Chapter 44 The Prince #2
“How much do you think it’s about her?” I said carefully.
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing.” His dagger stilled. “Oak’s never been like this over a woman before.”
I sniffed. “I could say the same thing about you.”
He shot me a look. “I can assure you I’m in full control of my head. And my cock.”
“So you say, and yet every time I turn around you’ve got your tongue down her throat again.” Or other places.
“Be careful, Brother,” he said, smiling. “Talk like that and people will think you’re jealous.”
“I assure you, I’m nothing of the sort.” And yet, I couldn’t shake those things I’d foreseen in that vision, all those years ago. If it had been her—and that was a significant if…
“Maybe it is jealousy,” Radven went on, and he wasn’t talking about me anymore.
“Jealousy, coupled with the frustration of having our abilities castrated.” He glanced at me.
“It gets worse, every day we’re back here.
You feel it too, don’t you?” It was the closest he’d come to acknowledging those shadows inside him.
I nodded. Our pain was different, and yet—I had my own shadows, my own burdens I carried. And it was worse now. I’d been lost in that other world, too, but I’d been in a strange place. Being back home, in Therador, and still finding myself wandering in the dark was a different, sharper pain.
But part of me was relieved, too. Because as long as my sight was gone, as long as my visions were denied me, I didn’t have to know whether the girl—woman—I’d seen in my mind over a decade ago was Marigold.
As long as I was blind, that woman was still just a symbol, a distant thing, open to the interpretation of time.
Because if it was her… Gods, if it was her…
“You have to admit, though, some would call us foolish for refusing that offer.” Rad began spinning his blade again, looking off into the middle distance.
“Assuming we could verify that Mordren was telling the truth about his ability to return our power. Even if just one of us could be made whole again… Think of how much we could do. She’s just one person.
One girl, sacrificed against all the lives we could save, all the good we could do for Therador. ”
He glanced to me again with that final word, as if he knew what pain the very name of Therador stirred within me. I’d declared, only days ago, that I would do anything for Therador. And I would, only…
“We all thought it,” Radven said. “We’d have been fools if we hadn’t considered it.
But I would never betray the two of you.
Or an innocent like Marigold.” I knew, without him even saying so, exactly where he stood on that matter.
“I guarantee Oak thought about it, too. And he lashed out at us rather than face that truth within himself.”
That made sense, of course. More sense than believing our brother truly believed Radven and myself capable of giving Marigold over to Mordren.
But Oak’s momentary, violent distrust in us, no matter his reasons, had opened a fissure. One that had never existed between us before.
And if he ever learned what I’d seen about Marigold in that vision so many years ago…
If it even was Marigold, and not simply some specter sent by Vela to haunt me…
Rad had stopped playing with his dagger again, and he was now looking toward the door, which had been left slightly ajar by Oak and Talon when they left.
“You can stop hovering,” he said. “If you want to eavesdrop, I’m going to have to teach you how to be subtle about it.”
A few seconds later, the door pulled open, and a fidgeting, pink-cheeked Marigold stood in the doorway.
Something tightened inside me at the sight of her. She was all wrong—too girlish, too helpless, too damned silly and cheerful.
And yet…
She’d brought us here. Found the strength to open the bridge to Therador, even at great risk and pain to herself. Kept her calm during Mordren’s attack, even though one wrong step would have meant her death.
There was strength in her, and great power, and that meant it was possible she contained all of the other things I’d seen, too.
And she’d crowned me, just as the woman in my visions had crowned me. Marigold had used a crown of flowers, and we’d been in the middle of a dirty, crowded street, but every word she’d said to me had been exactly the same as what I’d foreseen. And if that had been true, then the rest of it…
“Trade me,” she said.
I stiffened. “What?”
She looked from me to Rad and back again. “Give me to this Mordren guy.”
Radven jumped in while I was still recovering from the sheer absurdity of the idea.
“You don’t know what you’re asking, butterfly,” he told her.
“It would get you your powers back.”
“One of us,” Rad stressed. “And it would cause far more problems than it solved.” He shook his head. “Trust me, you don’t want to be anywhere near that bastard.”
“Well, then just make the trade, get your power returned, and then steal me back from him.” Her chin rose stubbornly.
“You said it yourself—think of all the good you could do.” She continued to fidget, lacing her fingers together and then pulling them apart again, shaking out her shoulders and shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
I couldn’t feel the essence that had built up within her, but I could see how it distressed her, how it refused to give her a moment’s rest.
“It’s not worth the risk,” I said.
Her eyes snapped to me. “Not even for Therador?”
Blessed Vela, I missed the way she’d looked at me the first night we’d met. She’d been just as na?vely obstinate then, but now, there was a knowing in her eyes when she glanced my way, like she’d figured out some piece of me.
I didn’t like it.
When I didn’t answer her, she said, very quietly, “He did this to get to me. He killed all those people…” The flush had drained from her face completely. “I can’t… I won’t let that happen again.”
“I hate to break it to you, butterfly, but you going to Mordren won’t stop him from killing people,” my brother said. “He’ll just find a different excuse to do so.”
“But it will do something,” she insisted, eyes flashing.
“And if I go with him, then I…I’ll learn how to use this power I have.
That’s what the Circle wants, isn’t it? To teach me how to use my power.
Then I won’t be so…so helpless anymore. Once I know how to use it, then I can leave them and I can help you. ”
“The Circle’s ‘gifts’ always have a price,” Rad said, shaking his head.
“If they teach you, it will be with their own aims in mind. And their lessons will go far beyond the physical scope of your power. They will manipulate you, mold you to their will, and you won’t even realize what they’re doing until it’s too late. ”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” she demanded, and despite the fire in her voice I saw the glisten of tears in her eyes.
“Just sit around and wait for one of the Circle to come after me again? I’m tired of things happening to me.
I’m tired of being useless.” She looked down at her hands, which were visibly shaking.
“And I can’t… I can’t go on like this. I know my body is supposed to adapt eventually, but I can’t…
” She looked up again, and her eyes found and locked on mine.
“I feel like it’s going to break me apart. ”
The desperation in her voice carved away at something inside me. My visions from ten years ago had suggested one thing, and yet…I’d misinterpreted my visions before.
I prayed I was wrong about this, about her.
“The answer is obvious,” I said. “All we have to do is send you home.”