Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-three
The time would come when a decision would have to be made. Our mission was done, and I’d have to leave the palace. But I deserved, and wanted, something for myself before returning to that life. So I ignored Catalaya and slept in the prince’s room, and woke to his beautiful face.
“Fox,” he said, his voice low, his words hoarse with hunger. He put a hand around my waist and pulled me against him. There was no hesitation in his movement. And when his lips found mine, the worry of the last few days melted away in the heat of our connection.
He rolled my body atop his, his arousal between us, and his hands settled at my lower back, pressing our bodies closer, his mouth eager and inciting. Need felt like a physical thing, a prowling monster that demanded satiating and wouldn’t give in to reason.
“I want you,” he whispered, pulling his lips away to press kisses along my neck. “I want to pleasure you until you’re breathless.”
So I let him.
“While I have you,” he said later, “there’s something we need to discuss about the Lady—and your bonds.”
“Our—” I sat up straight. “Why? What did you do?” The words were barely audible over the beating of my heart.
“I paid them off.”
I stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ll give you whatever I can. My life, if you asked for it. But I think you want freedom even more than that. So I gave you freedom.”
Joy and hope and fear blossomed together. “You’re serious?”
“Completely.” He rose and padded naked to a side table, every muscle highlighted by candlelight, power in every step. He picked up a leather portfolio, brought it back, and extended it.
My hands were shaking when I took it, the black leather slick and undoubtedly expensive. I opened it. There was a sheet of parchment—faded with age, work, misery, joy—setting out the terms of my service to the Lady.
“Lift it,” he said.
I glanced at him but flipped over the bond. And found Wren’s behind it.
I stared at them both, flipping back and forth between them to assure myself they were real. Then I looked up at him. “I can’t accept this. We can’t accept this.”
“Why?”
“Because…”
“Because I’m a Lys’Careth and you’d be indebted to me.”
I didn’t have a good answer for that.
He tipped up my chin. “You owe me nothing, Fox. And I didn’t buy the bonds; I paid them off. You owe no one a thing, not anymore. And I’ll put that in writing if it helps.”
I looked up at him. “You didn’t buy them?”
Now he looked offended. “Of course not. You should both be free. We all should. But this was the only bit of freedom I could afford.”
“Wait—the treasure room was empty.”
“So it was. But the book you found in the library turned out to be a list of moneylenders in and around the stronghold. We think someone in the palace—advisers the prince shouldn’t have trusted—secreted goods and coin out of the palace.”
“A nest for when the prince was killed?”
“Exactly. And I’ll be working on getting that back. In the meantime, I now owe Savaadh a very large sum of coin. Your freedom was worth it. Unless you want me to tear those up?”
“No.” I stuck the portfolio behind my back. “Don’t even think about it. Thank you. No one else would have done this for us.”
“Other than Savaadh,” he muttered.
“Other than.”
“I have something else.” He tried to take the portfolio away, but I couldn’t make my fingers release it. “I’m not taking your freedom, Fox. Just give me the portfolio so I can give you something else.”
He managed to uncurl my fingers and placed it on the bed beside me.
“What could possibly be better than that?”
“Hold out your hand.”
I rolled my eyes, but I did it. Gaze on me, he drew something from his pocket and placed it into my palm. I looked down at my hand and found a drawstring pouch—bigger than any he’d given us before—full of gold coins, heavy and gleaming.
“Oh,” I said quietly, weighing it in my hand. I could feel my cheeks warming. “Oh, that’s nice.”
“You’re like a damned dragon with a hoard. And you’re going to make me jealous of coins, staring at them like that.”
“Why are you giving me this?”
“Because you deserve a reward for saving my life, catching the practitioner and my uncle. There’s a bag for Wren, as well.”
I emptied the bag onto the bed and spread out the coins, gorgeous and gleaming in the candlelight. They were newly stamped with perfectly crenellated edges, one side stamped with an orchid, the other with a profile of the Emperor Eternal’s face.
Wren and I had talked about what life might be like if and when we were free, but the ideas had been soft and unspecific.
We didn’t want to tempt the gods with details.
We’d travel beyond the stronghold. We’d see things we hadn’t had a chance to see.
We knew how to work, to survive, and theft would keep us from going hungry.
Now I had freedom and coin. What were we to do with it?
Freedom was new; freedom was terrifying.
