few weeks gallant bands of American Legionaries were
hunting Reds down all the back-alleys of the land, and gaudily
butchering them, when found, at odds of a hundred to one. I know of
nothing more indicative of the strength of capitalism under
democracy than this melodramatic and extremely amusing business.
The scheme succeeded admirably, and it deserved to succeed, for it
was managed with laudable virtuosity, and it was based upon a
shrewd understanding of democratic psychology.
I believe that every other emergency that is likely to arise, at
least in the United States, will be dealt with in the same adroit and
effective manner. The same thing has been done in other democratic
states: I point to the so-called general strike in England in 1926,
which was wrecked by pitting half of the proletariat against the other
half. The capitalistic system now enlists the best brains in all the
democratic nations, including France and Germany, and I believe
that, instead of losing such support hereafter, it will get more and
more of it. As the old aristocracies decline, the plutocracy is bound to
inherit their hegemony, and to have the support of the nether mob.
An aristocratic society may hold that a soldier or a man of learning is
superior to a rich manufacturer or banker, but in a democratic society
the latter are inevitably put higher, if only because their achievement
is more readily comprehended by the inferior man, and he can more
easily imagine himself, by some favour of God, duplicating it. Thus
the imponderable but powerful force of public opinion directs the
aspirations of all the more alert and ambitious young men toward
business, and what is so assiduously practised tends to produce
experts. E. W. Howe, I incline to think, is quite right when he argues
that the average American banker or business man, whatever his
demerits otherwise, is at least more competent professionally than
the average American statesman, musician, painter, author, labour
leader, scholar, theologian or politician. Think of the best American
poet of our time, or the best soldier, or the best violoncellist, and then
ask yourself if his rank among his fellows in the world is seriously to
be compared with that of the late J. Pierpont Morgan among financial
manipulators, or that of John D. Rockefeller among traders. The
capitalists, in fact, run the country, as they run all democracies: they
emerged in Germany, after the republic arose from the ruins of the
late war, like Anadyomene from the sea. They organize and control
the minorities that struggle eternally for power, and so get a
gradually firmer grip upon the government. One by one they dispose
of such demagogues as Bryan and Roosevelt, and put the helm of
state into the hands of trusted and reliable men—McKinley, Harding,
Coolidge. In England, Germany and France they patronize, in a
somewhat wistful way, what remains of the old aristocracies. In the
United States, through such agents as the late Gompers, they keep
Demos penned in a gilt and glittering cage. Public opinion? Walter
Lippmann, searching for it, could not find it. A century before him
Fichte said “es gar nicht existirte.” Public opinion, in its raw state,
gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob’s fears. It is piped to
central factories, and there it is flavoured and coloured, and put into
cans.
CODA

IV
 CODA

1.
The Future of Democracy
Whether or not democracy is destined to survive in the world
until the corruptible puts on incorruption and the immemorial
Christian dead leap out of their graves, their faces shining and their
yells resounding—this is something, I confess, that I don’t know, nor
is it necessary, for the purposes of the present inquiry, that I venture
upon the hazard of a guess. My business is not prognosis, but
diagnosis. I am not engaged in therapeutics, but in pathology. That
simple statement of fact, I daresay, will be accepted as a confession,
condemning me out of hand as unfit for my task, and even throwing
a certain doubt upon my bona fides. For it is one of the peculiar
intellectual accompaniments of democracy that the concept of the
insoluble becomes unfashionable—nay, almost infamous. To lack a
remedy is to lack the very license to discuss disease. The causes of
this are to be sought, without question, in the nature of democracy
itself. It came into the world as a cure-all, and it remains primarily a
cure-all to this day. Any boil upon the body politic, however vast and
raging, may be relieved by taking a vote; any flux of blood may be
stopped by passing a law. The aim of government is to repeal the
laws of nature, and re-enact them with moral amendments. War
becomes simply a device to end war. The state, a mystical
emanation from the mob, takes on a transcendental potency, and
acquires the power to make over the father which begat it. Nothing
remains inscrutable and beyond remedy, not even the way of a man
with a maid. It was not so under the ancient and accursed systems
of despotism, now happily purged out of the world. They, too, I grant
you, had certain pretensions of an homeric gaudiness, but they at
least refrained from attempts to abolish sin, poverty, stupidity,
cowardice, and other such immutable realities. Mediæval
Christianity, which was a theological and philosophical apologia for
those systems, actually erected belief in that immutability into a
cardinal article of faith. The evils of the world were incurable: one put
off the quest for a perfect moral order until one got to heaven, post
mortem. There arose, in consequence, a scheme of checks and
balances that was consummate and completely satisfactory, for it
could not be put to a test, and the logical holes in it were chinked
with miracles. But no more. To-day the Holy Saints are deposed.
