Chapter 13
Isca
He remembered my name .
That shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
My heart trumped in my chest, still caught between the lingering pressure of Emrys’s fury and the giddy relief of Nisien shielding me like I mattered. I was used to being overlooked and even shunned in Caervorn, so the attention was an unfamiliar feeling.
But wasn’t that just as dangerous? To be noticed, steadied by one brother while the other stormed away, blue fire still crackling in his eyes?
With Emrys gone, Prince Nisien gestured toward the shattered door, seemingly unconcerned about the destruction of a piece that must’ve taken a skilled artisan months to carve.
“Doors are a particular enemy of his,” he said breezily, but I could sense a trace of old grief within him. “Don’t take it personally.”
Laughter would make me complicit, and silence would make me appear weak. So I settled for the safer middle ground. I schooled my features into polite amusement, though my pulse still raced. “Does he often…react this way?”
If Nisien noticed the change, he didn’t let on. “Only to the beautiful guests,” he answered, that grin disarming and practiced.
And damn it all, I blushed again despite knowing full well how dangerous it was to enjoy it. Did Nisien do that on purpose?
This is part of the job. Smile. Survive. Return home. You cannot get attached, Isca.
I was here to make things better. Treating Emrys’s destruction of a door as if it were nothing more than a toddler’s fit was absolutely not helping matters.
With a deep breath, I steeled myself to address this now, to get started on my work immediately.
“Your brother’s volatile nature won’t be changed by flattery, my prince. ”
Nisien still wasn’t shielding his emotions from me, though I suspected he could do it given his casual show of strength earlier.
“Lady Isca,” his slow words hung heavy in the air, “we have much to discuss regarding Emrys, but you must know his unpredictable state is beyond his immediate control. He has a condition.”
A condition? Confused, my mind swam in a sea of questions.
“Come, lady,” Nisien said, abruptly silencing my thoughts. He spun on one heel and started walking down the hallway past the destroyed door. Two guards who’d joined him on the stairs outside turned and waited for me to precede them. “There are sights far more pleasant than my brother’s back.”
This man was basically a king, even if his title was prince. He surely had more important things to do than give a fake diplomat like me a tour. Why wasn’t a servant doing this for him?
Nisien led me through a stone corridor lit with flickering torches that illuminated more tapestries until we stopped at a great open archway. He paused and extended one arm, gesturing for me to go ahead of him. His guards silently moved to flank either side of the archway.
The sight beyond hit me harder than any treasure, any throne room, any gilded promise the Assembly could’ve offered. For a meek woman like me, it might as well have been an armory—the type wholly lacking in steel and sharp edges.
My feet carried me three steps into the library. Books filled the space, stacked in tall, neat rows from floor to ceiling between every narrow window. The faint scent of old ink filled the air, and a fire crackled in the grated fireplace on one side of the room.
Two heavy wooden tables sat in the center. Four chairs, their leather worn smooth with age, flanked the larger table. Two smaller, exquisitely embroidered chairs sat at the other.
Nisien soon approached me from behind, stopping a respectful distance away. “My mother and sister used the more decorative table. Consider it yours.”
“Your sister?” I asked. I hadn’t known the twins had any siblings. The Assembly’s explanation of my assignment here had been, to put it mildly, lacking in specifics.
“Yes, Bronwyn married a Wynthian king just last year. It was her wedding that convinced Emrys to come back home, in fact.” While he spoke, his smile was bright, but a weight of conflicting feelings was buried beneath the surface as he discussed his sister.
“Oh,” was all I could manage. I had a million questions about that, but now didn’t seem like the time to get so personal. “So, I may use the library, read the books, when not attending to my duties?”
For a moment, Nisien studied me with a strange expression and a bit of confusion. Then he answered simply, “Yes, of course.”
I must’ve made a social blunder, though I wasn’t sure of the exact nature of my mistake.
“Thank you,” I said, curtseying again. My smile felt too wide, too eager for the show I was supposed to be putting on of being a high lady.
Since age sixteen, I’d viewed reading as a purely utilitarian thing. My mother had taught us all from an early age, but my access to new reading material ended when my parents could no longer afford my magical tutor.
