Chapter 4
Durlain fucking Averre.
Hell have mercy. I was in so much trouble.
The prince of many faces, they called him at the Estien court.
The prince of broken hearts. Most of all, in recent years, that fucker who killed Lady Pol, and it was that last moniker that made me go cold to the marrow of my bones now, smouldering hearth be damned – because I hadn’t liked a great many individuals around Aranc’s household, but I had liked Pollara Estien as much as any sane person had.
And she was dead.
She’d been sent to Mount Averre to marry Varraulis’s youngest son, and she was dead.
My hands had stopped shaking. Around the signet ring, my fingers were curling themselves into fists that knew exactly what they were about, because Pol had been so very sweet. So very kind, and this bastard, this ratty little bastard—
‘I see the tales of my grand deeds precede me,’ he broke the silence, eye cold as hoarfrost, the corners of his lips twitching into that unsettling non-smile again. ‘Marvellous. Before you make any doomed attempts to break my nose, I suggest you do something about those wrists of yours, first.’
Wrists?
Who the hell cared about my wrists?
But he stepped forward, and only then did I see the small container in his hand. He plunked it down on the table before me and added in that same icily flat voice, ‘Yarrow salve. Hedda found it for you.’
Because she’d seen the chafe wounds.
Don’t tell us anything we shouldn’t know, she’d said, and all of a sudden, that made a lot more sense.
My fingers uneasily unclenched to chuck his ring aside and snatch the jar off the table. Bad idea to walk around with wounds screaming escaped prisoner at every passerby, admittedly; I could slam His Highness’s nose into the back of his skull after I’d taken care of more urgent tasks.
‘She’ll be here with some food in a moment,’ Durlain went on, folding his tall body onto the edge of his bed, his back to the uncovered mirror. ‘I suggest—’
I dipped three fingers into the creamy ointment, shutting out whatever irrelevant thing he was about to suggest. ‘Why did you kill her?’
He snapped his sharp jaw shut.
I waited, rubbing the yarrow over my wrist with firm strokes, not bothering to meet his gaze as he sat on that hell-cursed bed and stared at me.
‘Who—' he finally started, as if there might be any doubt who we were talking about.
‘Pol. Pollara.’ I moved my attention to my other wrist, spreading thick layers of salve over the bruises and scrapes until my damaged skin was gleaming all over.
On the edge of my sight, the Third Prince of Averre didn’t move.
‘She would have made you a better wife than you deserved, by all accounts. Why did you kill her?’
He was silent for another long moment.
Then, his voice horrifyingly flat, spine-chillingly matter-of-fact, he said, ‘She was in my way.’
I lowered my hands at that.
There was no feigning indifference in the face of so much disregard. It would put me on one level with his own – and as it turned out, even after seven gruelling years at Aranc Estien’s beck and call, there were still levels I wasn’t willing to sink to.
‘You vile fucker,’ I said.
‘Well met.’ A flash of a smile again, stinging like poison. ‘So where did you come from, if you were on affectionate terms with your king’s niece?’
From the monster’s cage.
I settled for a sharp, ‘Oh, you suddenly care about true identities now?’
His sigh was crabby, as if I was the troublesome one between the two of us.
‘As you wish. An orphan, apparently. Trained runewitch, excellent fighter. Surprisingly well-informed on courtly matters. Not a simple soldier, because you wouldn’t have been locked up like a commoner if you’d been a deserter, so …
’ A tiny cant of his head. ‘One of Aranc’s messenger birds? ’
Fuck.
I wasn’t sure if my face hid the habitual constriction of my heart. Judging by the hint of a smug, biting smile on his lips, it didn’t. ‘You know about the birds.’
He shrugged. ‘Clandestine units handling an enemy king’s dirty jobs are exactly the sort of thing I like to stay informed about.’
Ah. Yes. His father’s unofficial spymaster, in life. What had Rook said about him, in those days before Pol left, when the whole court was abuzz with rumours? He sees more with one eye than most of us with two – hell, I’d never realised it meant the bastard actually had only one eye.
Had I never seen portraits of him?
It seemed pretty damn odd, now that I was forced to think of it. I knew what his older brothers looked like, Lorigern and Nalzen – had known from their portraits even before the summer they visited the Estien court. Was it—
There was a firm knock on the door.
Durlain’s expression shifted in the blink of an eye. His shoulders loosened. His smile suddenly lit up his face, softened the edges of his features. ‘Yes?’
