She pressed her lips together, her throat flexing.
“‘Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down,’” he said, wiggling his eyebrows and setting the candle on the sideboard table next to her door. “Etcetera, etcetera. ‘Come, we burn daylight, ho!’”
And he flicked his fingers out, causing three rapid pops and fizzing sparkles of light that leaped into the air and bounced off the mirror next to her door.
Libba startled enough that she found herself clutching either side of the stool under her while Rhys grinned at her manically through the thin fog of smoke and scent of sulfur.
“Christ and St. Genesius, Rhys!” she yelped, gasping in a gulp of breath and trying to swallow her heart back down. “You’re going to set my room on fire!”
“What? No.” He flicked another sparking paper into the flame to demonstrate, making another loud crack. “Perfectly safe. Ruby showed me.”
“Get out!” she said, pointing at the door. “I’m going to kill you one day.”
“Certainly, certainly, but on that day, you’ll let me make the pretty flames?” he said, bending daintily and giving a performative little puff of air to extinguish his candle, as though he hadn’t lit the lanterns on her bed and vanity as well. “Please?”
“Yes, all right. Now get out of here before I strangle you.”
“See?” he said to her, swiping the remainder of his little twists from the ground. “Youaremy sister, no matter how oft you protest.”
“Out!”
“Good night to you too,” he sang, prancing out. “Chwaer.”
She glared at the door for a time in his wake, and then, despite herself, chuckled.
Rhys’s chaos was never welcome, exactly, but sometimes it was exactly what one needed to reset the temperament. If he was anything, he was diverting.
And fairy fire would be a fine addition to the play, she told herself as she carefully removed the costume and applied her cold cream, sighing at the way it eased the heat in her cheeks and jaw and melted away the worry from her forehead.
Lem was probably correct that no one had noticed anything terribly amiss, beyond the obvious shocking behaviors of a foreign princess.
But why had Jasper kissed her back?
Why had he done that?
And if he was going to meet Malcolm at the tables tonight, did that mean he would be asleep in the parlor come morning?
If she stayed awake long enough, would Jasper return to this house tonight?
And, most importantly, was that what she wanted? More than sleep? More than avoiding the confrontation? More than the inevitability that even in her dreams, he’d be there in the parlor, waiting for her?
She sighed and crawled into bed but did not bother to extinguish the flame at her bedside.
She knew she wasn’t going to fall asleep.
And besides, at least the Jasper here in the waking world would still be wearing his shirt.
That thought, that last thought, made her fling the blankets back and push her bare feet into the carpet.
Rhys had forgotten one of his little twists of paper, one of his little miracles of spark and flame.
“‘If love be rough with you,’” she said, rolling it between her fingers and aiming at the candle next to her bed, “‘be rough with love.’”
She flicked it hard and when it exploded, the pop and pinpricks of golden light satisfied something that otherwise would have remained lodged and crooked in her soul. The haze of silver smoke smelled unpleasant, and nothing like cherry and almond, and that was exactly what she needed to blow the damned flame out and put her face in the pillow.
Neither the dream version or the reality of Jasper Townsend would defeat her tonight.
Chapter Eighteen
