36. Name Your Price
Chapter 36
Name Your Price
R aewyn
As mad as I’d been at Stellon earlier this evening, I was overjoyed to see him now.
Rarely, if ever, had I felt such a profound sense of relief. It doubled when Pharis released his suffocating hold and stepped back.
I rushed to Stellon, who wrapped me in his arms and pressed a quick kiss to my head.
“Are you all right, love?” he asked. “Did he hurt you?”
“I’m fine.”
“ He is right here,” Pharis said. “Why are you talking about me like I’m not in the room? And why are you calling that human ‘love?’”
Stellon tore his gaze from my face and looked at his brother. “You go first. What are you doing in my room, putting your hands on what’s mine ?”
“What?” Pharis asked. “Yours? Who is she?”
Stellon’s expression was pure defiance. “This is the woman I was telling you about—the one who saved my life in the Rough Market.”
When Pharis’ gaze came back to me, his eyes held what appeared to be a new appreciation.
“This tiny thing stood up to a roving gang of ruffians?”
He laughed, apparently amused by the mental picture. “How did you even get her into the palace?”
“I gave her an invitation to the ball,” Stellon explained. “She tried to attend, but things went wrong. She tripped and sprained her ankle. Then the guards threw her into the dungeon. I’ve been nursing her back to health ever since.”
Pharis narrowed his eyes at his brother, a slight smile curving his lips. “One of the human prisoners you said you released after questioning.”
“I did release her… in a way,” Stellon said, sounding defensive.
Pharis’ gaze moved to me as he thought aloud. “So she’s been here since the night of the ball. And she arrived with an invitation… that you personally gave to her.”
His eyelids flew wide, exposing the whites around the sea-colored irises, and I felt a stab of alarm. There wasn’t just shock in his probing look. There was recognition.
It’s you—isn’t it?
I couldn’t explain how I’d heard the words. Pharis’ lips hadn’t moved as he’d stared at me.
But I’d heard them, loud and clear. In my mind.
In his voice.
How had he done that? And how did he know ? How, after only a few minutes with me in my human form, had he realized that Lady Wyn and I were one and the same?
His expression was impatient, demanding. He seemed to be waiting for an answer.
When I didn’t give him one, he “spoke” to me again. I know it’s you.
Then he glanced over at Stellon. But he doesn’t, does he?
Sounding impatient and perhaps irritated by his brother’s persistent staring, Stellon said, “Yes, I’ve already told you that. But you haven’t told me what you’re doing here. I didn’t even know you’d returned from Altum. How did you get back so quickly?”
“I borrowed Orn’s evanescing glamour and evanesced there and back. Lord Elardis was telling the truth. He knew nothing of Wyn or any assassination plot.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were back,” Stellon said. “And you used the secret passageway?”
“I was convinced you were hiding Lady Wyn in here. I was worried for you,” Pharis said.
“I told you I haven’t seen her since that night.”
“Yes… you told me that. And I believe you believe it,” Pharis said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
As Stellon waited for an answer, I thought my pounding heart was going to crack my breastbone. My face was sweating along with pretty much every other part of me.
This was it. This was where my association with the Earthwife and my complicity in her assassination plot would be revealed.
I wouldn’t have to worry anymore about convincing Stellon not to love me. Rather, I’d be hard pressed to keep him from ordering my immediate death.
But Pharis didn’t out me. Instead, he gave his brother a pitying glance.
“Nothing. It means nothing. I wish the two of you well. May the Grand Star brighten your way.”
Following that bit of sarcasm, he turned to go, but Stellon stopped him. “You’re not going to tell Father, are you?”
Pharis turned back to him, a new gleam in his eye.
“What will you give me to keep the secret?”
I hated that guy.
He held a life—possibly two—in his hands, and all he could think about was making deals. About how to benefit himself.
“What do you want?” Stellon asked.
“Well, I don’t know. Let me think…”
Pharis struck a dramatic pose, planting his widespread feet and stroking his irritatingly handsome chin.
“This is a pretty big breach of Elven rules, not to mention palace etiquette.”
Stellon hung his head and sighed. “Just get on with it. Name your price.”
“Very well,” Pharis said. “I want you to give me your glamour, whenever I ask for it, no questions asked. Just hand it over, no matter what may be happening at the moment.”
“You told me before it was useless to you.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Pharis said.
“Fine,” Stellon agreed.
Pharis smiled and extended a hand for his brother to shake.
Stellon took it. “And I have your word you won’t tell Father about Raewyn?”
“Raewyn?” He sent a sharp glance in my direction.
His face split in a predatory grin. “What a lovely name.”
The exact words he’d said to me the night we’d met, when I’d introduced myself as “Wyn.”
He definitely knew . I didn’t know how he knew, but he knew.
Why wasn’t he telling Stellon about my duplicity? From the moment I’d met him, I hadn’t been able to figure this guy out.
“Well, goodnight, lovebirds,” Pharis said. Winking at his brother, he added, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Just before turning to leave, he gave me a long look and sent another eerie personal mind-to-mind message.
Tell him. Or I will. You know it can’t last anyway.
Then he was gone, and I was alone once more with Stellon. Stellon, who’d returned after I’d thrown him out of his own room and saved me from gods only knew what fate Pharis had intended for me.
And he’d secured my safety by offering up his own glamour gift for Pharis to take at any time and use for any purpose he desired. I didn’t know you could even lend out a glamour.
“Does he do that a lot?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“Make deals like that? Doesn’t he ever do something for free just out of the goodness of his heart?”
Stellon huffed a small laugh. “I’m sure Pharis would tell you there is no goodness in his heart.”
Taking my hand, he drew me over to the settee and urged me to sit on the cushion closest to the fireplace. He brushed my hair back from my face and looked me over as if checking for damage.
“My brother’s had a hard time of it,” he said. “I can’t say he’s experienced a lot of generosity in his life without strings attached. Negotiating is the only way he really knows to get what he wants.”
Stellon took my hands inside his. “Are you really okay? You must have been frightened when he came through the wall.”
“I didn’t actually see it happen. I just woke up when he spoke to me. But yes, I was definitely frightened.”
After a pause I added, “I’m glad you came back when you did.”
“I can’t imagine a world in which he’d have actually hurt you,” Stellon said. “But I must admit I never thought he’d sneak into my bedroom in the middle of the night either.”
“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do,” I muttered. “Why did you come back?”
“I couldn’t stay away,” Stellon said as if admitting a weakness.
“I must have walked miles through the palace halls,” he said, “thinking about the things you said. And I realized I’ve sort of been going through my life with blinders on, not asking too many questions, giving unconscious obedience to my father, just going with the flow like a leaf floating downstream.”
He squeezed my hands. “But you made me think, showed me there might be another way. You’re good for me, Rae.”
Stellon blinked a couple of times, offered me a nervous smile. “I came back because I have a question to ask you.”
“What is it?”
He shook his head rapidly. “First… I need to tell you everything about myself—the whole truth. That way you’ll know what you’re getting yourself into.”