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“Clare, I know the kind of attention he’s offering you is heady?—”
“You needn’t bother with whatever speech you’re about to give. Even if I was foolish enough to have aspirations that high, I didn’t come to Veralna looking for a husband.”
“Prince Numair will never be king,” Marquin continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “So even if he marries, which I must inform you it is unlikely he will ever do, his wife will never be queen.”
Clare’s emotions went flat, all former lightness and humor leaving her body. Queen. Ferrian’s hells, she hated that word. “I assure you, if there is anything I want less than to be someone’s wife, it is to be someone’s queen.” She gathered Battle Armor from the back of the couch, careful with it despite her anger. “If you’re quite finished insulting me, I have a great deal of preparation to do and very little time in which to manage it.”
Marquin watched Clare storm out of the room and wondered precisely when he’d lost all of his ability to trust anyone who wasn’t Verol. He couldn’t even say he’d pushed her about Numair because he was concerned for her, like Verol was.
He had no doubt she could take care of herself. No, he’d pushed her just to find out how she would react. If that iron control she had would slip and allow a glimpse into the power she carried.
It hadn’t. She’d felt as much like nothing as ever. If it weren’t for the fact that he’d looked into her eyes the two weeks they’d spent on the road and seen something ancient in them, he’d think Verol was wrong about her. That two decades of guilt over Marie’s death had made Verol look for any surrogate he could protect.
But he didn’t truly believe Verol was wrong. And Clare’s control hadn’t slipped.
He told himself it was still something he’d needed to know—because if she did slip that easily, they were all dead—but it didn’t make him feel any better. Because he’d seen that short, sharp bite of hurt and fear in her eyes, hidden beneath her anger.
He hadn’t thought she cared anything for his or Verol’s opinions. Cynical to his core, he’d been so certain he knew exactly what kind of person she was, what kind of person the world had made her to be. The kind who would take Verol’s protection without considering the consequences, the kind who wouldn’t hesitate to move on a perceived opportunity like Numair Tolvannen.
The door to her room slammed shut. He rubbed his forehead and went into the kitchen, staring blankly out the window, trying to decide if and how to apologize. He was surprised, a few minutes later, to see her striding across the lawn behind the manor, her hands curled into fists. His surprise wasn’t because she’d left her room, but at the fact that the ward on her window hadn’t sent him any feedback that she’d opened it, and that had to have been how she’d exited the house.
She’d changed into the tunic and pants she’d worn on the road, the ones that were little better than rags, and Verol’s old boots. It was a wonder the grass didn’t catch fire under the fury of her footfalls, she moved with such determination. Just when he thought he was going to have to follow her—Verol would kill him if he had to explain that Clare had left because he was an insensitive prick and now he had no idea where she was—she ducked into the barn. He relaxed—she’d spent hours with the horses on the road, clearly preferring them to human company—before he remembered that Alys was in the barn, but it was too late to curtail that interaction.
Alys could handle herself.
He hesitated, then went out the back door to Clare’s window. She’d closed but not latched it—and there wasn’t a single trace left of the magic from the ward that should have been there. He tested the other windows, the doors, but every other ward on the home’s openings was in place.
Only hers was gone, and he hadn’t even felt it disappear.
Clare walked toward the barn, the steady pulse of anger thrumming beneath her skin, her clunky too-big boots beating the frozen winter ground. The dozens of seams connecting the patches on her breeches crawled across her legs like spiderweb scars, ugly and uneven, but comforting against her skin. She’d have thought she’d burn the clothing at the first available opportunity but here she was, sliding them on like they could remind her of who she was.
Like she would even want to be reminded.
But maybe she did want it a little, because Marquin had rattled her. She’d known he didn’t really like her—he tolerated her for Verol’s sake—but she’d thought they understood each other. She’d thought they were, in many ways, the same, and she’d been comfortable in that similarity.
Now she thought maybe he didn’t understand her at all if he could think… She stopped in the barn doorway, her brain clicking pieces into place. Her anger mounted, not at him but at herself, for failing to see until this moment what he’d been doing—prodding at her with words to see where her pressure points were.
And how easily she’d handed them over.
She glanced over her shoulder, saw him outside, inspecting the window to her room. A smile curled her lips. The magic lining the window frame had pulled away easily, sliding under her skin like water through a crack. She hadn’t enjoyed the satisfied feeling of the Song after she’d taken it, as if the entity inside her was having a snack, but she did enjoy the obvious confusion the missing magic was causing Marquin.
She could consider them even, now, she supposed. And she would know better than to let him rattle her in the future.
She walked into the barn, noting idly how small it was for a lord’s stable. There was only the one barn and it consisted of a paltry six stalls, each one empty. She spotted Ginger and Skye in a paddock on the back side of the barn, and it was beginning to seriously appear as if they were the only two horses the Arrendons owned. It was also beginning to seriously appear as if Alys was the only stablehand the lords employed.
Unless Fitz doubled as a stablehand too. She found the two of them in the tack room, both seated on opposite ends of a wide bench, polishing saddles that didn’t require polishing. They weren’t talking, so there was no reason to sneak up on them, save Clare wanted to see how they would react.
She stepped silently, moving so as not to block the light streaming in from the door, and rapped smartly against the wood frame.
Fitz looked up, displeasure creasing his brow. He stood, placed the saddle back on its rack, and silently brushed past her. She felt more than displeasure coming off him as he left, she felt…hostility. He really didn’t like her.
But that was a problem for another time. For now, she turned her attention back to Alys. The woman had startled at Clare’s knock, though the movement had been slight, easily missed if one hadn’t been looking for it. Clare had, so she’d noted the woman’s surprise, but she appreciated Alys's quick recovery, the practiced nonchalance with which she finally deigned to look up. Her gaze swept over Clare, taking in the patches on the breeches, the threadbare areas of the tunic. Then she looked back to her work.
“What can I do for you, Miss Brighton?” She drawled the words, but though her delivery was admirable, the drawl did not have quite the right cadence for someone born to the lower dialects. It would fool anyone of higher rank, as Clare suspected it was intended to do, but it would not fool anyone lower.
She was going to have fun figuring out who Alys really was, and why she was hiding out in the Arrendons’ barn. And, for that matter, why they were letting her. But right now she had more pressing issues.
“I need to borrow your cosmetics, and I need your help with my hair for an engagement this evening.”
