Chapter Twenty-Four #2
“Have you tried healing these, like you did for your face?”
“I have no energy for it after your arm. At twilight, I’ll handle them.”
I felt entirely helpless. “What can I do? Do you want me to put you to sleep? Or soothe your mind?”
“Soothe me by coming closer.” His strong arms wrapped around my waist, tugging me onto the bed. I’d thought I would never touch him like this again. So I pressed my nose to his throat and breathed him in.
He fiddled with my hair, combing out knots. “My mother thinks you’re with child and I’m penniless.”
“What of the truth?”
“She would tell the entire alehouse her son was lord chancellor, and we’d be found.”
“Is.”
“Was,” he corrected. “The arrest warrant was rather inventive.” He snorted. “Apparently, I used magic to make Cecily’s dog prefer me to her, when the dog was a special gift from the king. Apparently, such a crime was an attempted theft of the queen’s property. There were fifty charges in all.”
“That dog does prefer you to Cecily.”
“I know,” he sighed.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Mmm?” he murmured, brushing his nose along my collarbone.
“As the crown was lowered onto Cecily’s head, as she held the scepter and orb, the Guildfords were practically shaking with triumph.
Oh, to know what was in their insignificant heads was torturous.
” He pinched his voice to mimic them. “‘I want a dukedom. I want a larger estate.’”
“They were emboldened.”
“Yes. They whispered to the king while we were away, drawing up the charges. Convincing him. The next day was to be the final round of the magicians’ tourney.
Me against Oliver in the great hall. I heard talk—well, Wyatt let slip—that we were to wrestle for control over a woman. I’ve seen a tourney like that before.”
A memory drifted from his mind. A tournament held years ago, in Lionesse.
Marguerite rendering a girl lovestruck, while a Mars made her so repulsed she then attempted to wrestle out of Marguerite’s arms. She cried out and screamed and kissed Marguerite’s face in such rapid succession the crowd quaked with laughter.
Roland looked away, thought such entertainment should stay in yards or pits, not in the terrain of a woman’s mind.
Now his lips thinned in anger. “I was being shaved in my room when the guards and Miranda arrived. Edward pressed the razor against my throat. They said I was under arrest, that any use of magic would only add to the charges, and submitting willingly was my only hope for a pardon.” I shivered as his fingers swept lazily along my nape.
“Oliver won the contest by default since I was … indisposed. He’s been appointed the king’s private secretary.
” His eyes narrowed. At first, I thought it was Oliver who had angered him, then realized his wandering hand had found the arrow wound on my shoulder.
“I’m unsure whether to thank you or say sorry first.”
“Aren’t you angry at me?” I asked.
“Do I feel angry?”
He sighed when I nodded, because there was a lingering spark in him.
I’d just felt it, and anger rarely stemmed from only one source.
“You’ve saved my life more times than you’ve betrayed me,” he said.
Another sigh against my neck. “I was far angrier at Hal than at you. Envious you shared something without me. I always hated being jealous of Hal. I tried not to be if I could help it, and I could never stay mad at him for long. Do you remember how he smiled when he knew he’d done something wrong?
I can imagine him now, smiling at me until I finally forgave him. ”
“Or how he’d tap his middle finger and thumb together when he was thinking?” I lifted my hand. “Like this?”
“Yes, I had forgotten that.” He huffed a laugh. “How it annoyed you. Do you remember?”
Do you remember? Yes. Always. Everything. Hal would be truly lost when these small gestures were forgotten.
Roland hummed thoughtfully. “What did you truly think of me, when we were young?”
“You know already.”
He settled deeper into his pillow, folding his hands together expectantly. “Tell me anyway.”
I hesitated, then settled on: “I loved you, I revered you, and I hated you. All at once.”
“And now?”
“I respect you too much to let you give the crown to the Guildfords. Or to Fulke Roet.” I rolled into his chest and said, very softly, “And I love you, I revere you, and I hate you. All at once.”
I felt him smile against the crown of my head. “When you were in Bastian, you saw Hal, didn’t you? What did you tell him?”
“That I loved him and missed him. That I would avenge him. And … about you.”
He froze for a moment, then tried to sit up. “What did he think of us?”
