CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A ll around Lin, people were chanting prayers to Aigon, a sound like the buzzing of bees in her ears.
Aigon, hear me as I pray with my soul for these children of mankind! Give them happiness, riches, children!
“ Oshozo! ” Lin called. “ Wait! ”
The Ashkar word drifted above the rhythmic chant. She saw a movement in the crowd ahead as Aron turned to look at her. A moment later, she had caught up with him. He was standing by the steps to the Justicia, away from the worst of the throng.
“What do you want?”
“What do I want ?” Lin put her hands on her hips. “You couldn’t have confronted my grandfather in the Sault? You had to humiliate him in front of the malbushim ?”
“He did not seem humiliated to me.”
“That doesn’t mean you didn’t try.” Lin’s hair was escaping from its fastening; it whipped across her face in the breeze. “You must realize that the damage you do to him is damage you do to all of us Ashkar.”
Aron looked at her squarely. “I have attempted to visit your grandfather at his house in the Sault. Repeatedly. He is always conveniently not at home.”
“You know that is no excuse,” Lin said coldly. “Why is your anger all for Mayesh? Why is it not for the Maharam? You know my grandfather spoke out for Asher Benezar. You know he did everything he could to keep him from being exiled.”
“ Everything he could. ” The Exilarch’s voice was measured, but his eyes seemed to burn with the shimmer of sun on desert sands. “That covers a wide variety of sins, does it not? How can we measure what a man can and cannot find it within himself to do?” He leaned closer to Lin; he was so much taller that she almost wanted to stretch up on her toes to hear him. She didn’t. “The truth is I expected nothing better from the Maharam. But I did expect better from your grandfather. I trusted him.”
“And you don’t trust him now?” She searched the Exilarch’s face. Such a strange face. A calm face, giving nothing away, and yet those eyes, like cuts in a paper mask, showing only a glimpse of a world otherwise unseen, a word of fiery emotion: anger, rebellion, righteousness denied. “You don’t believe that he was trying to protect you? You were the son of the Exilarch. What could you have done unobserved? Had you tried to help Asher, you would have been caught—”
He held up a hand, as if half-commanding her to be silent. “Your loyalty to your grandfather is to be expected,” he began. “But—”
“ Loyalty. ” She saw that the bitterness with which she spoke surprised him. “Me, loyal to Mayesh? I used to feel the same way you do. I used to hate him. I thought he had abandoned me for the royalty up on the Hill.”
The bronze eyes narrowed. “And now?”
“Now I understand that he was trying to protect me, in his way, because he was trying to protect us all. Mayesh will always choose the Ashkar as a people over any one individual. It makes him a good Counselor.”
“If not,” said Aron, “a good grandfather.”
“He is our voice on the Hill,” Lin said quietly. “We all know what happened in Malgasi. The Ashkar had no voice there, and we were murdered or driven out. I would think the Exilarch, of all people, would care—”
“You imagine that I do not care ?” He stared at her, wordless for a moment. In the distance Lin could hear the Hierophant, calling to Aigon to surround Anjelica and Conor with safe water, to bless their union with the strength of the sea and the faithfulness of the tides.
Conor, faithful? Lin bit the inside of her lip.
She had half thought Aron was about to shout at her. Instead, he said evenly: “I do not understand you, Lin Caster. When I look at you, I see that you are much more than you seem to be. I look into your eyes and I see the fire in there, and I think, is that the fire of the Goddess? That fire I was born to see? But around you—around you I see only darkness.”
Lin could not help herself, she flinched, just as a red-and-gold carriage rolled up beside them. Jolivet leaned out the window. “You were meant to wait by the Temple.”
Lin raised her eyebrows. “I received no message with that instruction.”
Jolivet looked as if he were feeling hard done by. “Just get in,” he said. “There’s little time.”
Odd, Lin thought, for Jolivet to speak so freely in front of Aron, a stranger—yet when she turned to speak to Aron, he was gone. He had melted away into the crowd like a ghost; search as she might, she could not see him.
But was he watching her? Lin could not shake the feeling of a gaze resting heavy on her; she turned to look toward the Temple and saw that beside the kneeling Princess, Conor stood straight-backed, one hand on the hilt of his sword. He was not looking at the Hierophant: He was staring directly at Lin, and even at a distance she could feel the bladed sharpness of his gaze.
