36. The Prince
36
THE PRINCE
Surely the peasant is no man whose hand forgets the plough, nor the warrior whose hand forgets the sword hilt.
— T.W. ROLLESTON, THE HIGH DEEDS OF FINN AND OTHER BARDIC ROMANCES OF ANCIENT IRELAND
“ Y ou don’t think he’ll tell anyone that we were here, do you?” I asked when the Roving Raider disappeared back into brick a few hours later.
Night had fallen completely over Dublin, along with a heavy fog and light drizzle that neither Jonathan nor I seemed to notice, as our jackets remained open, our faces turned up and toward each other. My stomach was full and happy, my mind awhirl from the effects of alcohol, nostalgia, and the fondness and attraction slipping through my glove where Jonathan held my hand again told me he was in a similar state.
I was happy, I realized.
And not fleetingly so. I’d been that way for hours.
I shouldn’t have felt that way. I should have been nothing but overwhelmed. Here I was, at the beginning of a quest with no visible end or even a legible path. In a strange country, a city that seemed bursting with thousands of years of conversations, and a crowded pub where everyone seemed to have hundreds of years of stories within them. And yet, it had been a lovely evening. I’d been completely and utterly content to wile away the evening that way, supported by the stolid sorcerer next to me.
The fiddler hadn’t stopped throughout the evening, and even after Cary had left us at the table, Jonathan and I had remained, our fingers finding each other under the table, stroking palms, toying with knuckles, teasing inarticulate thoughts and feelings apart.
Happy. Huh.
Jonathan looked down. “Are you really?”
I flushed. I desperately needed to learn to shield.
“But I rather like that you don’t.”
“Puts me at a bit of a disadvantage with you.”
He looked down at our joined hands, then back at me. I didn’t have to read his thoughts to know the message: I could let go if I wanted.
I didn’t. Neither did he.
“I’d say you’re still enough of a mystery,” Jonathan said as we started walking back down the alley toward the busy street calling at the end of our cobbled path. “You can’t shield, it’s true, but you’re hardly an easy read.”
“Glad I don’t bore you,” I said dryly.
“Darling Cass, I suspect you couldn’t if you tried.”
I didn’t necessarily want a thrill to run through my body when he called me darling, but I also couldn’t claim to dislike it.
“As for the previous question,” Jonathan said, providing a helpful distraction, “the answer is no. Cary and I have known each other since we were brats in our first year of school, both of us complete cast-outs. We’d no one but each other in those days. He wouldn’t break my confidence now.”
“So why bribe him at all?” I wondered.
Jonathan cocked his head and considered the question. “People become resentful of obligation. I find that if at all possible, it’s best to give them the option of consent. Or at least the perception of it.”
“How Machiavellian of you.” Not for the first time, I wondered about the hidden sides of Jonathan that I never seemed to see, even with his growing comfort with my touch. After all, what kind of person would play such games with a close friend?
“The kind whose friends expect it,” he replied. “Cary understands my life is…complicated.”
Complicated, how? I wanted to ask, though undoubtedly he would hear the question anyway. Maybe I should call him The Prince for his plotting ways.
His mouth quirked. “A prince, you say?”
“You know, I’m not so sure I like the fact that you can read my thoughts as easily as I can yours. Maybe even better.” I pulled my hand from his and ignored the odd emptiness I felt. Had I always felt that way, or was it just more obvious now, under the effect of alcohol and companionship?
Jonathan tipped his head back, and a deep, sonorous laugh bounced off the brick walls and out to the street. “Fair enough. Riddle me, this, Cass. If I’m a prince, does that make you my princess for the night?”
He regarded me with heavy-lidded eyes, and it was only then I considered just how much he had drunk this evening. If Jonathan was good at procuring secrets, Cary was better at putting people at ease. An evening filled with pirate stories had been lubricated by as many pints of sweet, dark beer. I’d had at least four, and I was certain my escort had put down far more.
“Jonathan,” I ventured. “Are you drunk?”