I wanted to run my fingers along the spines, crack them open and devour every page. I wanted to gain the knowledge I’d once dreamed of but never dared hope for.
My fingertips brushed over a particularly stunning example that had paint along the edges. Books were expensive. Poor girls didn’t touch priceless things. If I damaged it, I could never pay its price back…
Still, the risk might be worth it. These walls might hold the answers I needed to actually play the game the Assembly had embroiled me in.
Every book could be a weapon, if I could only learn how to wield it.
Since this was the family’s private library, I hoped I’d find something about their history within.
I needed to learn as much as I could about this broken kingdom so I could return home.
If Emrys’s initial greeting was any indication, I would be in Tir Darreth long enough to devour half these shelves. And maybe, just maybe, the books would teach me all the things I needed to know to survive inside a disorderly court—and the chaos of its princes.
“Lady Isca.” Nisien cleared his throat. “I hate to do this, but I am afraid that your behavior has made it necessary.”
My magic whipped out, frantically reading the prince’s emotions. He didn’t react to it. I’d already guessed that I’d made a social blunder, but had I actually made a much larger mistake? Would my family be punished for it? My pulse quickened once more.
Except the only emotional feedback my magic received from Nisien was…playfulness?
The broad, genuine smile on his face betrayed that he’d been teasing me… Or testing? With Emrys, every word had a glint of steel. With Nisien, they felt like silk.
But even silk could bind so tightly that escape was impossible. Between them, they pulled me as taut as a bowstring: steel and silk, fury and charm.
Nisien’s serious tone didn’t match what I could sense from him when he spoke next. “Lady Isca, you are forbidden from curtsying to me. The only exception is when we’re attending formal events with neighboring nobles, where it would be considered odd not to… Can’t have that.” Then he winked.
Men like him didn’t flirt with women like me. This had to be a part of his personality, nothing more.
But I couldn’t turn cold on Nisien in the first hour of meeting him because I was afraid.
I forcefully reminded myself that both princes were innocent in the Assembly’s clandestine machinations.
He didn’t know that I’d been sent to seduce him.
He likely didn’t even know that I was someone the Assembly had plucked out of the gutter.
I could go home when the kingship was decided…or when I was unmistakably pregnant. The first task was duty. The second? I’d told myself I could perform the necessaries while remaining detached. It would be a simple transaction. But meeting both princes had made that lie harder to swallow.
It was absurd. In the past week, I’d thought more about romance, heirs, and the weight of a man’s hands on my hips, of a man’s eyes piercing me with something I couldn’t name, than I had in my entire twenty-four years.
It made me wonder… Was it so terrible? What if, against all odds, this golden prince and the shadowed one weren’t the worst fates the Assembly could’ve chosen for me?
Guilt twisted in my stomach as I looked at row after row of books. Really, shouldn’t I be the one feeling guilty for even thinking about going through with the Assembly’s second task? My cheeks burned, this time from private shame, as I agreed not to curtsy to Nisien again.
The guards outside shifted, and a young woman in a black servant’s dress with wild auburn hair practically sprinted into the room. She skidded to a stop a few paces in, breathing hard.
She bobbed a quick curtsy, cheeks pink with excitement and nerves. “Prince, my lady mage,” she panted.
I shot Nisien a sidelong glance, smile attached, which he answered with a grin of his own. You could tell a lot from the way people treated their servants. And I could already tell that Nisien would be one of the best.
“This,” he said with a bit of pomp, “—is Catrin. She’s been assigned to you as your personal attendant. She will continue your tour, as I must make certain that Emrys has set nothing afire.”
Given the state of the door when I’d first entered, I was no longer certain Nisien was joking.
“I will see you at dinner, Lady Isca.” Nisien covered the distance between us quickly then took my hand, his touch warm and steady, as he gently pressed a kiss to the back of it.
His lips lingered a heartbeat too long. Could he feel the calluses from years of scrubbing cauldrons? His friendly nature, his dazzling smile, his very presence—everything about this golden prince was overloading my good sense. He left me breathless and speechless in his wake.
“Lady Isca.” Catrin quickly took my other hand up. “Do you like the library? Come, we’ll show you to your apartment.”
Apartment? I wasn’t even familiar with the word.