The hot sun beat down on the Hill as Kel made his way to Antonetta’s home on foot. He supposed he could have borrowed Asti, but this was something he felt he had to do alone somehow, absent even the trappings of Palace support.
As he neared the Alleyne mansion, his thoughts strayed to Valerian Square. Conor would be there now, receiving the Hierophant’s blessing. He, too, would be alone. Of course he would be surrounded by Castelguards, by Mayesh, by the Charter Families (save Alleyne, as Liorada had begged off, citing illness)—but as far as Kel was concerned, if Conor was appearing in public without him, he was alone.
He could feel it, the physicality of Conor unprotected, as if it were a wound as yet unbandaged.
He tried to distract himself with other thoughts. It was not as if he had a paucity of worries. In the days that had followed the events on Tyndaris, Kel had waited anxiously for the news of Gremont’s death to break among the nobility of the Hill.
It hadn’t.
Rumors were beginning to circulate about his absence. Perhaps Artal was on a three-day bender in the Maze (Falconet’s suggestion), or perhaps he had grown bored with what was on offer in Castellane and gone to explore the infamous brothels of Valderan. Perhaps he had been taken hostage by a group of lowlifes to whom he owed money. Some believed he had ingested so much poppy-juice, either on purpose or by mischance, that he had forgotten who he was and begun a new life.
None of them seemed to think he was dead, which felt strange to Kel, who had watched the life bleed out of him. Who had held the false, bloody amulet in his hand, and later given it to Andreyen for safekeeping. He had waited for guilt to come, waited to regret the way he had treated Gremont in the last seconds of the man’s life, but it never came. He only wished he, not Jerrod, had been the one to deliver the killing blow.
Of course, Lady Alleyne and Antonetta knew the truth of the situation, but it was to neither of their advantages to mention that. Kel could not imagine the strain Antonetta must be under, keeping such a secret. He had hoped she would seek him out at the Castel Mitat, but she had not; he had sent her a note but heard nothing back. Part of him knew there was every chance that Lady Alleyne had intercepted the message and thrown it away, but the rest of him kept recalling the last interaction he’d had with Antonetta at the docks, the disappointment on her face when he had refused to tell her the truth. It was like a song in his head, playing over and over, wearing a groove into his brain.
He had no clear idea what he wanted to say to her now, but there had to be some way to mend her disappointment, to reassure her that he was the same Kel he always was, someone she could trust—
He brought himself up short. He’d arrived.
He recalled the last time he’d been at House Alleyne, for the engagement party. An engagement that will now never be a marriage, thank the Gods. There had been a line of torch-bearing servants lining the path to the front door. Now there was only a single guard in livery dozing off at the gate, who recognized Kel and put two fingers to the brim of his hat, indicating that Kel could continue on to the front door.
Kel could not help but feel that something oppressive hung about the house like cobwebs. It was utterly silent; there was no noise from within. Despite the heat, the windows were shuttered, and when he raised his hand and knocked, he imagined the sound echoing through empty rooms within. A sharp fear seized him. What if they had gone? Packed up the house and fled at Lady Alleyne’s insistence, hoping to escape the consequences of her bargain with the Malgasi—
But the door swung open. To Kel’s surprise, it was Lady Alleyne herself, not Magali, who stood on the threshold. He could not help but start at her appearance. He had never seen her anything but impeccably turned out—she had worn rubies to Tyndaris—but she wore only a black dressing-gown now, with silk slippers on her feet. Her long hair fell down her back, blond streaked with silver he had never noticed before. Without her usual paint and color, her features seemed strained and gray, her face lined.
She looked at him with something close to loathing. “You,” she said. “You’ve a lot of nerve, showing your face here.”
Kel stared. He knew that Lady Alleyne was not overly fond of him, but she was never overtly rude. Usually she ignored him or was coolly polite.
He tried to look past her into the house, but she moved to block him. He dragged his gaze back to Lady Alleyne, to her blazing eyes. “I have come to see Demoselle Alleyne,” he said without emotion. “I have a message from Prince Conor.”
“Then give the message to me.”