Now each and every human problem swings into the range of
practical politics. The worst and oldest of them may be solved
facilely by travelling bands of lady Ph.D.’s, each bearing the
mandate of a Legislature of kept men, all unfaithful to their
protectors.
Democracy becomes a substitute for the old religion, and the
antithesis of it: the Ku Kluxers, though their reasoning may be faulty,
are not far off the facts in their conclusion that Holy Church is its
enemy. It shows all the magical potency of the great systems of faith.
It has the power to enchant and disarm; it is not vulnerable to logical
attack. I point for proof to the appalling gyrations and contortions of
its chief exponents. Read, for example, the late James Bryce’s
“Modern Democracies.” Observe how he amasses incontrovertible
evidence that democracy doesn’t work—and then concludes with a
stout declaration that it does. Or, if his two fat volumes are too much
for you, turn to some school reader and give a judicious perusal to
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, with its argument that the North fought
the Civil War to save self-government to the world!—a thesis echoed
in falsetto, and by feebler men, fifty years later. It is impossible, by
any device known to philosophers, to meet doctrines of that sort;
they obviously lie outside the range of logical ideas. There is, in the
human mind, a natural taste for such hocus-pocus. It greatly
simplifies the process of ratiocination, which is unbearably painful to
the great majority of men. What dulls and baffles the teeth may be
got down conveniently by an heroic gulp. No doubt there is an
explanation here of the long-continued popularity of the dogma of the
Trinity, which remains unstated in plain terms after two thousand
years. And no doubt the dogma of Transubstantiation came under
fire in the Reformation because it had grown too simple and
comprehensible—because even the Scholastic philosophy had been
unable to convert its plain propositions into something that could be
believed without being understood. Democracy is shot through with
this delight in the incredible, this banal mysticism. One cannot
discuss it without colliding with preposterous postulates, all of them
cherished like authentic hairs from the whiskers of Moses himself. I
have alluded to its touching acceptance of the faith that progress is
illimitable and ordained of God—that every human problem, in the
very nature of things, may be solved. There are corollaries that are
even more naïve. One, for example, is to the general effect that
optimism is a virtue in itself—that there is a mysterious merit in being
hopeful and of glad heart, even in the presence of adverse and
immovable facts. This curious notion turns the glittering wheels of
Rotary, and is the motive power of the political New Thoughters
called Liberals. Certainly the attitude of the average American Liberal
toward the so-called League of Nations offered superb clinical
material to the student of democratic psychopathology. He began by
arguing that the League would save the world. Confronted by proofs
of its fraudulence, he switched to the doctrine that believing in it
would save the world. So, later on, with the Washington
Disarmament Conference. The man who hopes absurdly, it appears,
is in some fantastic and gaseous manner a better citizen than the
man who detects and exposes the truth. Bear this sweet democratic
axiom clearly in mind. It is, fundamentally, what is the matter with the
United States.
As I say, my present mandate does not oblige me to conjure up a
system that will surpass and shame democracy as democracy
surpasses and shames the polity of the Andaman Islanders or the
Great Khan—a system full-blown and perfect, like Prohibition, and
ready to be put into effect by the simple adoption of an amendment
to the Constitution. Such a system, for all I know, may lie outside the
farthest soarings of the human mind, though that mind can weigh the
stars and know God. Until the end of the chapter the ants and bees
may flutter their sardonic antennæ at us in that department, as they
do in others: the last joke upon man may be that he never learned
how to govern himself in a rational and competent manner, as the
last joke upon woman may be that she never had a baby without
wishing that the Day of Judgment were a week past. I am not even
undertaking to prove here that democracy is too full of evils to be
further borne. On the contrary, I am convinced that it has some
valuable merits, not often described, and I shall refer to a few of
them presently. All I argue is that its manifest defects, if they are ever
to be got rid of at all, must be got rid of by examining them
realistically—that they will never cease to afflict all the more puissant
and exemplary nations so long as discussing them is impeded by
concepts borrowed from theology. As for me, I have never
encountered any actual evidence, convincing to an ordinary jury, that
vox populi is actually vox Dei. The proofs, indeed, run the other way.
The life of the inferior man is one long protest against the obstacles
that God interposes to the attainment of his dreams, and democracy,
if it is anything at all, is simply one way of getting ’round those
obstacles. Thus it represents, not a jingling echo of what seems to
be the divine will, but a raucous defiance of it. To that extent,
perhaps, it is truly civilized, for civilization, as I have argued
elsewhere, is best described as an effort to remedy the blunders and
check the cruel humours of the Cosmic Kaiser. But what is defiant is
surely not official, and what is not official is open to examination.
