The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“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.

She had slid a little away from him during the telling, although the bed sagged heavily between them. It was easy enough to take hold of her shoulder and gently pull her into him. He could not get enough of the simple touch of her—but he must pursue this other line of thought, not allow himself to be distracted by her body.

“If Hugh has practiced sorcery, then what other weapon do I need against him as long as he knows I can make such an accusation? But you must tell me what else you have done, if there is more to tell.”

At once, he felt her pull away from him—not bodily, but in an intangible way, a sudden retraction of the bond between them. “W-why?”

“So that we can be prepared. So that we can plan our tactics. It isn’t just Hugh’s interest you’ve attracted. Ai, Lord! I have never trusted Wolfhere, though I don’t dislike him.”

“Even after—?”

He smiled. “It is hard to hate a man for a deed you don’t remember and were only told about. He has never attempted to harm me that I recall, only plagued me with his endless accusations about a ‘crown of stars’ and some kind of unfathomable plot fashioned by my mother and her kin. But now it seems clear why he is interested in you, if it’s true you’re the child of sorcerers. Does he know everything about you?”

“Not everything,” she admitted. “I can’t trust him, even though he freed me from Hugh. But I don’t dislike him. Yet whom can I trust? Who will not condemn me for what I am? Who will not call me a maleficus?”

“I will not condemn you.”

“Will you not?” she asked bitterly, and she told him about the burning of the palace at Augensburg. “That isn’t all. While riding to Lavas, I burned down a bridge in the same way. I saw the shades of dead elves hunting in the deep forest. I’ve spoken with an Aoi sorcerer, who offered to teach me. I’ve been stalked by daimones. One of them was as beautiful as an angel but a monster nevertheless for having no soul. You could see that in its eyes. It called for me in a terrible voice, but it passed right by and couldn’t see me though I sat in plain sight. I was too terrified to move. Ai, Lady! I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what Da hid from me!”

“Hush.” He pressed a finger to her lips to silence her helpless fury. “But Wolfhere is right: You need teaching.”

“Who on this earth will teach such as me without condemning me? Without sending me to the skopos to stand trial as a maleficus?”

“Your mother?”

“Wolfhere wouldn’t tell me where she is. I don’t trust his secrecy.”

“Nor should you.”

“And I don’t know—I just don’t know— It seems so odd for this news to come now, after Da and I struggled so many years alone.”

“Then we must find out who can teach you without condemning you. You’re like a boy who is quick and strong and gifted, who’s taken up a sword but has had no training. He is as likely to hurt himself and his comrades as fell his enemies.”

“Sanglant,” she said softly, “why aren’t you afraid of me? Everyone else seems to be!” Her hand wandered to splay itself across his left shoulder blade. He became overpoweringly aware of every part of her, all that was soft, all that was hard, pressed against him.

The absurdity of it made him laugh. “What more can you do to me that you haven’t already done? I am at your mercy. Thank God!”

He literally felt indignation shudder through her. He understood at once that she did not know how to be laughed at. But even after that year among the dogs, he remembered something of the intricate dance eternally played out between female and male. There are places a woman’s indignation can be taken, and he knew how to get there.

3

LIATH woke with a strange sensation suffusing her chest and limbs. Sanglant slept beside her, touching her only where an ankle crossed hers, weighting it down. In fact it was too stifling within the curtained bed to press together. She had no cover drawn over her, yet even so, something lay on her so calming that the sweat and stuffy heat did not bother her. It took her a long while, lying completely still so as not to scare it away, to identify what it was.

Peace.