He swayed noticeably as we stepped over a particularly crooked cobblestone, reaching out for my shoulder to steady himself. Guilt swept through his touch before he pulled back. “Of course not. I can stand, can’t I?”
At that, he tripped over a cobblestone, lurching forward and nearly taking me to the ground with him. Slouching back up next to my shoulder, he peered mischievously over the edge of my sleeve.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You are toasted,” I informed him. “Does that mean I have to find the way back to the hotel?”
“Absolutely not. We’ve one more stop to make.”
“Jonathan, I don’t want to go to another clandestine meeting?—”
“No, no, nothing like that.” He offered that smile, a bright one that was deceptively innocent.
It was a smile I could fall in love with, I realized. Quite easily.
I was glad we weren’t holding hands anymore.
“Come with me,” Jonathan said. “It’s only a few blocks away.”
We turned onto a busy street, but instead of heading back to the hotel, Jonathan turned in the opposite direction. We walked for several more blocks until he stopped in front of a pub hewn from gray stone out of which the sounds of a lively jig and an even livelier crowd poured through the front door. The Brazen Head was etched in gold lettering on a black sign.
“Oh!” I clapped my hands together in recognition. “I know this place!”
Jonathan grinned. “Do you, now?” The Irish in his accent was even thicker after several drinks. He glanced up at the sign.“Think you might want a bit of a craic in the same pub where Jonathan Swift and James Joyce enjoyed a pint or two?”
I looked eagerly inside but shied away from the entrance once I spied the interior packed with plain folk. “I don’t know…”
Jonathan held out a hand. “Don’t worry, Cass. I’ll keep you safe from the beyond.”
“Will you, really?”
His canines seemed to grow slightly in spite of the grin. “Guard you with my life,” he promised.
I considered the circumstances. Four months ago, I’d have run from a place like this. Four months ago, I wouldn’t have been out at night like this at all.
And yet, here I was, finding it manageable—maybe even enjoyable—for the first time, and largely, I suspected, due to the man with me.
I took his hand, and when I felt the eagerness pulsing there, I wasn’t sure if it was mine or his. Or maybe I didn’t care.“All right. Lead on.”
He didn’t let go for hours. By the time we emerged from the Brazen Head, we were both sweaty, happy, and completelypissed as we fell into the night, hands as locked as ever.
The merriment was still going and would continue until the sun rose. Jigs had turned to reels and reels had turned to marches, and before I knew it, I had been spinning around a crowded pub for hours, bumping into strangers, and somehow never sensed a thought from any of them.
It was probably the best night of my life.
“Penny would have liked that,” I told Jonathan as we turned down a narrow street which I presumed would take us back to the hotel. It was hard to tell—the streets in this part of Dublin seemed to curve every which way. “She would have wanted a good wake. Reina and I tried to make one of our own, but it failed miserably in Portland. As you know.”
“Is that what you were doing in Portland?” He nodded, almost approvingly. “She did like a good party. Even if everyone would forget about it the day after.”
“Because of drinks or her spells?”
Jonathan chuckled. “Likely both.” A hazy, distant memory flickered through his mind. Something with Gran, but something I couldn’t quite make out, though there was music in it. Another reel.
“Jonathan.” I pulled on his hand, urging him to stop with me.
He turned with concern. “What is it?”
“I—” I shook my head. “Thank you. For tonight. I don’t know why you wanted to take me out, but I appreciate it more than you know.”
“Oh.” He looked down at our joined hands. “Actually, I think I do. You’ve been thinking about it all night.”
I followed his glance and blushed. Of course, he knew. “It’s only…I can’t usually do this because it always ends in disaster. Before tonight, a pub like that would have probably driven me into the river, as much from the crowd as from its history. Places like that carry…a lot.”
I looked away, recounting the time that had literally happened. Even the day he’d met me, though there had been too many others to count. Concerts where I’d lasted all but ten minutes. House parties where I’d jumped into a shower just to remain sane. The day Jonathan and I had met wasn’t the only time I’d gone swimming in the reservoir, though it was certainly the coldest.
