Chapter 3 #3
I considered questioning him about Whitestone, and yet I felt sure that I should keep anything I learned to myself. There was something here I did not understand, and I could not risk giving Nicosia even more of an upper hand.
“I want you to trust me, Nym.” He reached over the tray to touch the back of my hand. In another time and place, I would think him flirting with me, but no, he flashed into my mind, trying to read me again. He pulled his hand away, masking his disappointment. “I want you to let me in.”
“My thoughts are my own.” I kept my voice level. Picked up a yellow pepper stuffed with thinly sliced pork.
“And yet it only makes me wonder what you’re hiding.”
I met his gaze. “I am twenty-five years old, Your Majesty. Do you think I’ve never borne an embarrassment, suffered a heartache, or nurtured a secret? Do you think nothing in my life might be personal or sacred?”
“Ah, but of course.” He leaned back. “You don’t understand mindreaders. You’ve probably never met one.”
I thought of my brother, Dan.
“I can only see what you show me,” he confessed. “Read what you’re presently thinking. So if there is a past hurt you keep buried, or an insult you’ve wished to throw at me, I would only hear it if you actively thought it. You can protect the rest.”
I didn’t believe him. I reflected back on Dan in Fount, when he’d told me he was aware of my feelings for Renn.
I was fairly certain I hadn’t been actively thinking of my love for Renn when Dan touched me, but Renn was so often in my thoughts, I couldn’t be sure.
Dan needed only to brush my skin at one of those moments to hear the secret I myself had not wanted to admit.
I never told him I loved him.
Even my present thoughts were too dangerous.
“Tell me how you did it,” King Nicosia pressed. “How you healed the broken prince.”
I took my time chewing the pork and pepper. Swallowed. Kept my gaze on the tray. “You’re very concerned with him. Did you know him?”
“Only briefly. But stories of him travel.”
I shrugged. Thought to throw him a line, however flimsy. “I just did. It was luck more than anything. I’ve always enjoyed puzzles.”
Ursa had always enjoyed puzzles.
He hummed deep in his throat. “I don’t believe you.
The prince was a mess, and Cansere doesn’t train its crafters, even its healers.
Only drafted them and hoped for the best. No schools, no coalitions, no apprenticeships or meetings.
Were you Sestan, Nym, I might believe it was mere luck.
But Queen Winvrin drafted healers for twenty years.
It’s my understanding that only you ever stayed within the castle walls. ”
I lifted my head. “But no Sestan healers were successful, either, were they?” The queen had sent for doctors and healers, foreign as well as national. I’d met one of them during my stay in Rove.
A shadow passed over the king’s face, and at first I thought I’d offended him; his so-called trained crafters having failed to pass Queen Winvrin’s “test.” But then another possibility rose to my mind. Had Sesta sent any healers to aid the queen’s ailing son?
So you’re the one who undid all my hard work, he’d told me. The work of keeping Sestan healers from aiding Cansere? Or was it more macabre than that? I dared not ask.
The aggression between Sesta and Cansere was recent; otherwise, we’d coexisted in peace.
So either Sesta’s training of healers was not what King Nicosia claimed it to be, or he never sent any aid to Cansere at all, not in twenty years of peace.
My mind spun trying to find motivation for withholding aid, especially when the desperate queen would surely compensate for the effort.
Perhaps there was a feud I didn’t know about between the countries’ rulers.
Perhaps King Nicosia didn’t want Renn healed .
. . but why? Were he the heir, I might think it part of a long-formed plan to overthrow Cansere.
But Renn was third in line. Adrinn would have been the target for his disdain, and then Eden, who would take the throne upon marriage.
That, and Adoel Nicosia was not a young man.
He could have asked for a betrothal to Princess Eden at any time to cement claim to his southern neighbor.
Too many holes riddled that line of thought.
I wished I had heard more of his conversation with King Grejor when he’d come for “negotiations” months before. I wish I’d known what they’d said . . . then again, King Nicosia might have been as dodgy with the Noblewights as he was being with me.
Perhaps he did send healers, then, but only bad ones, or people posing as healers who did not know craftlock.
By the way he hesitated at my question, I felt I’d touched on something important.
One way or another, King Nicosia had not made an effort to heal the sick prince, even though it would form a stronger allyship between Sesta and Cansere.
The question still remained: Why?
“I don’t think you understand me.” He moved past the question as though it’d never been spoken. “This is precisely what fascinates me. You are untrained, unless your parents were healers?”
I shook my head. They hadn’t been.
“And no other family, or townsfolk, taught you?”
“No.” There was Ursa, but we’d learned our magic alongside one another, and I did not want her name on Adoel Nicosia’s lips.
He snapped as though this was some great revelation. “Then there is something special about you. Something different, and I want to know what it is. The prince was broken beyond repair, and yet you healed him; I saw him that day, in that little town outside Rove.”
“Speth,” I supplied, and fought rising anger. That little town that he’d ransacked. That little town full of innocent people, screaming and running for their lives.
Lord Fell had valued my parents and sister at five silver merits each. What price, if any, would King Nicosia pay for us?
And yet something else about the comment irked me. “You are a powerful healer. Did you ever try to heal him yourself?”
His expression tightened ever so slightly. “No, I never had the chance.”
I schooled my reaction. Shrugged and picked at the tray. “I just started at the beginning and worked my way up.”
If he’d ever seen my lumis, he might believe me.
But I couldn’t show him, not now. A memory of what it had been, before Ursa, perhaps?
But one slip and I feared I’d reveal everything I didn’t want to.
My life in Sesta would fare better with the king believing me an ally, but there were some things I dared not risk.
His mouth turned upward. He picked up the tray, though I hadn’t finished, and stood. “There is a place for you here if you wish it, Miss Tallowax. Please consider that offer carefully.”
Tray in hand, he strolled out of the conservatory, almost perfectly hiding the tension in his gait. I feared he was not happy with me.
I stared at the door even after he’d shut it. You slipped again, Your Majesty.
For he’d contradicted himself. Perhaps he’d realized it, and thus the stiffness of his stride. Either way, he’d given me more information, information I carefully tucked and folded and kept for myself.
He claimed he’d never had the opportunity to heal Renn. In twenty years, he’d never had the chance. And yet earlier in our conversation, he mentioned meeting the Canseren king only briefly. Only briefly.
I, too, had met him only briefly upon my first healing of him.
It took only a simple touch. Surely if the Sestan king had been in the room with a sick child, he would have tried.
The queen would have asked. He certainly could have offered when he arrived unannounced to Rove.
That, and Renn had been ill since shortly after his birth; there was very little window for Adoel Nicosia to have met him when he was hale.
Something of the king’s story did not add up.
He was so desperate to see what I was hiding, he’d begun to fail at keeping his own secrets.
I just had to figure out what they were.