“Right.” His cheek twitched as he stared emptily into thearmoire. “It’s my fault you returned to the woods immediately after I told you to leave. It’s my fault you marched yourself straight up to a cursed king, demanding back a tithe. And it’smy faultyou bartered your life in exchange for Ewan Lark. Yes. I see how I am utterly to blame here.”
Emeline’s hands tightened into fists.
He turned fully, crossing the room in three easy strides to stand before her. The heat rolled off him, warm like a wood fire.
“Do you know what else I see?” He glared down at her. “A girl who is in far over her head, and too foolish to know it.”
He stepped closer, bringing the smell of the woods with him, along with that delicious warmth. Despite herself, Emeline wanted to step into it.
She shook off the urge.
“No one else can help you fetch the Song Mage’s music.” His voice was a warning. “And if you don’t fetch it, you will never learn his songs, and if you don’t perform them for the king—and in so doing, please him—your skull will join the wall of others belonging to minstrels who fell before you. And you willcertainlynever bring your grandfather home. Is that what you want, Emeline Lark?”
Emeline’s mouth opened and shut. She swallowed her anger, looking to the windows.
His name suited him perfectly, she decided. Hawthorn trees were prickly, gnarly, horrible things—just like him.
And yet he seemed to be trying to help her.
He’d been trying to help her last night too, she realized, when he tricked her out of the woods. She didn’t have to like him, though. She didn’t have to forgive him for bringing her grandfather to this wretched place. But she could take what he was offering her if it meant getting Pa out.
She gritted her teeth and said, “Give me the clothes.”
A small smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, as if he’d won some great victory. It made her blood boil.
Oh, she would dress. She would go with him to fetch this music. She would take his advice: learn this dead man’s songs, perform them in order to please the king, and then, when her grandfather was safe, she would make her escape.
That’s what this is. One step closer to going home.
“Turn around,” she said after seizing the stack of garments from him.
He tipped his head in a mocking bow, then did as he was bid. It wasn’t until he faced the wall that she turned to the window and set the clothes down on the bed. But when she started tugging at the dress, trying to pull it over her head, she realized she couldn’t: it was laced too tightly at the back. Frantically she tried to undo the laces. She contorted herself, bending her arms up her back and then down over her shoulders, trying to reach.Desperateto reach.
But she couldn’t.
“Something the matter?” he asked, impatient.
An embarrassed heat flooded Emeline’s body as she became aware of what she needed: help. The soft silk of her dress crumpled in her fists as she squeezed her eyes shut.
He must have sensed her drowning in her own humiliation, because she heard him turn.
“Oh,” he said after a moment. “I see the problem. Would you like some help?”
Steeling herself, Emeline turned her head. She spotted his reflection in the mirror, his gaze on the back of her dress. Coolly, she said, “If you think you can manage it, sure.”
His eyebrow cocked, as if she’d issued a challenge. But he said nothing more as he strode across the room. The heat of his body spread across her back as he stepped up behind her. Theystood before the bed, its canopies drawn to reveal the windows facing the gardens.
First, he swept aside her hair. Emeline kept her attention fixed straight ahead as she felt his gaze trail downwards, stopping on the nape of her neck.
Next, he reached for her laces, his fingers a hot graze on her skin as he pulled them loose, slowly and steadily, knowing precisely what he was doing. Emeline wondered if helping girls out of their clothes was a regular occurrence for him.
She quickly stuffed that thought down deep, where it would shrivel and die.
When the bodice slackened fully, his hands paused, then fell away. But he didn’t step back. His breath was warm on her neck as he asked, “Can you manage from here?”
She nodded, wordless.
“Then I’ll wait in the hall.”
