“Well, that’s what your father wanted, but why can’t you do something else?”
“I was not given the skill for anything else.”
“Right,” I continued, exasperated. “But that doesn’t mean you’re doomed to be this one thing forever. You don’t have to do what the king tells you to do every hour of every blessed day. Fine, you don’t have any other skills. So learn some.”
I had spoken more sharply than I intended. There was another long silence. He rubbed at his eyes.
“Well,” I said. “I suppose I should let you ...”
“Wait.” He reached out to hold me by the wrist. I stopped.
“It is hard for me to sleep again, after,” he said. “We need little sleep, thankfully, but even a magic-worker must rest now and then. Stay.”
“What?” I said stupidly.
“Stay until I am asleep,” he said. “I would not be alone tonight.”
I couldn’t concentrate on his words for the touch of his hand on my wrist, heavy and encircling and precious as a bracelet. He seemed to realize this and withdrew it.
“Where?” I wondered. I looked around at the room. “I mean ...”
An overstuffed black chair sidled in at the edge of my vision. Another one of those large, shaggy black throws lay temptingly over the arm.
“You need not,” he said, and it was the thread of uncertainty in his voice that decided me.
“All right,” I said, and made a show of settling myself in the plush chair and drawing the blanket over my knees, taking time to tuck it in under me and arrange it perfectly so I didn’t have to look directly at him.
I could feel him watching me until I stopped moving, and when I dared to look up, he had settled himself down and turned his head from me.
“Good night,” he said, and the light in the room extinguished as if a giant, black hand had descended to snuff it out.
12
I woke with a crick in my neck and a sour taste in my mouth. As soon as I remembered where I was, I snapped my eyes open.
The events of the previous night crowded my mind: my walk to Oyster Lane, the Snagged, the sorcerer’s nightmare. I felt like I had lived a thousand years in the space of sundown to sunup. And now I was in the sorcerer’s bedchamber, of all places. Hisbedchamber. And to make it even worse, Sylvester was still in the bed.
As I watched, he stirred, and the dark blankets fell away a little, exposing part of his chest. I sat frozen, barely daring to breathe. The bespelled part of me wanted to climb into bed beside him, but the rest of me wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible before either he woke up, or I spontaneously combusted.
I got to my feet, letting the blanket slither to the floor, and tried to creep away quietly, but I knocked into the portrait, and of course it fell over as spectacularly as possible, clattering on the black floor. I swore and grabbed at my shin where I had bruised it, and only then did I turn around and see Sylvester sitting up in bed.
His unbuttoned nightshirt had fallen open, and his chest was now fully exposed in all its pale, chiseled glory. The blood rushed to my head. And elsewhere.
“Sorry,” I said weakly, then rallied. Grouchiness was an excellent cover for the confusing feelings a half-naked Sylvester awoke in me. “Well, it was a stupid place to put it. Right in the way.”
He blinked. “Noted,” he said.
“Why did you bring it in here, anyway?” I grumbled, massaging the sore spot on my leg.
“It should be on the wall.”
He leaned forward, further disarranging the covers and seeming wholly un-self-conscious. “Oh ...” he passed his hand over his mouth. “Sometimes I like to examine it, before I sleep.”
“Why? Who is it?” I asked.
“It could be the right boy,” the sorcerer said softly. “In the portrait. It’s from around the right time, as far as I can tell. And he’s about the right age and has dark hair—although that doesn’t mean much, as my hair could have been changed along with everything else.”
I stared at him. The outlines of something horrifying were starting to form in my mind.