Kel shook his head. “The Prince requires that I give it to the Demoselle herself.”
“You are a liar.” Lady Alleyne spoke dispassionately.
Kel narrowed his eyes. “I understand you are unwell, Lady Alleyne. For that reason, I will not bring news of your outburst to the Prince. But I act on his orders—”
“Do you?” murmured Lady Alleyne. She put out a hand to brace herself against the doorframe. “I have never trusted you, Kel Anjuman. You think you hide your disrespect, your resentment? You have never had a sense of your place. The Prince, in his blind kindness, has given you ideas far above your station.” Her gaze flicked over him. “Ever since I told you to stay away from my daughter—”
“I did stay away from your daughter,” Kel said; it was all he could do to keep his white-hot rage out of his voice. “I stayed away from her for years. You destroyed an innocent friendship between two children. You let her believe I despised her. You have never cared about her happiness at all—”
Lady Alleyne had gone a grayish color. “Antonetta is all I care about,” she hissed. “For the past nights I have not slept, not since”—he almost imagined she was about to say since that night on Tyndaris, but instead she finished with—“since the night Antonetta left our home.”
Kel’s ears seemed to be ringing. “Antonetta isn’t here?”
Foolish, he thought numbly, foolish to call her Antonetta and not Demoselle, but Lady Alleyne did not seem even to have noticed. She was fumbling in the pocket of her robe, from which she produced a crumpled bit of vellum and handed it to Kel without a word.
Mama, he read, in Antonetta’s familiar scrawl, Gremont does nothing but humiliate me in public. It is insupportable. If he inquires, I will be at the house of a friend for some time. I do not wish visitors.
Lady Alleyne’s look was hot with fury. “Swear to it,” she said. “Swear she is not hiding herself away in the rooms of the Castel Mitat.”
Kel’s mind was in a whirl. It was clear that Antonetta had told her mother nothing about her own trip to Tyndaris, that she had not revealed to Lady Alleyne her own knowledge of Gremont’s death. “I swear it,” he said. “Why would I have come here if I knew where she was? Just to be insulted? But then I suppose you imagine those of my station enjoy it.”
A look of real concern passed across Lady Alleyne’s face; it had nothing whatsoever to do with Kel. He was not even sure she had registered his words beyond understanding he did not know the location of her daughter.
“Then... where is she?” she said. “With some other friend?”
“I cannot imagine,” he said, holding Antonetta’s note out to her. His stomach churned. Did Lady Alleyne really know so little about her own daughter that she did not realize there was no one on the Hill whom Antonetta really counted as a friend?
Which was a terrifying thought. He tried to tell himself that perhaps she had fled to Sancia Vasey’s, but he could not make himself believe it. So where was she ?
“Ask the Prince,” said Lady Alleyne, snatching the note from him. “If anyone can discover where she has hidden herself—”
“No,” Kel said. The rage and terror swirled inside him like a rising whirlpool; he could not force it down, any more than he could stop himself from saying what he knew he should not say: “So Conor can have her dragged back under your thumb? You forced your daughter into an engagement with a man she hates, a man who has done nothing but humiliate her with his repeated trips to brothels in the city, and who plans to humiliate her only more greatly with the ceremony of the First Night.”
A look of shock passed over Liorada’s face, but she was made of stern stuff. The steel in Antonetta’s veins had its roots in her mother, even if in Lady Alleyne those roots were twisted.
Lady Alleyne raised her chin, her look of contempt washing over Kel like dirty water. “My daughter will always have the finest things in life,” she snapped. “I have seen to that.” Her voice curdled. “Not that you would understand. You live off the royal blood. You will never understand the meaning of responsibility or what it means to sacrifice for another.”
“Sacrifice?” Kel bit back. “It has always been my understanding that for a sacrifice to have meaning, you must surrender something that matters to you. Not sacrifice your own daughter in your stead.”
At that, she flinched, and Kel felt a savage pleasure in having hurt her. A pleasure born in the pain of a fifteen-year-old boy who had just been told he had nothing to offer the girl he loved and should stay away from her for her own good.
Lady Alleyne’s lips pressed into a thin line. “My daughter will return. She is being foolish and stubborn, that is all. And when she does return, I want you to remember that nothing has changed. Keep away from her, Anjuman.”
