The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

Given no choice, she had to stay where she was.

III

THE LOCKED CHEST

1

“WHAT means this?” asked Wolfhere harshly as they left the hall.

A servingwoman brought them food and ale and left them to sit on a bench to take their supper in peace. Liath smiled wryly as Wolfhere glared at her. Peace, indeed. The first stars had bloomed in the heavens above—the three jewels of the Queen’s sky promising momentary splendor—but in the west the sky still wore the blush of sunset.

“You are silent,” Wolfhere observed. They hadn’t eaten since taking bread and cider at midday at an isolated farm, but he ignored the platter set on the bench beside him, although a fresh cut of roast pig steamed up most invitingly.

Liath concentrated on the food because she was starving. Wolfhere would get his answer soon enough. She had gulped down most of the food on her half of the platter when she saw him make his way through the crowd of retainers who had flocked around the entrance to watch the entertainment within. Embarrassed to be caught bolting her food, she wiped her mouth with the back of a hand and stood. Wolfhere jumped up as Sanglant eased free of the crowd and walked toward them.

“What means this?” Wolfhere demanded again.

“What matters it to you? What right do you have to interfere?” But she was only angry at him because of the fearful pounding of her own heart as the prince stopped before her. He had filled out in the past twenty days and had his hair trimmed neatly, but the haunted look in his eyes hadn’t dissipated. He wore a rich linen tunic trimmed with silver-and-gold-threaded embroidery, cut to fit his height; with a sword swinging in a magnificent red-leather sheath at his belt and several fine rings on his fingers, he looked very much the royal prince and courtier. Only the rough iron collar bound at his neck spoiled the picture. Perhaps it choked him: He seemed unable to speak, and now that he stood so close she could not think of one single word.

“Do not forget the oath you took as an Eagle,” said Wolfhere suddenly. “Do not forget the news I brought you, Liath!”

“Leave us,” said Sanglant without taking his gaze off Liath.

Not even Wolfhere dared disobey a direct command. He grunted with irritation, spun, and stalked off without taking supper or ale with him.

“I kept the book safe for you, as I promised.” His hoarse voice made the words seem even more fraught with meaning; but his voice always sounded like that. “The question I asked you … have you an answer for me?” Shouts and laughter swelled out from the hall, and he glanced back toward the doors and muttered something under his voice more growl than words.

“You were half mad. How can I be sure you meant what you asked?”

He laughed—the old laugh she recalled from Gent when, under siege, he had lived each day as if he cared not whether another came for him. “Ai, Lady! Say you will marry me, and let us have done with this!”

Impulsively, she raised a hand to touch his face. No trace of beard chafed her fingers. This close, she could smell him: sweat, dust, the fading scent of recently-dyed cloth, all of it sharp and overwhelming. Nothing of his Eika prison remained. In the wild lands beyond the city of memory, frozen under ice, the summer sun flooded the wilderness smothered in ice with a heat so intense that it ripped through her with the power of liquid fire: A torch flared across the yard, surprised murmurs rose from inside the hall, and she staggered under the hideous memory of the palace at Augensburg going up in flames.

He drew her hand down to his chest. His touch was like the wash of cool water, soothing, quieting, healing. Where he held her hand pressed against his tunic, she felt the beat of his heart. He was not less unsteady than she was.

Lady Above! This was madness. But she couldn’t bring herself to move away.

Suddenly, Sanglant threw back his head and half-growled, pushed her brusquely aside as he stepped forward. Surprised, turning, she saw Hugh behind her with an arm outstretched to grab her. She yelped and began to bolt, but Sanglant had already put himself between her and the enemy. She began to shake, could do nothing more than press a hand weakly against Sanglant’s back.

“Hugh,” said Sanglant in the way that a devout man utters one of the thousand names of the Enemy.

“She is mine.” Hugh looked so consumed by rage that for an instant she scarcely recognized the elegant courtier who graced the king’s progress. Then he controlled himself. “And I will have her back.”

Sanglant snorted. “She belongs to no man, nor woman either. Her service as a King’s Eagle is pledged to the regnant.”

Hugh did not back down. Sanglant was taller, and broader across the shoulders; certainly Sanglant had the posture of a man well-trained at war. But Hugh had that indefinable aura of confidence of a man who always gets what he wants. “We may as well set this straight now so that there are no further misunder-standings between us, my lord prince. She is my slave and has been in the past my concubine. Do not believe otherwise, no matter what she tells you.”

The words fell like ice, but Sanglant did not move to expose her. “At least I do not number among my faults having to compel women to lie with me.”

The difference between them was that Hugh made no unstudied movement, allowed no unthought expression to mar either his beauty or his poise, while Sanglant made no such pretense—or perhaps he had simply forgotten what it meant to be a man, a creature halfway between the beasts and the angels.

The smile that touched Hugh’s lips fell short of a sneer; rather, he looked saddened and amused as he slid his gaze past Sanglant to fix on Liath. She could not look away from him. “‘Whoever has unnatural connection with a beast shall be put to death,’” he said softly.

She grabbed the cup of ale and dashed the liquid into his face. Shaking, she lost hold of the cup. It thudded onto the bench, rolled, and struck her foot. But the pain only brought her fully awake, out of the blinding haze of desire that had surged over her when she first walked into the hall and saw Sanglant waiting for her.

Someone laughed; not Sanglant. The prince’s fingers touched her sleeve, to rein her back.

Hugh laughed, delighted, even as he licked ale from his lips. He did not wipe the ale from his face or blot it from the damp front of his handsomely-embroidered tunic, grape leaves entwined with purple flowers. She was so painfully alive to the currents running between them that Hugh’s laughter came this time with revelation: Her defiance excited him physically. He laughed to cover it, to release an energy fueled of fury and lust.