Chapter Sixteen #2
“I have good, steady hands because I steal things in the market. Only what me and Wren need in order to stay alive, in order to maybe, possibly, have the hope of freedom one day. We only take from people who can afford it, but we take nonetheless. Things we aren’t entitled to have.”
I knew it was a risk to tell him, to Wren and me both. But I had no power here beyond the truth.
“A criminal,” he said. “A criminal in my palace. Although that does explain the seams.”
“The seams?”
“ ‘You didn’t check the seams,’ ” he added in a high-pitched voice.
“I didn’t sound like that.” But I suspected I sounded exactly like that, and I didn’t like that he’d been able to capture me so well.
“You did.” He frowned. “You also recognized that the bandits were thieves and you knew how to search the smithy. I was a spy in the Eastern Army. I know how to read people, and I should have put that together.”
“I cannot relate to that feeling. Please explain it to me. Is it difficult to realize that you misjudged someone, that you missed signs, and that you have to completely reevaluate who they are?”
“It’s getting easier,” he said dryly. “Have you ever been caught?”
“Not yet. I’m good, and I’m careful. I try to avoid notice. Or usually.”
“Except when saving a prince from assassins?”
“I broke a rule.”
He watched me in silence for a moment. “Do you regret it?”
“Would you, if you were me?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Probably.”
I nodded. “Sometimes it’s better—safer—to be invisible.”
“I see you.”
He said the words slowly, softly, and sent a shard of heat through my chest, an arrow hitting its mark.
I should have kept moving to the door, quickened my step.
Anything to get clear of the crackling connection between us.
But the fact that he’d read me so well still felt like a vulnerability. A tender spot that could be poked.
“You shouldn’t.”
“While we’re clearing the air about our secret identities, is there anything else I should know about you? Are you secretly a foreign spy? Juggler?”
“No and why?”
“I don’t like jugglers. I find them unsettling.”
“Juggling and green food. You’re an odd prince.”
“You’re an odd thief. And now we know each other’s secrets.”
I doubted that. Who ever really knew the deep, dark room of someone else’s soul? I was aware he was trying to get me to relax, to drop my guard. Which I wasn’t going to do.
I stood up, one hand on the bed for balance. “Thank you for letting me stay here. But I’m awake now, and I’ve reported what happened, so I should go.” Except the room wobbled when I took a step forward, and if he hadn’t rushed forward to catch me, I’d have hit the ground.
My head began to throb again. “Let me go,” I said, and pushed away from him; I was dizzy and overwhelmed and I wasn’t sure how much of it was him.
He ignored that, at least until I made it to the bed, his hand at my elbow just in case. And when I sat down, he stepped back.
“You aren’t a prisoner. You can leave if you want—if you’re able to walk out the door.”
“Second time I’ve heard that recently,” I said, feeling weak as a newborn colt. “The first time was a lie.”
But he walked to the door, opened it, and stood for a moment beside it, offering escape. When I didn’t move, he closed the door and strode back to me, shoulders set like he ruled the world and everything in it. Everyone in it. Maybe someday he would.
I felt weak and helpless and penned in. And I hated it.
“If you don’t want to stay in the palace for you, consider doing it for me. If you’re hurt because you chose to help me, I’d be exactly the kind of Lys’Careth you imagine.”
“Is it really possible for a Lys’Careth to be different?”
“I mean to find out.”
The gods in their quiet corners knew I didn’t want to believe him, because believing him felt like submitting to a grift. Willingly becoming the mark.
“I sense you aren’t used to being offered help, Fox. Or accepting it. But it’s earnestly offered.”
I didn’t like that he could read my thoughts so easily, and that had me fidgeting on the bed. “I can’t stay here while he’s out there hurting people.”
“Why? Because you could stop him?”
Shame had my cheeks going hot. “No. I can’t stop him.”
“Then you should take the opportunity to rest. And heal.”
“What am I supposed to do in a royal palace? Scrub floors? Polish royal trophies?”
“For the sake of all gods, Fox. I’m not going to put you to work.” The words barely made it past his strangled laugh. “I owe you my life. You’d be here as my guest and under my protection. And, frankly, that the practitioner attacked you proves I still need your expertise.”
