The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“What did you think I was?”

He was weeping. “I dreamed of you so often in Gent, I forgot what was dream and what was real, and then I would wake up. Ai, Lady. That was when it was worst, when I would wake up to discover I was still Bloodheart’s prisoner.”

“Hush,” she said, kissing him. “You’re free.”

He only shook his head. He rocked back and forth, unable to keep still, but with her still clasped in his arms. Then, as suddenly as he had begun, he ceased and lifted his face to look at her. Light seeped in where wooden rings fastened the curtain to rods attached to the ceiling; she saw his expression as a gray mask, bewildered, joyous, determined.

“Make no marriage, Liath,” he whispered, echoing words he had said to her a long time ago, before the fall of Gent. Then he smiled. “Unless it be with me.”

“Foolhardy,” she murmured.

“What is?”

“This. Marrying.”

His voice sharpened. “Do you regret it already?”

She laughed. It was spectacularly disconcerting to have this need consume her. She just could not keep her hands off him. “Oh, no. No. Never.” It was a different kind of fire, just as intense but more satisfying. He did not try to resist her even knowing that the village woke beyond the curtains as a new day began, but he was far more restrained than she was—although now and again he would forget himself and nip.

They did, finally, have to dress. They could hear Mistress Hilda and her household moving around, hear the soldiers moving restlessly outside the longhouse, talking and joking, although no one dared disturb the two hidden behind the curtains. She was embarrassed when they at last drew the curtains aside. Sanglant did not seem aware of the stares, the whispers, the giggles, the jocular congratulations. He wound up his leggings and laced up his sandals with intense concentration, obviously making plans. He took in a deep draught of air and held it, then shook his head as a dog shakes off water.

“Nothing,” he murmured. “I do not smell his scent here.”

“Whose scent?”

“Bloodheart’s.” He belted on his sword. “Bloodheart laid a curse as a protection against any person who sought to kill him. Your hand drew the bow whose arrow struck him down.”

Mistress Hilda bustled over with two cups of cider. As they drained the cups, she surveyed the tangled bedcovers with satisfaction.

The bite of the cider cleared Liath’s head. “A curse is woven of magic,” she said in a low voice, “and Da protected me against magic. It can’t harm me.”

He swore. “Rash words!”

“I don’t mean them to be! You didn’t see the daimone stalk past me, calling my name and yet not seeing me. That’s not the only time it happened.”

“That you were protected from magic? What do you mean?”

“I suppose the way armor protects you from a sword blow. It’s as if I’m invisible to magic.”

He considered this seriously. “Do you remember when Bloodheart died?”

She touched her quiver, propped up against the bed. “How could I forget it? When I first saw you—” She broke off, aware that her voice had risen. Everyone had turned to watch them: children, adults, slaves; even the soldiers who had crowded to the door as soon as they heard Sanglant’s voice. It wasn’t every day that such folk got to witness a royal marriage.

“Ah,” said Sanglant, looking embarrassed—but she had a sudden feeling that it wasn’t their audience that bothered him but the memory of Gent and the bestial condition in which she and Lavastine had found him. He headed for the door, and Liath hurried in his wake, not at all sure where he was going. But he was headed for the three Eika dogs, who barked and scrabbled to reach them as he approached. He cuffed them down, then retrieved the handsome reinforced pouch. Inside she saw The Book of Secrets, but he did not remove it; instead, he pulled out his gold torque, the sign of his royal kinship. He turned.

“This is all I have to give you. My morning gift to you.”

The assembled audience gasped at the magnificence of the gift, although Liath knew that among the nobility such a piece of jewelry, while very fine in its own right, would be but one among many such gifts—except that only women and men born into the royal lineage had the right to wear a torque braided of solid gold.

“I can’t—” she choked.

“I beg you,” he whispered.

It was all he had.

She received it from him, then flushed, humiliated. “I have nothing to give you—” Nothing but the gifts given to her by Lavastine and Alain the day before, and to hand them over now seemed demeaning, to him, to her, and to the lords who had rewarded her. She glanced toward the waiting soldiers, and inspiration seized her. “But I will have, if you are willing to wait.”

o;What did you think I was?”