Kel allowed himself the ghost of a smile. “If Artal Gremont wishes me to stay away from his fiancée, he can tell me that himself. Can’t he?”
For a moment, a look like fear passed over Lady Alleyne’s features. Then she slammed the door in Kel’s face.
As the carriage rolled smoothly up the Hill toward Marivent, Lin clenched her hands in her lap. She could sense her heart beating in her palms. She knew, of course, that it wasn’t really her heartbeat she felt. The vessels that carried blood through the body were near the surface only in certain places, like the wrist and throat. But the body in distress was like a broken mirror, casting strange reflections: A wound on one side of the body might be felt on the other, or agony might still register in an amputated limb. Aron’s words had burrowed under her skin like poison or a sickness.
She had accepted the fact that when Aron looked at her, he did not recognize the Goddess. That he saw she was only ordinary, and perhaps worse than ordinary—silly, a liar, desperate for attention. It had made her squirm inside.
But now he said he saw fire in her. Whether it was the true fire of the Goddess she could not say, but the thought frightened her almost as much as what he had said next. Was the flame he saw some residue of the magic she’d been doing? A sort of bright reflection of her Source-Stone? But then—
Around you I see only darkness.
What darkness could he be seeing? She did not for a moment doubt he saw something. He was the Exilarch, the Lion of Judah. Almost unconsciously, she reached into her sleeve, where the brooch with her stone was pinned. The stone was cool to the touch, inert and empty of magic.
She bit her lip as they entered the Palace through the North Gate. The first time she had come to Marivent had been like stepping into a Story-Spinner tale. Now she was beginning to know the place: the Castel Mitat and its courtyard in the center, the towers at each cardinal point, the Little Palace among the gardens, the walking paths near the cliff’s edge, where the sea crashed below, sending up spray like an invading army climbing the rocks.
The chaos in her mind had quieted by the time the carriage halted at the North Tower and she let Jolivet lead her up the stairs. She knew how to set aside whatever troubled her so she could concentrate on a patient. And as for her most important patient—Mariam—all that mattered was making Mariam well before the Exilarch and the Sanhedrin could stop her.
They reached the landing. She scrambled to make sure she had her satchel, her notebook, then nodded at the head of the Arrow Squadron. “It would be better if I went in alone,” she said. “To see the patient.”
“The patient,” Jolivet said. He managed to make the two words sound unexpectedly grim. He was an odd man, the Legate, gray and severe apart from the blood-red signet ring on his hand. “You may be alone with him if you like. Good luck to you. He’s been in a wild mood these past days.”
Lin tried to picture the silent, staring King in a wild mood. “I see. Thank you. For the warning.”
“I will await you on the landing.” Jolivet did not look at her as he unlocked the tower room door. Lin’s stomach was clenched with tension, but there was nothing for it. She went past Jolivet into the King’s chamber and heard the door close behind her with an ominous click.
At first glance, everything seemed unchanged. Items of the astronomer’s science still littered every surface: bronze astrolabes, cosmological maps, gold and ebony octants, a brass torquetum from the time of the Empire. And, of course, the scorch marks on the walls she had noticed before.
The King sat, as he had previously, in the great wooden chair beside the casement window. As she approached slowly, mindful of Jolivet’s warning, she noticed something odd about the window itself—the glass seemed warped, as if there were a flaw in it. But she did not remember a flaw...
As she drew closer, she saw that the glass was not warped but scratched. Gouged, in fact; narrow channels were dug deep into the clear material. They created the impression that the view beyond, of the Palace and the sea, was of a countryside that had itself been damaged. Lin could see a row of white plaster follies shaped like miniature buildings—a cottage, a farmhouse, a temple—standing guard at the edge of the sea cliffs. The damaged glass made the pillars of the temple folly seem broken, and the Trick, rising in the distance, seemed riven with pale scars.
If the King, staring out the window, noticed any of this, he gave no sign. He sat still as a statue, robed in gray and black. He wore no crown, but the omnipresent dark gloves were, as ever, firmly on his hands.
“Your Highness,” Lin said quietly. “I am your physician. I have come to examine you.”
