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She whirled to face him. She had fled the main room without knowing where precisely she was going—all she had thought wasout, away.Away from the titters, from the people who had seen her dance, from the look on the Prince’s face.
But he had followed. And now he had caught up with her in one of a set of deserted and interconnected drawing rooms that seemed to occupy the front of the mansion, each one decorated in a different color scheme. This one was blue and black, like a bruise. A carcel lamp glowed overhead, its flame striking sparks off his rings, his circlet. He seemed to loom over her, reminding her again how tall he was. Up close she could see his dark hair was in disarray, the black-and-silver kohl around his eyes blurred into luminous shadow. His eyes were a very dark pewter color. He said, in a voice of controlled fury, “What are you doing here, Lin?Why did you come?”
Even through her rage, the question set her back on her heels. “After all that,” she said. “That’swhat you want to ask me? You know Mayesh is my grandfather. You know he brought me—”
He waved this away, with a short, sharp jerk of his arm. “You’re aphysician,” he ground out. “You healed Kel. You healed me. I have beengrateful.But now you come here, like this—”
His gaze dropped to her dress. She felt it like a touch, the fierce drag of his eyes over the neckline of her gown, her collarbones, her throat. She had always thought of contempt and loathing as cold emotions, but now they seemed hot, radiating off him. If she were not so furious, she would have been afraid.
“Oh?” she spat. “You mean I should know my place. Stay in the Sault, not presume to think I might be welcome, or allowed, on the Hill.”
“Don’t you understand?” He caught hold of her. She tensed up immediately, even as his gloved fingers dug into her upper arms. She could tell he was something more than drunk. He had always been unreadable, but now she could see too much in his face. The yearning printed plainly there, the hunger to insult her, to belittle her. “This place,” he hissed. “The Hill—ruins things. Things that are perfect as they are. You were honest. This place has made you a liar.”
“You dare call me a liar?” She could hear the fire in her voice. “The last time I saw you, you made a pretty show about how guilty you felt. How you’d gotten yourself into this situation, how I should pity your bride. I thought you meant I should pity her for the situation you found yourself in, but you meant I should pity her for the way you planned to treat her.”
“Touching,” he said, in a low voice, “that you believe I haveplans.”
She reached up and caught at his wrist. Soft velvet, crisp lace, the heat of skin underneath. She said, “Perhaps you have no plan. Perhaps your only goal is to be a selfish bastard who treats his wife-to-be abominably.”
His grip tightened on her. “The commerce in this city is gold, Ashkari girl. But the commerce on the Hill is cruelty and whispers. If the Princess does not learn from me and mine, she will learn it from worse tutors.”
“So you are cruel out of necessity,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm. “No—out ofkindness.And what is your excuse for humiliating me?”
“I have no excuse.” He was so close she could breathe the scent that clung to his clothes: a mixture of spice and rosewater. Likeloukoumcandy. “Only I wanted to see you dance.”
She tipped her head back to look up at him. His lips were stained faintly red with wine. She remembered placing the morphea drops on his tongue, the soft heat of his mouth against her fingers. “Why?”
“To dance is to drop your guard,” he said, and there was a harshness in his voice that made her believe him. He meant what he was saying; in fact, he hated saying it. “I thought I would see you without that wall you have built around yourself, like the walls of the Sault. But you were only further away than ever. All I could see was how little you wanted from me,” he added, and there was a loathing in his voice that was directed entirely at himself. “You have wanted nothing from me since the moment I met you. You are and have everything you need.” He dipped his head; his breath stirred her hair. The scent of wine and flowers. “You do not look at me as if I have any power over you.”
She stared at him wonderingly. How could he think that? Power—he had all of it. Was armored in it. Wore it like his shining rings, like the strength of his body, the gleam of the circlet crown among the dark curls of his hair. “And that makes you hate me?” she whispered.
“I told you to stay away from me,” he said. “From Marivent—I was clear I did not want you there—” He lifted a hand, slowly, almost as if he could not believe what he was doing. He laid it against her cheek, his hand soft but callused at the fingertips. Her hand was still wrapped around his wrist. She could feel his racing pulse. Imagine his heart, frantic as her own, driving his blood. “Idid not want you,” he whispered harshly, and kissed her.
He slanted his mouth over hers fiercely, parting her lips with a hard flick of his tongue. She twisted away from him—or meant to. Somehow he had pulled her against him and she clawed at his shoulders, digging her fingertips in. He groaned as she clung to him, almost tearing at the material of his jacket, and it was not simple hatred she felt, it was betrayal. She hadlikedhim, that night he had been whipped. She had been unguarded. And then, tonight, he had been likethis.
His right hand was in her hair now, fingers tangled in its thickness. He kissed her and kissed her, as if he could draw breath out ofher and into his own lungs. She bit his lower lip hard, tasted blood, salt on her tongue. Arched up against him, into the sharp ache that was suddenly all she wanted.
His free hand stroked along her throat, his fingers finding the edge of her dress’s neckline, where her breasts rose to press against the material. She heard his breath catch and was not prepared for the piercing ache of desire that shot through her. She had never felt anything like it. Perhaps only in her dreams of smoke and fire, where everything burned.
There was a step in the corridor. Lin felt the Prince freeze against her, the hardness of his body suddenly gone to stone. She felt her cheeks flame hot and slid away from him, along the wall—by the Goddess, what if it was Mayesh, looking for her? She smoothed her dress down, frantically, but the step in the corridor faded.
No one was coming into the room.
She looked at the Prince. “Lin,” he said, and took a step toward her again.
She flinched away. She could not help herself. Her legs were still shaking, her heart beating like a panicked bird. She had never been so close in her life to losing control. Some part of her, a part she could not question or understand, had wanted to draw his hand down, to the rise of her breasts, to that place between them no one but herself had ever touched. Had wanted him to touch her more, and deeper.
It was madness, and the realization that she was as vulnerable as anyone else to the lures she had always thought foolish and shallow—beauty, power, royalty—was more than shameful. It was true what the Prince had said. The Hill ruined things, and this was the path to ruination.
He had seen her flinch, pull away. She did not catch the moment his eyes went hard, like chips of diamond. Only heard the distance in his voice as he took a step back and said, with a cold calm, “Aigon. I must be drunker than I thought.”
The arrow in her belly dug deeper, a stab of pain. Lin raised her eyes to his and said, “My grandfather brought me here because hethought I might be interested in taking over his position someday. He wanted me to know what it would be like to be among those who call the Hill their home, to work among them. Now I know. I know, and I hope never to return.”
And she strode out of the room, without looking back.
—
Kel had taken Vienne and Luisa to a small drawing room, where Lady Roverge sometimes received daytime visitors. The first time Kel had ever been drunk had been in this room; Charlon had unearthed his mother’s secret cache of cherry jenever, and they all took turns making themselves thoroughly sick. Even Antonetta.