For all I know, democracy may be a self-limiting disease, as
civilization itself seems to be. There are obvious paradoxes in its
philosophy, and some of them have a suicidal smack. It offers John
Doe a means to rise above his place beside Richard Roe, and then,
by making Roe his equal, it takes away the chief usufructs of the
rising. I here attempt no pretty logical gymnastics: the history of
democratic states is a history of disingenuous efforts to get rid of the
second half of that dilemma. There is not only the natural yearning of
Doe to use and enjoy the superiority that he has won; there is also
the natural tendency of Roe, as an inferior man, to acknowledge it.
Democracy, in fact, is always inventing class distinctions, despite its
theoretical abhorrence of them. The baron has departed, but in his
place stand the grand goblin, the supreme worthy archon, the
sovereign grand commander. Democratic man, as I have remarked,
is quite unable to think of himself as a free individual; he must belong
to a group, or shake with fear and loneliness—and the group, of
course, must have its leaders. It would be hard to find a country in
which such brummagem serene highnesses are revered with more
passionate devotion than they get in the United States. The
distinction that goes with mere office runs far ahead of the distinction
that goes with actual achievement. A Harding is regarded as
genuinely superior to a Halsted, no doubt because his doings are
better understood. But there is a form of human striving that is
understood by democratic man even better than Harding’s, and that
is the striving for money. Thus the plutocracy, in a democratic state,
tends to take the place of the missing aristocracy, and even to be
mistaken for it. It is, of course, something quite different. It lacks all
the essential characters of a true aristocracy: a clean tradition,
culture, public spirit, honesty, honour, courage—above all, courage.
It stands under no bond of obligation to the state; it has no public
duty; it is transient and lacks a goal. Its most puissant dignitaries of
to-day came out of the mob only yesterday—and from the mob they
bring all its peculiar ignobilities. As practically encountered, the
plutocracy stands quite as far from the honnête homme as it stands
from the Holy Saints. Its main character is its incurable
timorousness; it is for ever grasping at the straws held out by
demagogues. Half a dozen gabby Jewish youths, meeting in a back
room to plan a revolution—in other words, half a dozen kittens
preparing to upset the Matterhorn—are enough to scare it half to
death. Its dreams are of banshees, hobgoblins, bugaboos. The
honest, untroubled snores of a Percy or a Hohenstaufen are quite
beyond it.
The plutocracy, as I say, is comprehensible to the mob because
its aspirations are essentially those of inferior men: it is not by
accident that Christianity, a mob religion, paves heaven with gold
and precious stones, i. e., with money. There are, of course,
reactions against this ignoble ideal among men of more civilized
tastes, even in democratic states, and sometimes they arouse the
mob to a transient distrust of certain of the plutocratic pretensions.
But that distrust seldom arises above mere envy, and the polemic
which engenders it is seldom sound in logic or impeccable in motive.
What it lacks is aristocratic disinterestedness, born of aristocratic
security. There is no body of opinion behind it that is, in the strictest
sense, a free opinion. Its chief exponents, by some divine irony, are
pedagogues of one sort or another—which is to say, men chiefly
marked by their haunting fear of losing their jobs. Living under such
terrors, with the plutocracy policing them harshly on one side and the
mob congenitally suspicious of them on the other, it is no wonder
that their revolt usually peters out in metaphysics, and that they tend
to abandon it as their families grow up, and the costs of heresy
become prohibitive. The pedagogue, in the long run, shows the
virtues of the Congressman, the newspaper editorial writer or the
butler, not those of the aristocrat. When, by any chance, he persists
in contumacy beyond thirty, it is only too commonly a sign, not that
he is heroic, but simply that he is pathological. So with most of his
brethren of the Utopian Fife and Drum Corps, whether they issue out
of his own seminary or out of the wilderness. They are fanatics; not
statesmen. Thus politics, under democracy, resolves itself into
impossible alternatives. Whatever the label on the parties, or the war
cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical
choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of
preposterous impossibilists on the other. One must either follow the
New York Times, or one must be prepared to swallow Bryan and the
Bolsheviki. It is a pity that this is so. For what democracy needs most
of all is a party that will separate the good that is in it theoretically
from the evils that beset it practically, and then try to erect that good
into a workable system. What it needs beyond everything is a party
of liberty. It produces, true enough, occasional libertarians, just as
despotism produces occasional regicides, but it treats them in the
same drum-head way. It will never have a party of them until it
invents and installs a genuine aristocracy, to breed them and secure
them.

2.
Last Words
I have alluded somewhat vaguely to the merits of democracy.