She knelt down in front of him. Opening her satchel, she retrieved her lancet, a cannula of hollow reed, and a small glass bottle. It was her own invention, this method of collecting blood.
The chirurgeons of Castellane saw no use in taking blood from patients, save with the use of leeches for bleeding. There was no point in looking at blood, surely; what could it tell you? Chirurgeons were fools, Lin thought as she arranged the cannula and the bottle. Blood was a tablet, a book. You could read secrets in it if you knew how.
Lin placed the tip of the lancet against the King’s wrist, above the black leather of his glove. She felt him jerk as the cold metal touched his skin; when she looked up, he was staring at her—not past her or through her, but directly into her eyes.
“I do not think there is any chance, Fausten,” he said hoarsely. “They will never allow us to escape.”
Lin stayed very still. She had known he was not incapable of speech—he had spoken in her presence once before—but this was the calmest she’d heard him. Even if he didn’t know who she was. “I am not Fausten. I am Lin, Lin Caster. Your son brought me to you before—”
The King shook his head. “I took their greatest treasure. That which made them what they are. But they stole it. It was never theirs to begin with.” His voice rose. “The House of Belmany was built on darkness, and to darkness it will return.”
House Belmany. Lin thought of what the others had told her about Tyndaris. About Malgasi. Fire burning on the sea. She whispered, “What did you take from them?”
His gaze roamed fretfully around the room. “All night I heard it crying out. It was caged. It begged for freedom, but all I could give it was death. They would never have freed it. It was the source of all their power.”
“What is it ? Was it... a Source-Stone?” Setting the lancet on the arm of the chair, she folded up the sleeve of her dress, showing the silver brooch pinned inside, the Source-Stone black and lightless—
“ Atma! ” The King roared. His head went back, his eyes flaring, his teeth bared. “ Atma, sur az koval! ”
Before Lin could move to stop him, the King seized up the lancet from the arm of the chair and plunged the blade of it into the palm of his left hand.
Lin cried out. The King’s grip relaxed as suddenly as he’d lunged for the blade; the lancet clattered to the ground. Lin caught at the King’s wounded hand—blood ran from the cuff of his glove, soaking his sleeve, spattering onto Lin. She felt the hot sting of it, and then a sharp pain at her wrist.
She looked down. The Source-Stone in its brooch was glowing brightly through her sleeve. It was hot. So hot it was searing her skin.
Fire rose up all around her. The room was burning, the papers suddenly alight, the King’s chair a flaming funeral pyre. She tried to scramble to her knees, but the smoke was too thick to breathe. Her chest aching, she tried to crawl toward the door, but the smoke burned her throat, choked the air from her lungs. She curled in on herself, gasping as darkness rushed in, smothering her breath.
Lin opened her eyes with the sudden shock that accompanies waking in an unfamiliar place. She was lying on something soft; above her arched a low stone ceiling. A dim light came from somewhere nearby. Her lungs felt emptied of air; she sucked in a breath, struggling into a sitting position.
Memories flooded her mind immediately—memories of fire and falling. A descent into a dark place, the blade of a knife and the bars of a cage. But that had not been real, she told herself. She had been unconscious, dreaming—but the tower room had been burning. Of that much she was certain. And she had fallen into unconsciousness, unable to breathe, to think. How had she gotten out?
She was still in the Palace. The room was small, stone-walled, with a single high window. The walls were covered with maps, of Dannemore and the Gold Roads, of Malgasi and Sarthe, dotted with constellations of silver pins. There were maps of the stars, too, and a number of paper constructions with rotating parts: wheels and numbered dials. Volvelles, they were called: spinning die-cut charts that measured everything from distance over land to the orbit of the moon.
She glanced quickly at her hands, her arms, to see if they were burned, but her skin was unmarked. She threw back her thin blanket and sat up. The room seemed immediately to swing around her. She reached for something to anchor her, but her vision had blurred. She dug her fingers into the mattress—
“You’re all right.” A familiar voice, presence. Her hands were enfolded in a steadying grasp. “Lin. Breathe. Breathe. ”
She sucked in her breath. She was not alone, she told herself. Nor was she dreaming. Conor was with her. She felt the warmth of him, his presence. His hand brushed back hair from her face. “Look at me, sweetheart,” he said. “Can you do that?”