Lys’Careths were supposed to be arrogant, spend coin, lounge around with wine and lute players and dancing girls. He wasn’t supposed to care. I didn’t like this. I didn’t know this man—not really. So I ignored the warmth in his voice.
“It’s not often I meet someone who actively despises royalty.” He smiled a little. “You keep me humble.”
“Please. You have a palace full of servants; you can pay them to keep you humble. I can accept why you lied to me about who you are.” Especially after my encounter with the monster in a mask.
“But not—” I gestured at the room, with its rich fabrics and glass windows and fine things.
“All this. It’s too much to just move past.”
“So few would object to it,” he muttered. “Me being a prince and living in a palace.”
I snorted. “Believe me, there’s more than a few who object. You should hear the strongholders’ other songs.”
“I’ve heard them. They mostly amount to the same complaints. They do piss off my father, which is satisfying for an allegedly disobedient prince.”
He put his hands on his hips and considered me. I met his gaze, refusing to look away. It wasn’t an easy thing to stare down a prince, especially when it felt like he was trying to look into my soul and pull out the truth of me.
“I’ll pay you to stay here,” he finally said.
I blinked, so he’d won that round. “How much?”
“As much as it takes. I don’t want you hurt because of me. Not again.”
I had a sense that wasn’t all of it; who in Oblivion knew his real motivations?
Unfortunately, he also had a damned point.
The practitioner was still out there, and he wanted me for something, even if it wasn’t my Aetheric prowess.
There was a chance he’d trace me back to the manor, send someone to find me.
If I was here, it would be much harder to get to me.
I didn’t want to be a coward, to feel like a mouse hiding in a wall.
But I wasn’t sure I’d survive another round of his testing, and I was worried about Wren.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, trying to think of a better solution. A safer solution. And not a single one came to mind. Not as long as the practitioner was out there.
At least we’d get paid for it. Maybe we could earn enough to pay off our bonds.
“I have conditions,” I said when I opened my eyes again.
He managed not to grin with victory, but it was clear in his eyes. There was power in that look, in the sight of a beautiful man who knew he’d won a fiercely contested battle.
He crossed his arms. “Proceed.”
“Put a guard on the Lady’s manor in case he tries to get to Wren.”
“Yue is already there; I sent her when Luna brought you here.”
“Good. And Wren and Luna can visit whenever they want.”
“I’m fairly sure Luna doesn’t need my permission to go where she wishes. I’ll tell the guards about Wren. I did ask the Lady to let her stay as well. She refused.”
“Of course she did. She loses power if we’re both inside the palace. And Wren would have refused anyway.” She wouldn’t want to live within yet another wall; she’d also probably say it would be easier to save me, if necessary, if she was outside it.
“Next,” I said, “I can go wherever I want in the palace.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Do you want to go into my private rooms?” There was a dare in his eyes, a challenge that I almost wanted to call, just to show him that I wasn’t intimidated.
And because I was curious about where he found solace from all the rest of it.
Were his rooms luxurious? Full of jewels and furs and tapestries that showed stories from older times?
Or were they simple and spare? The rooms of a soldier?
Was he, in the quiet and solitary times, more like Nik, or the prince?
None of it was my business, I reminded myself. “No,” I finally said.
“And you can’t go into the palace treasury.”
That pulled me immediately out of his rooms and into this one. “There’s a palace treasury?”
“I probably shouldn’t have admitted that to a thief.”
“Especially not a skilled one.”
He cocked his head to the side. “How skilled are you?”
“Would you like me to show you?”
“Not at present. Stay out of the treasury and my rooms. With those caveats, you can go wherever you want.”
I nodded, couldn’t think of anything else to add. “And there’s truly no work for me to do?” I didn’t know how to structure a day without it.
“No. You can sleep. Eat. Walk the grounds. Stare at the river. The palace has a library. Maybe you could find something about the Aetheric weapons. Maybe there was a prior attempt.”
“I’m not much of a reader,” I admitted. I must have learned to read when I was younger, as I could do it when I’d arrived at the manor. Neither Wren or I owned a book. We’d flipped through the storybooks in the bookseller’s shop, but only until she shooed us out the door for not having coin.
“Now that we’ve reached an agreement as to terms,” he said, “I have something for you.”
“Is it Wren and sweetwine?”
“Not yet. Consider this an introduction to the benefits of living in a royal palace.”