“The fourth?”
“Time you’ve touched me without my leave.”
If his voice isn't kind, it is at least gentle. “Aerinne, I need none.”
One beat of silence, two. “So this visit is a warning.”
I pull away but he resists, hands tightening. Anger rises, but is chased away by a brief spill of a few unfamiliar words from his lips that I'm not certain are spoken aloud, quiet words with the sonorous quality of a chant, or a prayer. They wrap me in a haze, stealing any emotion stronger than wonder.
“What do you want from me?”
He must lower his head because again in some strange echo, his hair falls over my shoulders, and feeling as if the weight of a dream slows my movements, I lift my hands to catch the strands like water running through my fingers.
I’m not me; I’m not in my own time and place. I lean back against his chest and the impulse, the fleeting nascent need, scares me more than he does; but the now silent words steal fear away too.
“The wait was difficult,” he says. “And necessary. I did not want to hurt you.”
“You already have.”
Have we spoken these words before? Some variation? There is very real physical pain as I strive to push through the haze, so I stop before I start dripping nose blood onto my clothing; I don't think it’s a good idea to bleed around the Prince.
We stand in silence I don't know how long, then there’s the scuff of distant feet signaling one or both of us.
“For your mother, for mine,” he says softly, “I would spare you if I could. But this will not be denied; not even I can halt its progress any longer. The seed was planted long ago and sprouts now in the presence of rain and sun.”
From the sudden rise of tension in his body, I think he must feel the same need I do. I wait for the cage of his arms, but he remains still. His breath brushes the side of my face and if I turn my head just so, his lips would brush against me too. I don’t move.
I also don't tell him, again, that I don't understand. He already knows and. . .I think Iambeginning to understand, and it is far, far too awful to consider.
“Be wary at the ball,” he says. “Hoard your anger. There are parts of me that will see it as challenge and respond in kind. If you run, you are prey. If you fight, you are to be subdued.”
The Prince slowly releases his hold on both my arms and my emotions, and his hair slips away from hands I have yet to lower. Before he walks away I hear five more soft words.
“Forgive me. And never forget.”
I turn to watch his back.
Sanity is the dream of my distant youth. I beg you, tread carefully. I do not wish to kill you. There is enough Kuthliele blood on my hands.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
THE MIDNIGHT BALL CONT…
“My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me
That I must love a loathèd enemy.”
—Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 5
Tonight I submit to Prince Renaud, and die.
We pause outside the arched entrance to the lush forest bower of Everenne City's soaring white palace.I glimpse my mother's killer, my brother's jailor. The thief of my childhood, and the usurper of my future.