She blinked. He was a blur—a blur of silver silk and gray velvet, of black hair, and of the gleam of his circlet, like the shimmer of water. Gripping his hand, she looked around the room. It was full of heavy, old-fashioned furniture. There were a number of desks, and a wardrobe whose drawers had been pulled out, their contents scattered—everything from gloves to scissors to ceramic hot water bottles. A fine-bound leather book lay on the floor, its cover stamped in gold: OREL VALARATI .
“Where am I?” she whispered.
“This is Fausten’s room, or used to be.” Conor was no longer a blur. She could see him clearly now. He still wore the same fine gray velvet he had worn in the square, its embroidery gleaming like dull fire in the faint light. His eyes were the same silver, and they seemed to be burning, watchful lights in a face whose skin was too tight on its bones. She had never seen him look like that before. Not— afraid.
When he spoke, it was with immense control. “I found you on the floor of the tower. You were unconscious. I carried you in here. Lin—what happened?”
“Your father,” she choked. “The fire—the room was burning. Is he all right?”
She tried to get to her feet, but the dizziness was bad. She sank back against the mattress, her head pounding.
“Lin. Stop.” Her hair had come out of its braids; he pushed it back again. The feeling was unutterably soothing. “There was no fire. When I came in, my father was sitting in his chair. Everything was as it always is, except you—” He broke off. “I need to know, Lin. Did he hurt you?”
“No,” Lin said. When she shook her head, her hair tumbled against her neck, her shoulders, and she thought how strange it was to appear before the Prince with unbound hair. “Nothing like that. The fire may not have existed, but even if it was an illusion, it was of the King’s making.”
“He is not a magician, Lin. Not a Sorcerer-King of old.” Conor’s tone was gentle.
“And yet, there is magic here. This is no ordinary aliment, as I said. I know it—” Because my Source-Stone burned. But she could not say that. Because the Malgasi wield true sorcery. But she could not say that, either. She bit her lip in frustration. “Do you know what happened to your father when he was young? At the Malgasi Court? He left—”
“He fled,” Conor corrected her. “Though he has never spoken of his time there.” His hand tangled in her hair, the strands winding through his fingers. He watched her sidelong, as if ready for her to pull away, but Lin would not have moved for the world. “Why do you ask me about Malgasi? Because of Fausten?”
“It is not just Fausten. When your father is distressed, he speaks Malgasi. It is clear his mind is fevered with some wound of the past, some memory of his time in Favár...”
Conor frowned. “When I found you,” he said, “you were babbling in Malgasi. Atma, atma, sur az koval. I didn’t know you even spoke the language.”
“I do not,” said Lin. “What do the words mean?”
“‘The fire, the fire, the blood and the cage.’”
“The blood and the cage,” Lin said. “What did they do to him?” Her stone pulsed at her wrist, like the touch of a match tip. She winced.
Conor sat up straight. “You are hurt,” he said, almost accusingly. “Lin, if this is magic, a curse, it’s too dangerous. I should never have asked you to be involved.”
“You didn’t know,” Lin said. “And I am not hurt— Conor. ”
But he had risen to his feet. He raked his hands through his hair, almost disarranging his circlet. “I should never have let you come here alone,” he said. “I wanted you in the square. I wanted you to see me with Anjelica. I wanted you to be—” He flung his hand out, slammed it against the wardrobe, making the remaining contents rattle. “I should never have asked you to fix a problem that is mine and mine alone.”
“You didn’t ask,” Lin said, and though she said it softly, she saw him flinch.
“You mean I gave you a royal order.” He was clenching his hand so tightly at his side, she worried his ring would cut into his skin. “Well, I rescind it. You are no longer under a royal order, Lin Caster. I release you from this and any other obligation you might feel to me—”
Lin rose from the bed. She had been worried she would be shaky on her feet, but thankfully she was steady. “What about the obligation I feel to my patient? I want to help your father. To treat him. This is what I do. ”
“The only reason you are involved at all is because I demanded it,” he said. He closed the few steps between them, caught her face between his hands. His thumb brushed along her cheekbone, unraveling something inside her, like Mariam unpicking a row of stitches. “When I found you on the floor, I thought you were dead,” he said roughly. “And I realized what that would mean. If you were hurt, even a scratch, because of something I’d demanded you do—” He closed his eyes as if against the vision of something he could not bear. “I rescind the order, Lin. And for the Gods’ sake, if I ask you to do something and you know it to be stupid and dangerous, tell me no. Refuse me, the way you like to do.”
