“Delara, have you ever been in love?”
She leveled an incredulous look at Lord D’Luc and saw that he was serious.
“Well?” he said.
Ru couldn’t fathom how she was supposed to answer the question, or why he would ask it. Up until now, their breakfasts had been one of two things: a painful interrogation, or a heady scientific discourse. It was all about the artifact, naturally.
He seemed determined to make Ru feel terrible. She often left their breakfasts with tears in her eyes, questioning her own motives, her intelligence, her place in the world.
Lord D’Luc had never asked about love before.
“That’s a pointless question,” Ru said finally.
The lord leaned back, bracing himself with a hand on the blanket. “I'm a man of science,” he said. “But I’m also a man of faith. I know that you are intrinsically joined to the artifact, even though I cannot see it. So why not ask of love? Is it not anothersort of joining?” He popped a piece of fruit into his mouth and chewed.
Ru wracked her brain for some hidden meaning. Surely he couldn’t guess that she had loved Fen, or been close to something like it. With knowledge like that, who knew what emotional torments he might devise for her? And anyway, Fen was gone. Her throat tightened.
Then, apparently oblivious of her inner turmoil, Lord D’Luc said, “Solve an equation for me.”
Ru sipped her now cold coffee, waiting.
“Tell me, how does one differentiate between science and magic?”
“Onedoesn’t,” said Ru, unable to hide her exasperation. This was a topic they had covered many times in the past few days. “We lack the tools to quantify magic, but as youknow, my theories point to it being rooted in physics. The movement of particles we can’t measure with our technology.”
“And how,” said Hugon, his hair lifting and falling about his ears in the chill wind, “would one differentiate faith and magic? Love and science? Are they, by necessity, separate entities, mutually exclusive yet existing in harmony?” His neckcloth, usually starched and stiff, had loosened in the breeze and ruffled against his chin. “And if they were laid out before you, would you know the difference?”
Ru stiffened. “That’s conceptual.”
“The artifact itself, I’d argue, is a concept.” Hugon’s blue eyes were lighter in the sun, and his smile remained. “So is joy. Love. Death. I know you’re familiar with the latter.”
The lord had never ceased to be magnetic, despite the darkness that rose often in his eyes. And even this, a jab at the deaths Ru herself had caused, felt to her like a beautiful knife in the ribs.
She sighed deeply. Her nose had gone numb. “If I participate in this obscure banter will you let me go inside?”
“Naturally,” came his elegant reply.
She glowered; at least she could be petulant if nothing else. “I’m not sure my answer will even make sense to you. I don’t believe you’ve ever been in love. You lack the required selflessness.”
The lord’s eyes flashed. “Tread carefully, Delara. My methods thus far have been gentle.”
Gentle. As if his cruel words, being under constant guard, Children monitoring her every move, were gentle.
In some twisted way, Ru almostlikedpushing him, seeing how close to danger she could get before one of them backed down. It was a rapier dance, a thrilling game that left her breathless, tripping on the edge of a tumbling dark.
“I don’tknow,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ve been in love. Love isn’t quantifiable, anyway. I suppose you think we can measure feelings if we try hard enough, assign an emotion to the artifact, conduct studies in that way. ‘Oh look, it’s feeling a bit peckish this afternoon! Ah, how joyful the stone is feeling this morning.’” She glared heartily at Lord D’Luc.
He smiled right back. “As always, you seem to know my thoughts before I speak them,” he drawled. “Why not? Why shouldn't we hypothesize that the artifact, inanimate as it is, might feel emotion? I know you have some connection to it, though you continuously evade me when it comes to the details. Couldn’t such a connection be based in emotion, in love?”
Ru remained impassive. Only her breaths gave away her true feelings, the fact that she had wondered the same. “Speculation doesn’t become you.”
“Evasion isn’t your strong point,” Lord D’Luc shot back with a half-smile and a tilt of his head. “The stone reacts to you, and you alone. I’ve held it, touched it with bare skin. What you sharewith the stone is more than physicality. And as a man of science, I mean to understand it. Furthermore, I mean foryouto harness it. You’ll succumb to me regardless.”
“How do you intend to manage that?” Ru asked, her tone clipped. But even as she spoke, her breath quickened, and the picnic spread began to smear into a colorful haze. Her fingers clenched in her skirts, curling into fists. “Needles under my fingernails?”
Breathe in, then out. She shouldn’t be afraid of this man, and yet he filled her with a growing dread that wouldn’t abate. Every morning she woke with a curdle of fear in her belly, and every night she lay awake with visions of his sneer, his sapphire eyes, kaleidoscopic in her mind’s eye.
“Needles?” said Lord D’Luc, his gaze heavy. “I shouldn’t need to go so far as that. Your friends are very loyal.”
