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“Well,” she said, “I did not think you would change the beddingyourself.I just thought that…you would want to know what needed to be done.”
He only grinned. “Indeed. It seems your grandfather was right. Youarethe best in the Sault—perhaps the best in Castellane.”
The grin was disarming. It flashed white teeth and lit his gray eyes to silver. For the first time tonight, Lin could see the Prince of Hearts in him, the one the city sighed over. Something about it irked her, like being stuck with a pin. Perhaps it was that to be the King’s son was one kind of power, to be beautiful was another, and to be both was entirely too much power for any one person.
Besides, Conor Aurelian held himself as someone who knew he was beautiful. Even his disarray did not mar his looks. His rich clothes might be crumpled, his sleeves of ivory silk spotted with blood, but his beauty was not the sort that required orderliness. In fact, it benefited from some dishevelment, being the kind that came from strong contrast: black and silver, fine features and untidy dark hair.
“Where is my grandfather?” she inquired, suddenly wanting very much to be away. “I ought to go; he might be waiting for me.”
Prince Conor said, “Before you do. Bensimon said you wouldn’t require payment, but I’d like you to have this.” He slid a ring from his right hand and held it out to her, with the gesture of one bestowing an expensive toy upon a child.
The ring was a plain gold band, set with a flat sapphire. Incised into the sapphire was the rayed sun of House Aurelian. A signet ring.
For a moment, Lin was ten years old again, flinging the gold necklace Mayesh had brought her, with its Aurelian stamp, at his feet. She heard Josit, protesting—just take it—and saw the stony look on her grandfather’s face as she turned away.
She did not reach out for the ring. “No, thank you. I don’t want it.”
He looked taken aback. “You don’twantit?”
The quick flash of memory was gone, but the anger remained. Anger at Mayesh, she knew, but here, made flesh, was the very reason Mayesh had abandoned her, arrogantly offering her what would be a year’s salary for herself, but was plainly nothing to him. “What am I meant to do with it?” she asked, her voice brittle as glass. “Sell it at a pawnshop on Yulan Road? I’d be arrested. Wear it? I’d be robbed by Crawlers, like your cousin. It has no value to me.”
“It is a beautiful thing,” he said. “That has its own worth.”
“For those wealthy enough to sit about contemplating an item they can neither eat nor sell,” Lin said acidly. “Or do you think I wish to keep it in a box and pine over the time I met the Prince of Castellane and he deigned to tell me I was a halfway-decent physician?”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. His face had gone taut. She was aware suddenly of how much bigger he was than she—not just taller, but broader in the shoulders and larger overall.
He moved toward her. She could feel the force that radiated off him, even as disheveled as he was. A disheveled prince was still aprince, she supposed, with all the careless power that blood and privilege had conferred on him. It was a quality all the stronger for the fact that he had never had to consider that he possessed it, never wonder if there might be some reason for him to hold back.
He could pick her up with one hand, she thought, and toss her against the wall. Break her neck, if he liked. And his power came not from the fact that he had the physical strength to do it, but from the fact that there would be no repercussions for him for the act. No questions asked.
He would not even need to question himself.
He was looking down at her from an uncomfortable height, his gray eyes unwavering. They were like and yet unlike Kel’s. But of course they would be. “How—” he began.
A sharp voice cut him off. “Lin!”
She whirled. She had never been so glad to hear her grandfather approaching. He was at the far end of the corridor; Lin hurried toward him, aware of the Prince behind her, his gaze burning a hole between her shoulder blades. She couldfeelhim watching her, even as she quickly explained Kel’s condition to Mayesh.
Her grandfather nodded, clearly relieved. “Well done,” he said. “Now wait for me in the carriage downstairs. I must have a word with the Prince.”
Lin did not stay to hear what the word was. She inclined her head in Prince Conor’s direction and murmured, “Monseigneur,” before making her escape.
The Prince said nothing in response, and offered no farewell, though she noted that he was still holding the signet ring in his hand. He had not put it back on.
Outside, the sky was lightening in the east, over the Narrow Pass. Just before dawn was the coldest time of the day in Castellane. Dew sparkled on the grass, wetting her feet as she approached the waiting carriage. (The driver, a dour-faced Castelguard, gave her a single dark look as she clambered in; perhaps he did not relish being awake so early.)
She was grateful to find that someone had placed a box of heated bricks, wrapped in soft linen, on the bench seat. She retrieved one, rolling it between her palms, letting her skin soak up the warmth. She wondered if Mayesh had requested they be put there.
She thought again of the talisman in Kel’s hand.Mayesh, what have you done?
There was a rap on the door and Mayesh appeared, folding himself inside the carriage. With his height and long limbs, he made her think of an elongated bird—a heron, perhaps, picking about in the shallows when the tide was exceptionally low.
He glowered at her as the carriage began to move. As they rolled beneath the trellised arch, he said, “Would you prefer to hear the good news first, or the bad?”
She sighed, folding her hands tighter around the hot stone. “Both at the same time.”
“Hmph,” he said. “You do seem to have worked wonders with Kel. I looked in on him briefly. That ought to dispose the Prince well toward you.But,” he added, and she assumed this was the bad news, “it seems not. He has forbidden you to return to the Palace grounds.”