“Then I am refusing you now,” she said. “Not the rescinding of the order. The treatment of your father. You drew me into this; you cannot cut me away from it now.”
“I could order you not to involve yourself.”
“ Conor. ” She laid her hands on his chest, felt his muscles jump under her touch. He looked at her almost in disbelief. “Not everything has to be orders, demands. I am asking you to trust me.”
“I already trust you,” he said.
“Then trust yourself.” She could feel the beat of his heart under her right hand. It was racing, as if he were running. She wanted to press her hands harder against him, wanted to press herself against him, the ache of desire like a fishhook caught under her skin. “You are trying, ” she whispered. “To be a good Prince, a better King someday. I believe you could be a great King of Castellane. You must believe that about yourself, too. You do not want to put me under an order. It is not your instinct. Trust yourself.”
His eyes were wide. So beautiful, she thought; he was so beautiful it hurt, black-ink hair and the bones of his face graceful as a soaring heron. “I have never trusted myself,” he said. “But I think, if you did—I could.”
She did not know what madness seized her then. Only that there was an ache in her chest, in her bones, that she could not understand or explain; only that her body impelled her upward, onto her toes, her hands pressing down on his shoulders as she brushed her lips against his cheek—a quick kiss that was barely a kiss at all.
She drew back to see that his eyes had darkened, the gray almost swallowed up by the blackness of his pupils. His hand curled in her hair, catching at the strands, letting them slide through his fingers. “Lin...” he breathed. “Don’t do that.”
She had never been so close to him; she could see the flecks of lighter and darker color in his eyes, the lighter skin at his temples, the base of his throat, where the sun did not touch, the glint of the circlet in among his curls. The beat of the pulse at his throat, so fast it was visible. “You just told me,” she whispered, “not to take orders from you.”
His breath hissed between his teeth. “ You, ” he said, and then he caught at her, pulling her against him, her hands flattening against his chest as he drove his mouth against hers.
The force of the kiss would have set her back on her heels, but his hands were already at her waist, pulling her against him, holding her in place. She could taste honey and spice on his mouth, the sacramental wine of blessing. When he sucked her lower lip, running his tongue across it, stars exploded behind her eyes.
The tight coil of control she held around herself whenever she was near him loosened. She slid her hands up his chest, and the pleasure of touching him like that, even without her skin on his, was sharper than pain. She smoothed her palms down his shoulders, took hold of his arms, the muscle of them hard beneath her grasp.
Without her hands in the way, she pressed even closer against him, every part of her fitted against his body. He moaned against her mouth at the touch. Kissed her again and again, each time harder, his tongue curling against hers, her fingers biting into the soft velvet of his jacket. And still she wanted.
People dying of thirst, when they were given water, sometimes drank until they died, unable to assuage the need that had become part of them. She could understand it now, how you could have something and still not have enough of it, ever. He was shaking against her, tremors that curled his clenched muscles tighter, forcing her awareness of the heat of him against her, the strength of him, the pressure of his hand at her hip—
He jerked away from her. It felt like a wound, and not a clean cut: bone and muscle torn apart. Her hand flew to her mouth.
“ Conor, ” she breathed.
He stood a few feet from her, his hands half raised, as if to ward her away. His voice shook. “You had better go.”
“It’s not your fault,” she whispered. “I wanted—”
“I stood in front of the Hierophant today,” he said. “I was sealed to Anjelica in front of all my people. And now—” There was agony in his words. “Please. I am not ordering you away from the King. I am begging you, for my sake. Go now.”
It was the please that caught her. Conor Aurelian did not ask, did not request, did not say please or for my sake. Conor Aurelian did not beg. But he was begging her now.
With shaking hands, she caught up her satchel and fled from the room.
