The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“I do. Did you intend to leave it with me all along?”

“It all happened so fast. I didn’t know what to do.” She wiggled to blow on his neck, as if her breath would heal the ring of chafed skin that was now all that remained to remind him of his slavery. “Do you know what is in that book?”

“No.”

“My father was a mathematicus, a sorcerer. I suspect he was thrown out of the church because of it, before he married my mother—who was also a sorcerer—and they had me. That book contains his compilation of all learning on the art of the mathematici that he could find—” She hesitated, again touched the scar at his throat.

He waited. She seemed to expect something from him.

“That doesn’t trouble you?” she demanded finally.

“Ought it to?”

“That isn’t all.” He heard a hint of annoyance in her voice—that he hadn’t responded as she expected him to—and he grinned. Her eyes sparked in the blackness with a flicker of blue fire. From beyond the curtains he heard snoring, a child’s cough, the restless whining of a dog, and the faint pop of a log shifting on the outdoor hearth fire, banked down for the night. “What Hugh said about me is true. It’s true he wanted me for the knowledge he thought I had, but that wasn’t all. He knew all along. He still knows there’s something more. When we return to court, he won’t give up trying to get me back.” Her voice caught. “Do you despise me for what I was to him?”

“Can you possibly believe that after Gent I would judge you? Easier for you to despise me for becoming no better than a dog.” He could not help himself. The growl that emerged from his throat came unbidden and unwanted; he could not control this vestige of his time among the dogs, and he hated himself for it.

“Hush,” she said matter-of-factly, pressing her finger to his throat again. “You no longer wear Bloodheart’s slave collar.”

“And you no longer wear Hugh’s,” he retorted. “I tire of Hugh. Whatever power he may still have over you, he has none over me.”

“Do you think not? He tried to murder Theophanu!”

He sat up abruptly. “Not so loud,” he whispered. “What do you mean?” Her education had given her the ability to recount a tale succinctly and with all necessary details intact. She told him now of the incident in the forest where Theophanu had been mistaken for a deer; then, haltingly at first but when he made no horrified reaction more confidently, told him of the vision seen through fire of Theophanu burning with fever and of the panther brooch that Mother Rothgard had proclaimed a ligatura wrought by a maleficus—that of a sorcerer determined only to advance his own selfish desires.

ad no such strength of will, or considered it unnecessary. What passed next went rather faster than he would have wished, but he did not disgrace himself; his prayers did not go in vain, for the Lord watched over him and he managed to get through it as a man would, not losing control like a dog.

“Ai, Lady,” she whispered urgently, as if the strength of her passion scared her. “I’ll burn everything down.” He closed his arms around her, to be a shield against that fear. With her face pressed sideways against his neck she spoke in a slow murmur. ‘I’m not—I’m not what I seem. You felt it before. Da hid it from me, locked it away—”

This close, with her pressed bodily against him and nothing between them, nothing, he finally understood what it was that stirred there, inchoate, restless, almost like a second being trapped within her skin.

Fire.

“You’re like me,” he said, and heard how the hoarseness in lis voice made him sound astonished. As indeed he was.

“What do you mean?” She pushed up, weight shifting, and looked down at him, although she couldn’t possibly see him in this darkness.

He chose his words slowly, to be precise. “There’s more than human blood in you.”

“Aoi blood?” She sounded stunned.

“Nay, I know the scent of Aoi blood, and it isn’t that. It’s nothing I recognize.”

“Lady have mercy.” She collapsed so hard on top of him that he grunted, all the breath forced out of his chest.

For a long while he spun in an oblivion of contentment, simply lost track of anything except the actual physical contact between them, her breath on his cheek, her unbound hair spilling over his shoulders, her weight on his hip and chest, the sticky contact of their skin. He might have lain there for the space of ten breaths or a thousand. He simply existed together with her, nothing more, nothing less, they alone in the whole wide world all that mattered.

She said into the silence: “You still have the book.”

“I do. Did you intend to leave it with me all along?”

“It all happened so fast. I didn’t know what to do.” She wiggled to blow on his neck, as if her breath would heal the ring of chafed skin that was now all that remained to remind him of his slavery. “Do you know what is in that book?”

“No.”

“My father was a mathematicus, a sorcerer. I suspect he was thrown out of the church because of it, before he married my mother—who was also a sorcerer—and they had me. That book contains his compilation of all learning on the art of the mathematici that he could find—” She hesitated, again touched the scar at his throat.

He waited. She seemed to expect something from him.