The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“How can I know you won’t kill him anyway, after you’re done?” she asked hoarsely.

“You can’t know! They’re all asleep, Liath.” His voice gentled. “No one can help you now, and do you dare risk burning down this place knowing the king rests next door, asleep? He’ll not escape in time; he’ll be the second to die. Will his death be on your head, too?” His face twisted again, and the bruise mottled in the inconstant light to become like the mark of the Enemy. “I will have what he has enjoyed! He’s no better than a dog. How could you possibly prefer him to me!”

“I hate you.”

He smiled with the old familiar beauty—not lost after all but merely poisoned. “Hate is only the other face of love, my beauty. You cannot hate what you cannot also love. You cannot possibly imagine how beautiful you looked seated beside the king You looked truly to be a queen, set higher than the rest. I can’t believe you were foolish enough to turn away from the king’s favor for—this—this dog!”

“Jealousy is a sin.” Just yesterday she had been able to hate him with all her passion, but, trapped by him against the bed, all that anger drained away. Numbness oozed from his hand like poison down her arm, invaded her chest, spread with the inevitable doom of a plague brought down by angels upon those who have turned their back on God’s Holy Word.

“Then I will fall forever into the Abyss—but you will be at my side! Forever. We will ride out in the morning, back to Firsebarg. You and I—”

“Princess Sapientia—”

“What do I care for Sapientia? Ah, my beauty, how long I have waited for this. Perhaps the wait truly only makes it sweeter.”

He pressed the knife against Sanglant’s vulnerable throat. A line of red started up, not quite seeping.

“Ai, God,” she breathed. She had nothing but fire, and fire would destroy what she loved.

“Take off your clothes, so I can see you who are dark and lovely.”

Why hadn’t Da’s spell that protected her against all other magics protected her against Hugh’s? Unless what Hugh had woven onto her during that long winter in Heart’s Rest had not been any kind of spell at all but only cruelty and abuse.

Was it better to die with Sanglant?

“I told you what I wanted.” He pressed the knife harder, and Sanglant actually murmured and shifted—but he did not wake. He could not wake. Hugh pressed the knife harder until blood trickled down the prince’s neck.

The dog lunged, dragged itself forward, and gripped Hugh’s trailing foot in its mouth; even weakened the dog had a sharp bite. Hugh jerked back and swore in pain, kicked free of the dog, and then kicked it back into the corner.

Which gave her time and chance.

She dove for her short sword.

He wrenched her back just as she got a grip on the handle. Slammed her against the wall. “I’ll kill him! I promise you, I’ll kill him. You’re mine, damn you.”

She fought him, trying to catch his hands so the blows wouldn’t land; trying not to explode into a fire made manifest by terror. There Sanglant breathed, so peaceful, but so far away now that Hugh loomed everywhere. She would never be free of him. But at least if she fought, she would be dead.

“God damn you!” He took her throat in his hands. “You are mine! Or no one’s.”

“Hush, Brother. Calm yourself. I fear you are overwrought.”

Hugh did not register the voice. Over his shoulder, Liath saw the door standing open. She had barred that door. Stunned into immobility, she felt the back of her head hit the wall as Hugh shook her by the throat, but she could only stare, limp and passive, as a veiled figure crossed the threshold and glided into the room.

“Brother,” it said in a woman’s sorrowful yet commanding alto, “this is unseemly behavior for any soul indeed and yet how much worse in a man sworn to the church and educated in its ways. Alas, how God’s children have fallen!”

Now his grip slackened. His eyes widened, and his lips parted with astonishment. He let Liath go and she slid down the wall as though she hadn’t any bones left and sat hard, jolting her spine, on the floor. Beside her, the Eika dog lay under the window like a dead thing.

He raised a hand, pointed it at the hooded figure as a threat—or as prelude to a spell.

But her hand, pale and smooth, rose in response, and abruptly Hugh clapped a hand to his throat. His mouth worked, but no sound came out.

“Such a lovely countenance, such an elegant voice, to be poisoned by such trivial weaknesses as lust and envy. I pity you, Brother.” She stepped aside from the door. The opening yawned wide and as dark as the pit beyond, where nothing stirred. She might have walked into the chamber from out of thin air, and yet she had weight and substance and her footfalls made a faint noise as she moved. “You are not as powerful as you think you are, although I admit you have strength of will and a promising intelligence. Such a great talent to be wasted tormenting a helpless girl. You must scour all such base feelings from your soul and be purified by God’s love. Then you will understand that the power we have on earth, the lusts that hunger in our flesh, are as nothing compared to the promise of the Chamber of Light. All is darkness, below. Above—” She gestured eloquently toward the ceiling, but by the sweep of her arm she included the high heavens in that gesture. “—there is only that light which is God’s gentle breath.”

Hugh could not speak, although he tried to. He tried to grasp his knife, but it kept slipping out of his fingers. He was helpless. And Liath exulted in her heart to see him so.

“Go, Brother. ‘Heal thyself.’ But do not trouble me or this child any longer.”

He coughed out something, not words—perhaps a curse that had gotten stuck in his throat. He stumbled over to the table and fumbled for the candle and at last got the bronze handle squeezed between thumb and forefinger. Even so, he could barely stay upright; he grunted like a pig as he groped along the table. Then, suddenly, he dropped to his knees and got his arm under the strap to the leather pouch which before the struggle had been hooked to the dog.