She did not slow down until she had burst from the tower, flinging herself into the carriage waiting there. As it rolled forward across the courtyard, she lifted her arms to wrap them around herself—to stop herself shaking—and it was then that she saw it. The Source-Stone in her brooch, which had been a dead blank eye for so long, was glimmering with a tiny flicker of light deep in its heart.
When Kel came into the rooms he shared with Conor, something struck him as odd. It took him a moment to realize what it was. For the first time in months, the door to the liquor cabinet was flung open, and a row of bottles sat on Conor’s desk, atop the papers.
Kel had spent some hours after leaving the Alleyne house wandering the Hill, kicking his way through the garrigue, the dry scrubland of tangled lavender, thorny broom, and rosemary that covered the highlands of Castellane. From the higher spots on the Hill, he could see down into the city. There was the dot of the Sault, and to the east of it, Valerian Square turned black with the density of the crowd gathered to see the marriage blessing. He thought of Conor again, but now thoughts of Conor were tangled with thoughts of Antonetta. Could he ask Conor to help him find out where she was? But there had been nothing in her note to indicate she was not leaving willingly, and who could blame her? The Hill rumors were poisonous, and she could not tell the truth of what she knew without indicting her own mother.
“Kel?” Conor’s voice. His eyes adjusting to the dimness in the room, Kel saw Conor for the first time. He was seated in the embrasure of the arched western window, still in his ceremonial clothes, dark-gray velvet chained with brilliant threads of silver. There was a bottle in his hand. “Kel, is that you?”
“I certainly hope so.” Kel crossed the room, glancing at the bottles on the desk as he passed. Dark-red bloodroot liquor from Hanse, pale-yellow ginger wine, pale-lilac elixir made from violets. It seemed Conor had had difficulty choosing.
Kel could sense, more than see, Conor watching him owlishly as he approached and pulled himself up on the windowsill. He swung his legs up sideways so he and Conor could face each other, each at their opposite ends of the arched hollow in the stone. The window glass was cool against the side of his face.
He could not count the number of times they’d sat like this, the dark room on one side of them, the lights of the city a shimmering blur through the glass on the other. Kel could see Conor more clearly now, see his hand wrapped tightly around the neck of a green bottle, see the half-defensive look in his eyes.
Kel said lightly, “It’s been a while since you’ve been at the absynthe, Con. Did the blessing ceremony not go as planned?”
Conor ducked his head. Kel sensed the Prince was vibrating at an unusually tense frequency, like an overtightened viol string. “All was well,” he said. “I was blessed and bound, as was the Princess. It is not the ceremony that preys on my mind.”
Good, Kel thought. At least he’s willing to admit something is preying on his mind.
“The Solstice Ball is troubling you, then? Don’t tell me. Your costume isn’t ready, or they’ve sent you the wrong one and you’re going to have to go as a hedgehog instead of a lion.”
“I would make a noble hedgehog,” said Conor gravely. “No, it is not the ball. I have simply been thinking on what I bound myself to today, and of all the bindings I have willingly submitted my will to over the past months. I am bound by treaties, by contracts, by promises both explicit and implicit, and by expectations.”
“The expectations others lay on you or the ones you have of yourself?”
“I think I no longer know the difference.”
“It may not be so bad, you know,” Kel said. “All rulers are bound by such obligations, yet they manage. I do not see why you would be different.”
“I cannot hope for not so bad, ” Conor said gravely. “Hope is a danger, you know. Hope may raise you up for a time, but when it is disappointed, the fall is all the more acute.”
He reached up to press a forefinger against his temple, as he always did when troubled. And at that moment, Kel wanted to tell him everything. About the conspiracy, about Malgasi, about what he had seen on Tyndaris. He would swear him to utter silence. He would tell him no one could be trusted. He would explain that he had done what he had done at Jolivet’s bequest, and because the Ragpicker King was not an enemy. There has always been a King on the Hill and a King in the City—
Something must have shown in his eyes. Tension, anxiety—whatever it was, Conor sat up straight, shaking his head to clear it. “Never mind,” he said with a disarming smile. “I am lamentably no longer used to strong liquor, I think. Take this bottle from me, Kel; there is no point in my being hung over at the Solstice Ball. That’s what the day after the party is for. Now, I could use your advice on my costume...”