One of them is quite obvious: it is, perhaps, the most charming form
of government ever devised by man. The reason is not far to seek. It
is based upon propositions that are palpably not true—and what is
not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating
and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true. Truth has
a harshness that alarms them, and an air of finality that collides with
their incurable romanticism. They turn, in all the great emergencies
of life, to the ancient promises, transparently false but immensely
comforting, and of all those ancient promises there is none more
comforting than the one to the effect that the lowly shall inherit the
earth. It is at the bottom of the dominant religious system of the
modern world, and it is at the bottom of the dominant political
system. The latter, which is democracy, gives it an even higher credit
and authority than the former, which is Christianity. More, democracy
gives it a certain appearance of objective and demonstrable truth.
The mob man, functioning as citizen, gets a feeling that he is really
important to the world—that he is genuinely running things. Out of
his maudlin herding after rogues and mountebanks there comes to
him a sense of vast and mysterious power—which is what makes
archbishops, police sergeants, the grand goblins of the Ku Klux and
other such magnificoes happy. And out of it there comes, too, a
conviction that he is somehow wise, that his views are taken
seriously by his betters—which is what makes United States
Senators, fortune-tellers and Young Intellectuals happy. Finally, there
comes out of it a glowing consciousness of a high duty triumphantly
done—which is what makes hangmen and husbands happy.
All these forms of happiness, of course, are illusory. They don’t
last. The democrat, leaping into the air to flap his wings and praise
God, is for ever coming down with a thump. The seeds of his
disaster, as I have shown, lie in his own stupidity: he can never get
rid of the naïve delusion—so beautifully Christian!—that happiness is
something to be got by taking it away from the other fellow. But there
are seeds, too, in the very nature of things: a promise, after all, is
only a promise, even when it is supported by divine revelation, and
the chances against its fulfilment may be put into a depressing
mathematical formula. Here the irony that lies under all human
aspiration shows itself: the quest for happiness, as always, brings
only unhappiness in the end. But saying that is merely saying that
the true charm of democracy is not for the democrat but for the
spectator. That spectator, it seems to me, is favoured with a show of
the first cut and calibre. Try to imagine anything more heroically
absurd! What grotesque false pretences! What a parade of obvious
imbecilities! What a welter of fraud! But is fraud unamusing? Then I
retire forthwith as a psychologist. The fraud of democracy, I contend,
is more amusing than any other—more amusing even, and by miles,
than the fraud of religion. Go into your praying-chamber and give
sober thought to any of the more characteristic democratic
inventions: say, Law Enforcement. Or to any of the typical
democratic prophets: say, the late Archangel Bryan. If you don’t
come out paled and palsied by mirth then you will not laugh on the
Last Day itself, when Presbyterians step out of the grave like chicks
from the egg, and wings blossom from their scapulæ, and they leap
into interstellar space with roars of joy.
I have spoken hitherto of the possibility that democracy may be a
self-limiting disease, like measles. It is, perhaps, something more: it
is self-devouring. One cannot observe it objectively without being
impressed by its curious distrust of itself—its apparently ineradicable
tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. I
need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when
the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy,
on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as
taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity.
Lincoln, Roosevelt and Wilson come instantly to mind: Jackson and
Cleveland are in the background, waiting to be recalled. Nor is this
process confined to times of alarm and terror: it is going on day in
and day out. Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it
theoretically loves. I have rehearsed some of its operations against
liberty, the very corner-stone of its political metaphysic. It not only
wars upon the thing itself; it even wars upon mere academic
advocacy of it. I offer the spectacle of Americans jailed for reading
the Bill of Rights as perhaps the most gaudily humorous ever
witnessed in the modern world. Try to imagine monarchy jailing
subjects for maintaining the divine right of Kings! Or Christianity
damning a believer for arguing that Jesus Christ was the Son of
God! This last, perhaps, has been done: anything is possible in that
direction. But under democracy the remotest and most fantastic
possibility is a commonplace of every day. All the axioms resolve
themselves into thundering paradoxes, many amounting to
downright contradictions in terms. The mob is competent to rule the
rest of us—but it must be rigorously policed itself. There is a
government, not of men, but of laws—but men are set upon benches
to decide finally what the law is and may be. The highest function of
the citizen is to serve the state—but the first assumption that meets
him, when he essays to discharge it, is an assumption of his
disingenuousness and dishonour. Is that assumption commonly
sound? Then the farce only grows the more glorious.
I confess, for my part, that it greatly delights me. I enjoy
democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence
incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards,
trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is
balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it
inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other
form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous
men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that
rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may
turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even
to civilization itself—that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a
colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers
are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating. But I am, it
may be, a somewhat malicious man: my sympathies, when it comes
to suckers, tend to be coy. What I can’t make out is how any man
can believe in democracy who feels for and with them, and is pained
when they are debauched and made a show of. How can any man
be a democrat who is sincerely a democrat?
THE END
 A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN
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