For all the protections I tried to maintain, I often felt like a hostage to the world around me, trapped by its constant noise. Somehow, this man’s touch managed to quiet everything. And for the first time, I wasn’t Seeing everything all at once. I was only seeing the world like everyone else.
I was seeing him.
Jonathan watched me quietly, though he had undoubtedly followed my thoughts. Something like awe was trickling through our connection, but little more. For all I was an open book, he was working very hard to block me at the moment.
“What…what are you thinking?” I finally asked.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then looked at our clasped hands and back up at my face. “I’m thinking you don’t really want to know what I’m thinking, Cass.”
I gave his hand a little shake. “I do, actually. Don’t make me pry.”
He swallowed thickly even as he looked away. “Please don’t.”
“Why not? What won’t you tell me?”
Those green eyes shuttered as if he were in pain. Then he opened them, and there was a hint of that magical blaze in their depths. “It’s only your thoughts I’ve ever Seen like this, you know.” The words came out almost hurried.
I offered a small smile. “At least I’m not the only one caught off guard by it.”
“I like it. It makes it easier to understand you.” He chewed on his lower lip. “Sorcerers are not known for our empathy.”
“‘Cold as ice, the whole lot,’” I said in my best imitation of Gran’s accent.
His expression twisted into displeasure. “I hope you don’t think of me like that.”
Warmth sprung between us. And maybe a bit of hope, mixed with humor.
I smiled. “Not anymore.”
He was staring at our hands again. “I’m glad. I brought you out because…I wanted to see that look on your face again. You said you were happy tonight, and I—I rather liked it. I find that despite my best efforts not to care so damn much about your happiness, I do. Very much.”
We stared at each other in that alley for a long time. Overhead, the sky broke, and a few bright constellations twinkled on the other side of the clouds like promises unspoken.
I leaned in, not quite able to stop myself.
Jonathan, however, leaned back and released my hand.
It might as well have been a slap. Again .
“I’m sorry,” he said, fixing his stare on the bricks behind me. “I can’t. We shouldn’t.”
I turned my hand back and forth, flexing my fingers like I was about to take a punch. It didn’t make sense. He was attracted to me—he’d said as much. Had flirted with me, even by his touch, all evening. And while normally I wouldn’t be interested either, hadn’t we both just acknowledged that there was something here? Something unusual?
“It’s only a kiss,” I said. “I’m not asking for marriage or anything.”
“You’re still grieving, Cass.”
“And I’ll be grieving,” I countered. “Probably for the rest of my life. But Penny died months ago, and I’m okay enough. Why is it so wrong to want a bit of pleasure, a bit of solace in the darkness that seems to be swallowing my life?” With a tip of my head, I dared him to argue. “Stranger things have happened than a kiss between two people who are attracted to each other. A celebration of life in the face of death is perfectly healthy.”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at me, his gaze still fixed on the brick wall behind me, the lights of the alley casting his face in shadow while lighting a corona through the fringe of his blond hair.
His body was shaking almost imperceptibly. Whatever he was holding onto, it looked like it was about to break him.
“Don’t you ever want to let go?” I asked, more gently now. “Lose some control? Just a little?”
Those shifter eyes turned on me with such force that I almost fell back a step.
“You don’t want me to lose control, Cassandra.” His voice was low. Almost a growl, betraying the animal within.
But I didn’t turn away. I wouldn’t. Not now. “Don’t tell me what I want.”
He looked very much like he wanted to, but didn’t. A few thoughts seemed to blaze through his mind, and for once, I would have given anything to know what they were.
Slowly, he held out a hand, and I recognized it for what it was: a dare.
I peeled the glove from my right hand, and held it back out to him, daring him right back to join us two.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said.
I extended my fingers. “Then show me.”
“You asked for this,” he said, and then touched his fingers to mine.