Death’s arse, that was not getting any less unnerving.
Hedda stepped in with a tray in her weathered hands, eyes snapping to my wrists and sparking with what I thought was a flash of satisfaction. But all she said as she settled the food on the table was, ‘We’re off to bed now. You know where to find the kitchen if you need more.’
This was insanity.
Offering more food? For free?
‘You’re a gem,’ Durlain informed our hostess in that disturbingly charming tone, and she patted him on the head in response, between the horns, as if to say, nice try, boy, now eat your dinner. He gave a crack of laughter. ‘I won’t keep you up any longer.’
‘Wise.’ She glanced at me, hesitated a moment, and averted her eyes again. Her parting words – ‘Good night, you two’ – came out to the room as a whole instead.
Only as the door closed behind her did I realise I should probably have thanked her.
‘Alright,’ Durlain said when her footsteps had died away, hauling himself off the edge of the bed and crossing the three steps to the table.
He turned his chair a quarter-turn before he sank down onto it – back to the mirror again, I couldn’t help but notice.
‘Eat. You’ll be no use to me if you’re dead tomorrow. ’
‘Considerate,’ I ground out, but it lacked bite. I would have been dead tomorrow. Faced with a table full of plates and bowls, that fact I had accepted so easily hours ago now suddenly seemed unthinkable.
There were berries. Berries.
A plate of pickled herring. Thick slices of rye bread, steaming.
A creamy white substance I guessed must be goat’s butter, a small bowl of peas and shallots, browned and caramelised.
And then those strawberries, plump and red, six of them, and out of nowhere, I could have wept over the abundance of it.
Durlain reached out before I could move, plucked one of the berries from their bowl, and popped it into his mouth as if it was just another spoonful of peas.
Somehow, that nonchalance filled me with a rage even Pol’s death hadn’t been able to spark in me.
As if it was nothing, that fruit. As if people hadn’t slaved to grow it in the cold, grey weather of this land of mist and fire.
It hadn’t always been like this, Kjell had said.
Once upon a time, flowers grew on the slopes of what was now Mount Estien.
Then the cold had come and the fireborn had followed, the only ones who could keep the ice at bay – so we’d allowed them to take our springs and our mountains, to put those crowns on their cursed horned heads, to crush our pride for the sake of survival.
And when they’d clashed with the runewitches who’d been masters of Seidrinn before … well, we’d lost.
Durlain Averre, chewing idly on his strawberry, didn’t look like his hands had ever touched the island’s barren soil in his life.
I filled my plate with bread, fish, vegetables, then took three of the strawberries and put them next to my small pile of peas.
Not that fireborn mages had any trouble taking what wasn’t theirs, but perhaps this would be somewhat of a warning not to mindlessly snack his way through all of that bowl.
It seemed to work. He absently buttered a slice of bread, leaving the remaining two berries alone.
We ate in silence – all I could do, because I was too busy tasting, savouring, to think of anything else.
The butter was creamy and salty, with just a hint of smoke.
The bread was firm and earthy. The shallots were sweet, the peas were crunchy; when I finally took a bite of my first strawberry, the smallest, most involuntary moan escaped me as juicy sweetness exploded across my palate and tongue.
What a sad, sorry life one must live, to scarf down such utter bliss without a thought to spare for it.
The prince didn’t touch the last two strawberries.
They remained in their bowl, sweet and neglected, when he finally put down his knife, wiped his fingers on the linen napkin Hedda had included on the tray, and leaned back in his chair with a look that suggested imminent conversation.
I reluctantly tore my mind away from the buttered bread melting in my mouth and swallowed my last bite, bracing myself.
‘So,’ he said.
He wasn’t any less ominous when he wasn’t hungry, it turned out. Prince of many faces … the man who could be anyone’s and everyone’s friend, Rook had said, yet for some unfathomable reason, he seemed determined to make an enemy of me.
‘So?’ I returned, mouth dry.
His lips twitched. ‘I thought we should have a chat about our mutual goals.’
Most likely, that was a thinly veiled request for me to talk about my goals. I clenched my hands beneath the table, nails digging into my palms, and managed to grind out a more or less civil, ‘I believe it’s pretty clear what I want, isn’t it?’
‘Perhaps.’ He leaned back, crossing his legs. ‘Tell me more.’
‘Why?’