“I presume the Lady won’t want you staying at her manor.”
He was right. We were no longer useful to her, so even though she’d known us since we were children, she’d still want us out.
“I’d like you to stay here,” he said quietly. “You and Wren both. But I know you want to taste freedom. If you need time before leaving the stronghold, the bookseller in the northern market has a small cottage to let. I’m told it’s not much, but it would be a place for just the two of you.”
He was willing to give me freedom because he knew I wanted it, craved it, even if it meant I’d be farther from him. That was…remarkable. He was remarkable, all the more so because he had the power to be callous and cruel with impunity. Instead, he’d chosen kindness and compassion.
“You didn’t have to do all this.”
“I did,” he said. “You’ve earned it. I owe you my life, many times over. Because I have the ability to do it, and that ability should be used for good. I know you can take care of yourself, Fox. But you deserve to have someone who believes in you. You’ve deserved it for a long time.”
“About us—” I began, but he shook his head.
“We’re complicated, I know. Especially with the magic. I want you, and I care about you, and I know you feel the same. I’m not giving up on us, Fox. I only ask that you don’t give up on us, either.”
“I said we were dangerous to each other,” I told him again, just as I’d told him before. “But maybe that’s not right. Maybe we’re just…dangerous. And we should fight with the weapons we have.” I looked down. “And a bag of gold coins will probably buy a lot of weapons.”
“I expected sentimentality, which was ridiculous of me.”
I was quiet for a moment. “I need to talk to Wren. But maybe…staying here wouldn’t be so bad. I can try to plan for a different kind of future.”
“Really?”
I looked up and found the sweetest, most boyish expression of joy on his beautiful face. My heart warmed in a way that had nothing to do with the ember. “Really. I’m not sure how to thank you for all this.”
His smile went absolutely wicked. “Have you ever been naked atop a bed of golden coins?”
I grinned at him. “No. Let’s see what it’s like.”
We met each other halfway to the manor. I’d been walking to retrieve her, but the Lady had already kicked her out, and she’d been walking to the palace to retrieve me.
She carried nothing more than the worn linen bag that held her few possessions.
Since I wasn’t sure what Wren would want to do, I also had a bag.
I’d left behind the dresses he’d given me, taking only the one I was wearing, the cloak he’d given me, the boots.
And my old tunic and pants, just in case. I didn’t need the rest. Not right now.
“She told you?” I asked.
“That he bought our bonds. So we work for him now.”
“No. He paid them off. And gave us coins for saving his life.”
She stared at me for a moment. “Paid them off?”
“In full. I have them.” I pulled the portfolio from the bag and extended it to her.
For a long time, she simply stared in quiet contemplation. “It’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever held.”
“You held the Moriad. The sapphires.”
She shook her head, sniffed. “Those were rocks and metal. Freedom is…priceless. And it doesn’t seem real.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed. But it was very real, and a little scary. Freedom, after wanting it for so long, dreaming of it, felt like a precipice. The edge of something new, dangerous and unknown. Equally thrilling and terrifying.
“He’ll give us jobs if we want them,” I said. “Or we don’t have to stay in the stronghold. We could walk out of the gatehouse tonight and leave all of this behind. Start new somewhere else. Climb the mountain, or take up Savaadh’s offer and go see Vhrania.”
The thought of leaving, no matter how long I’d wanted it, made my heart ache. I didn’t so much care about leaving the stronghold, and I didn’t want to leave him. But Wren had worked to keep me safe in the palace, and I owed her. So I’d packed a bag; it was her turn to chart our futures.
“I…have no idea what to do.”
“You don’t?”
She shook her head. Maybe, like me, she’d always secretly believed that the life she was living was the only life that she’d be able to live.
“Then we won’t decide today. Would you like to go to the palace, or an inn?”
She scratched her temple. “The palace is free. And that bed is really, really comfortable.”
I’d hoped she’d say that. “Then we’ll go to the palace.
And when we’re ready, we’ll go to an inn.
We’ll get rooms, and sleep and eat until we’re bursting.
And if we get tired of that, we’ll rent a room in one of the markets.
We can take time to think about what we want.
” Another luxury that coin afforded—the opportunity to plan, rather than having to react.
She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and gave me a sideways look. “I want my own room. I’ve gotten used to sleeping in peace.”
“I’m sure the prince will accommodate you.”