Exclusive Interview + Excerpt + Giveaway: The Captive Prince Trilogy by C.S. Pacat

“Your pride should be put aside, and the petty business of your former life forgotten. You exist only to please the Crown Prince, for whom this country is held in stewardship—who will ascend the throne as King.”

Last night I started the first book in this highly buzzed-about trilogy—Captive Prince by the talented C.S. Pacat. YOU GUYS… I started at around 10:30 p.m. and by around 1:00 a.m. I was wide awake and finished. I could not put it down. The story. The writing. The quickly consuming obsession with these characters. The tension.

!!!!!!!

The story is a compelling, tightly written M/M fantasy—a tale of two princes, two would-be kings, two enemies. It’s a love story that will not let you go.

When Prince Damianos is betrayed by his brother, he’s sent to enemy territory as a nameless pleasure slave for the man who hates him the most. Keeping his identity secret becomes critical, but the more time Damen spends with the secretive Prince Laurent in a kingdom he detests, the more secrets he unearths, the more he realizes his own kingdom is in peril if he doesn’t manage his captivity just right. Making complicated matters more complicated, unexpected tension sparks between him and this golden-haired prince who clearly hides much of who he is.

If you’ve not read this now-complete series, I have a special treat for you today. You can read an excerpt from the first book below, plus an interview with author C.S. Pacat! Plus, scroll down below to enter to win a paperback set of the entire series!

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About Captive Prince

Damen is a warrior hero to his people, and the rightful heir to the throne of Akielos, but when his half brother seizes power, Damen is captured, stripped of his identity, and sent to serve the prince of an enemy nation as a pleasure slave.

Beautiful, manipulative and deadly, his new master Prince Laurent epitomizes the worst of the court at Vere. But in the lethal political web of the Veretian court, nothing is as it seems, and when Damen finds himself caught up in a play for the throne, he must work together with Laurent to survive and save his country.

For Damen, there is just one rule: never, ever reveal his true identity. Because the one man Damen needs is the one man who has more reason to hate him than anyone else . . .

Excerpt

From Captive Prince

Damen went over to the goblet and lifted it. A shallow slide of liquid remained in the cup. It was water, surprisingly, not wine. That was why the thin rim of pinked colour on the inside of the cup was visible. It was the distinctive mark of a drug Damen knew well.

“It’s an Akielon drug,” said Damen. “It’s given to pleasure slaves, during training. It makes them—”

“I am aware of the effect of the drug,” Laurent said, in a voice like cut glass.

Damen looked at Laurent with new eyes. The drug, in his own country, was infamous. He had sampled it himself, once, as a curious sixteen-year-old. He had taken only a fraction of a normal dose, and it had provided him with an embarrassment of virility for several hours, exhausting three cheerfully tumbled partners. He had not bothered with it since. A stronger dose led from virility to abandonment. To leave residue in the goblet, the amount had been generous, even if Laurent had taken only a mouthful.

Laurent was hardly abandoned. He was not speaking with his usual ease, and his breathing was shallow, but these were the only signs.

Damen realised, suddenly, that what he was witnessing was an exercise in sheer iron-willed self- control.

“It wears off,” said Damen. Adding, because he was not above enjoying the truth as a form of minor sadism, “After a few hours.”

He could see in the look Laurent leveled at him that Laurent would rather have cut off his own arm than have anyone know about his condition; and further, that he was the last person Laurent wished to know, or be left alone with. Damen was not above enjoying that fact either.

“Think I’m going to take advantage of the situation?” said Damen.

Because the one thing that emerged clearly from whatever tangled Veretian plot had unfolded this evening was the fact that he was free of restraints, free of obligations, and unguarded for the first time since his arrival in this country.

“I am. It was good of you to clear your apartments,” said Damen. “I thought I’d never have the chance to get out of here.”

He turned. Behind him, Laurent swore. Damen was halfway to the door before Laurent’s voice turned him back.

“Wait,” said Laurent, as though he forced the word out, and hated saying it. “It’s too dangerous. Leaving now would be seen as an admission of guilt. The Regent’s Guard wouldn’t hesitate to have you killed. I can’t . . . protect you, as I am now.”

“Protect me,” said Damen, flat incredulity in his voice.

“I am aware that you saved my life.” Damen just stared at him.

Laurent said: “I dislike feeling indebted to you. Trust that, if you don’t trust me.”

