AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don’t call me that,” he said, rather sharply, and she inhaled a breath; was this going to be like last night? Was he going to be strange, half furious, unpredictable? “I would prefer that you call me Conor. As your grandfather does.”
She stared at him. “I can’t do that. I’m not a royal or a noble, it would be too”—intimate—“too familiar. What if someone overheard?”
“Familiar,” he said, his lips quirking at the word. “I came, Domna Caster, because I understand that last night I may havealarmed you by kissing you. I don’t remember itwell”—he waved a hand, as if shaking off a cobweb—“but I assure you there was no meaning or malice in it. I kiss a great many people.”
Lin blushed. She had not mentioned that part of the evening to Mariam; in fact, she had not mentioned a great deal of what had happened—not Luisa crying, nor her own dance, nor her angry words, nor Prince Conor’s fury when he had followed her from the room. And certainly not what had happened then. “I truly hope,” she said, “that you did not really waste your royal morning coming here to tell me something I already knew.”
Something in his eyes flashed. It was not anger, though she might have expected that. He had been angry the night before. It was something more like a passionate puzzlement, as if he were trying to solve an equation and coming up short.
“All right,” he said. “You are correct enough. I did not come here merely to apologize for kissing you.”
She looked at him directly. That always seemed to make a difference, she thought—when she could catch his gaze with her own, when she could make him look at her andseeher. She did not think many people sought his gaze. The studied gaze of a royal might uncover any sort of secret; it might unsettle, might remind a member of the Charter Families that, though they were nearly as powerful as Gods, they were not.
Their gazes met, held. In the dimness of the room, his eyes seemed the brightest thing before her, save for his crown, a ring of fire. She said, “Then why are you here, Prince Conor?”
He drew something out of his jacket. A square something, that looked like a ragged brown package. “You called me a selfish bastard last night,” he said, “but would a selfish bastard gift you this?”
He held the object out to her. She realized it was a book, its leather cover tattered and worn. As she took it from him, her hand shaking slightly, she recognized the title, half faded from the spine:The Works of Qasmuna.
“Ohh,” she breathed. She began to flip through the pages, frantically—even as she felt how soft they were, and fragile, under her touch. Words, so many words, and drawings—of stones that looked like her own, in various stages of brightness—and numbered columns that could be instructions—
“I suppose I should have expected this,” said the Prince drily. “Your grandfather has never thanked me for anything, either.”
Lin forced herself to look up from the book, remembering suddenly what Andreyen had said.There are murmurs that someone else is searching for our book. With great dedication, I hear.
“You’rethe one who’s been searching the city for this?”
She was still clutching it to her chest, like a little girl with a new favorite toy. She saw a smile tug the corners of his mouth.
“I’ve turned Castellane upside down looking for it,” he said. “I finally hunted it down in the collection of a trader who’d found it in the Maze. He was about to take it to Marakand, where collectors will offer great sums for this sort of thing. I persuaded him he’d make more money selling it to me.”
“But—why did you do this? How did you even know I wanted it—?”
“You mentioned it. That night at Marivent.”
And she had, she realized, the night of his whipping. She had told him all about the book, the Maharam, the Shulamat…
Only she had not thought he was reallylistening.But he had been, it seemed. Something hot flared inside her chest. Gratitude—but she had never been comfortable with gratitude, and it came now edged with panic.
“But what does it matter to you,” she said, “that I was looking for it? I do not need to be paid, I have told you that before—”
He was no longer smiling. “Yes,” he said. “You refused the ring I offered you in recompense for healing Kel. You would take nothing for healing me. But that does not mean I do not owe you. And I despise being indebted.”
She drew herself up, knowing she must look ridiculous, barefoot and tangle-haired and stubborn. “What difference does it make? You are a Prince—one might say you cannot owe anything to someone like me.”
“But you know that is not true. You saved me. You saved my Sword Catcher.” He took a step forward, closing the space between them. Lin could not move away; the table was directly behind her. “And as long as I owe you, I cannot forget it. I think of you—of the debt I owe you—and I cannot rid my mind of the thoughts. It is like a fever.”
“And now you wish me to heal you again,” Lin said slowly. He was so close—not as close to her as he had been the night before, but she could see lighter flecks of silvery white in his eyes. “Of the fever that is myself. Your debt to me.”
“It is a sickness,” he whispered. She felt his breath stir her hair, and a tide of goosebumps flooded across her skin. “I need my thoughts back. My freedom. You ought to understand that, physician.” He flicked his glance to the book in her hands. “Everyone wants something,” he said. “It is the nature of people. You cannot be that different.”
Her hand tightened on the book. A part of her, that did not want to give him what he wanted—that did not, if she had to admit it, want to be ordinary in his eyes—wished to thrust it back at him. But she thought of Mariam, of Mariam’s bright eyes glowing at the thought of making a cloak for the Prince, and she could not do it. It would be madness.
She set Qasmuna’s book down on the table. Turned back to look at him. “There,” she said. “I’ve taken it. Does that mean you can forget all about me now?”
He was breathing quickly. If he had been her patient, she would have laid her fingers against the smooth skin of his throat, would have pressed in lightly, feeling his blood pulse beneath her fingertips. Would have said,Breathe, breathe.
But he was not her patient. He was the Prince of Castellane, andhe leaned in close to her then, putting his lips against her ear. She clutched the edge of the table behind her, feeling a hot tide flood through her belly, her legs. His voice was rough in her ear. “I,” he said, “have already forgotten you.”