“You’ll open your wounds again. Stay still.”
He rolled his eyes as I rose to soak more fabric, laying the strips on his skin.
My arm still ached whenever I moved it. Yet he’d used all his strength to heal me before himself, and so his body was a patchwork quilt of tears, of pains.
As I soaked and wrung and pressed, I showed him my memory of Bastian so he could also relive Hal’s moment of death, wondering if he noticed anything I hadn’t.
But he only shook his head, yelping when I dabbed one of the cuts on his shoulder.
“We are different men,” he murmured after.
“He could stand to see you with someone else. I could not. If I were a ghost, I could not.”
“Roland—”
His change of subject was swift. “What happened in the chapel, Mouse?”
I glanced over my shoulder, twisting more cloth in the basin. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Before, you could only transform your own body. Now, I’d wager you could change any person or any object into something else, if you worked hard enough at it.”
“Let’s test that.” I dropped the cloth into the water and held out a smooth river stone I’d stolen from the banks of the Snake. I’d leaked blood onto it, and it wouldn’t wash off entirely. The stone was so off-color, I worried it would mark our trail. “What shall this be?”
“Gold. For the wager.”
I concentrated on the stone in my palm. When I shifted my own appearance, I sought to embody a person or creature. To imagine their life, to step inside it.
What was a stone? For many years, it must have been pushed through the earth, then tossed around the river before settling on the banks where Roland and I walked. What was a coin? It would be passed between hands, a simple meal to some, an entire month’s wage to others.
The stone shimmered and flattened into a golden crown in my palm. I tossed it to Roland.
“Exaltation.” He held it up. “Do you understand how it happened?”
I bit my lip, puzzled. “Do you?”
“I have a theory now. Yes.”
“Enlighten me.”
He traced his teeth with his tongue, hesitating. “Tell me more about Balthasar first. Saturns truly know when someone will die?”
I scowled and crawled back into bed, settling on Roland’s chest. “If he is to be believed. And according to Eleanor and Prospero’s star chart—he called it a Final Breath—there will be a death in three days. A death that will shake Alvion.”
He didn’t ask who was to die; he was quick enough to know. He only blanched and stared at the ceiling for a long while. “You want someone to reply to a letter quickly. Someone at court.” He turned his head. “Who did you write to?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
His laugh turned into a groan from the pain in his back. Then he was groaning for another reason altogether. His thumb stroking down mine. A serene happiness sighed through him whenever he touched me. “We’ve been apart for so long, and—”
“Only a few days. And you avoided me for one of them.”
“A lifetime when I have so much to discuss with my advisor.” He tipped my chin up. “Who did you write to? Who at court do you suppose would ally with me?”
“Clearly, I would. Though,” I added, “our alliance is tenuous.”
“Yes, it rests on a knife’s edge.” His eyes skimmed up my bare legs. “I wish I had the strength right now to thank you properly.”
He leaned forward. Traced his tongue around the edge of my mouth, teasing me the way I liked, before our lips met in earnest.
Last night I’d knelt in his arms in the chapel, facing death. The urge to fight, to deny myself, was gone. All of my guilt and shame melted away—I was burning too hot.
I pressed myself against him. Waiting was agony, an ache between my legs.
As he tugged on my lower lip, he began tracing tight circles on my thighs.
I whispered his name, my face so close to his, our foreheads and noses brushing.
“While I’m healing,” he said, his breath ragged and sweet against my lips, “I’d like to learn every single way I can pleasure you.
Won’t you show me what you want now, so I can prepare? ”
I ducked my head, hiding my face beneath his arm, which smelled impossibly of roses and musk. He stroked my hair tenderly as I considered it, for no one had asked me such a thing before. Not even myself.
What would I want with Roland?
I thought of the council room, of him pushing me against the door. No—of him pushing me against the table. His deft hands flickering over my thighs, lifting my gown. Him praising me, calling me sweetheart, darling—
He cursed into my nape. “Is that why I should return to power? So I can fuck you in my council room?”
I twisted in his arms, kissing the divot in his chin. “It is a motivation, surely.”
“You have my attention now, Mouse,” he said, his eyes bright. “Now what, exactly, is your plan?”