“Trust you?” said Damen. “You flayed the skin from my back. I have seen you do nothing but cheat and lie to every person you’ve encountered. You use anything and anyone to further your own ends. You are the last person I would ever trust.”

Laurent’s head tipped backwards against the wall. His eyelids had dropped to half-mast, so that he regarded Damen through two golden-lashed slits. Damen was half-expecting a denial, or an argument. But Laurent’s only reply was a breath of laughter, which strangely showed more than anything else how close to the edge he was.

“Go, then.”

Damen looked again at the door.

With the Regent’s men on heightened alert, there was real danger, but escape would always mean risking everything. If he hesitated now and waited for another chance . . . if he managed to find a way out of the perpetual restraints, if he killed his guard or got past them some other way . . .

Right now Laurent’s apartments were empty. He had a head start. He knew a way out of the palace. A chance like this one might not come again for weeks, or months, or at all.

Laurent would be left alone and vulnerable in the aftermath of an attempt on his life.

But the immediate danger was past, and Laurent had lived through it. Others had not. Damen had killed tonight, and witnessed killing. Damen set his jaw. Whatever debt was between them had been paid. He thought, I don’t owe him anything.

The door opened beneath his hand, and the corridor was empty.

He went.

Interview

Two princes. Nations at war. A master and a slave. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill fantasy. For readers yet to meet Damen and Laurent, tell us about their story and the series… what readers can expect.

Captive Prince is a fantasy full of adventure, intrigue and twists, and at its heart is an intense, slow-built enemies-to-lovers relationship between two princes of rival nations.

It follows the story of Damen, a warrior prince and heir to the throne, whose half brother seizes power and sends Damen to serve the prince of an enemy nation as a slave. His new owner Prince Laurent is a frigid ice prince–beautiful, manipulative and deadly. Damen is thrown into a world of court intrigue and deception in a land where the knowledge of his true identity would mean his certain death.

But in the decadent court, nothing is as it seems… I don’t want to give too much away, but if I had to tell readers to expect anything as the story between Damen and Laurent unfolds, it would be, “Expect the unexpected.”

What inspired the series and was there anything you set out to accomplish with these books?

I love high-octane escapism, adventure, true love, intrigue, high stakes – and homoerotica, themes of sex, power and sexuality.

I wanted to write the book that I wanted to read, and more than that, I wanted to write a book that celebrated heroic and diverse characters. I also wanted to write a fantasy set in a homonormative universe where sexual identity was constructed more freely than in our own world. I set Captive Prince in a world influenced by the history of Mediterranean basin region (where my own family hails from) rather than a setting that felt necessarily Anglo-European.

The kind of writing that is exciting to me is the kind that feels epic, but simultaneously has very intense and even intimate relationships between people, and I think overall, that was my hope for the series.

You have a tremendously loyal group of readers and the series continues to gain momentum. What do you think it is that has everyone obsessing about Damen and Laurent’s story?

The response to Captive Prince has been incredible, and I’m so grateful to the readers for their enthusiasm and support.

I think there is some sense that Captive Prince feels new, although of course it comes out of a tradition of writing. It mixes an enemies-to-lovers romance between princes with high tropes, court intrigue, battles and a story-driven fantasy. I think people attach to the characters in particular, the frigid, Machiavellian ice-prince Laurent, and his opposite, the noble warrior-prince Damen, who is more like Alexander cutting through the Gordian knot. 

Now that Kings Rising is out, how are you feeling? Sad? Relieved? Excited? Looking forward to starting something new or still not willing to let them go just yet?

I am so excited for people to read the story! It feels like the end, but in a good way. It’s been such an amazing journey, and it was both wonderful and strange to reach the end and look back, and see how far the characters had come–and how far I had come with them.

There is definitely a sadness too, which I think that I felt most when I finished the last word of the final draft, and sent it off to my editor.  I found it difficult to hit “send”, in fact–I hesitated ridiculously for 30 minutes with my hand hovering over the “send” button, because I didn’t want to say goodbye. I even cried, which is very rare for me! I’ve heard from other authors that the end of a series can be a difficult emotional time, because the door to a world that you have held inside yourself for so long has closed.

As for the future, I’ve just started work on a new series and I am incredibly excited about it. It’s a YA fantasy, and I’m in the building stage now, setting up the tensions and intensities between characters. It is a lot of fun to be at this stage again–working on something completely new. A new adventure!

Giveaway

Enter to win a paperback set of the series, open internationally!

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