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“You loved someone. You made a home for them; since then, you have lived a life of peace and solitude. You have done no harm in this world. I have no doubt that when you pass into the world to come, the Goddess will welcome you.”
We must talk.
This is someone you care about, Con.”
“I know what you want to say,” Conor said, and Kel was surprised by the savagery in his voice. It was a savagery directed not at Kel, but at Conor himself. “Tell Anjelica you can’t marry her. Figure out some other way Castellane can pay its debt to Sarthe and protect itself at the same time. Do not torture yourself. But you know there is no other way.” “I would not have used the word torture,” Kel said in a low voice. “But it means something to me that you did.”
To Conor: his mouth, his hands, the sound of the rain, the sensation of him against her. Her heart would skip and stutter; she would feel sick and hot all at once, as if her skin were burning.
He had pulled the gloves off and was twisting them between his hands. His head was lowered; she could not see his face. “And that’s all?” he said. “A mistake?”
“Of course that isn’t all,” he snapped. “Lin. I am not a fool. What we did—That was your first time, wasn’t it? If I had guessed, I would never—”
Everything about him changed. His eyes widened. He dropped the gloves he’d been holding as his hard, stiff, defensive posture seemed to melt away; suddenly he was frantic to get across the room to her. He pulled her against him, his hand in her hair, his voice soft. “Lin, Lin. Don’t, sweetheart. Please.”
“I want to give them up.” His voice was ragged. “But I cannot. I cannot offer you what the lowest peasant in the street could offer you. Myself. Because myself does not belong to me. It belongs to Castellane.”
“And I would be your mistress?”
“It would be discreet,” he said. “But we could see each other. I would spend nights with you. Not every night, not at the beginning, but some. I would see you as much as I could.”
She saw the hurt bloom across his face and wondered if she would ever be this close to him again. Close enough to see his flickering expressions, pain followed by stubbornness, the quick flash of anger that mirrored hurt. Close enough to see the way the dark curls of his hair lay against his temples, begging for a hand to brush them back. Close enough to examine the exact curve of his mouth. “Why not?” he said.
Part of her saw only that he hurt, saw the pain in his eyes, the way his hands gripped themselves into fists so that his nails could dig into his palms. How well, how oddly, she knew him.
He whitened. “I had you already,” he said harshly. “I doubt you have forgotten. And I want you still. That has never happened to me before.” He plunged his hands into his hair, as if he would tear it out in handfuls.
feared that if anyone ever saw me with you, they would see it on my face, that I was an addict, that I would barter my birthright just to touch you—”
He was so close. So close she had to force back the memory: the taste of his mouth on hers, wine and rain. His hands a key that unlocked a Lin inside her she had never imagined: a girl who burned like fire burned, whose heart was thunder, wind, and storm, whose body was capable of feelings as sharp and fine as a blade’s edge. She knew she was losing that Lin forever as she spoke, even as she knew she had no choice about it.
do not want some part of you, of your time and self.” She raised her face to his, wondering if the hot spark of desire and memory she saw in his eyes was only a reflection of her own. “I do not want a lover. I want something more than that, and you cannot give it to me.”
“There could be a child.”
“As easily as that?”
He moved toward the door, a little unsteadily, as if he were finding his way in a dark room. At the door, he paused without turning back
The power in my blood contains the Word.
“Are you in love with him?” he asked. “Because he is certainly in love with you.”
You are complete in yourself. You need nothing from him; you never have. And he cannot understand it. You might as well put him in a lifeboat and set him adrift. He grasped at that royal order because to him you are like water slipping through his hands. He knew no other way to hold you—and,” he added, “I am not saying this is a good thing about him, but it is a true thing. I am assuming he has released you from the order since?”
“He didn’t offer me his heart. He offered me a house.” “It’s all he can offer,” Kel said with a force that surprised him. He thought of Antonetta, and of how little he had ever had to offer her. “It’s everything he has.”
“Do you love him?” She smiled the ghost of a smile. “Sword Catcher,” she said. “Are you protecting him now? You know I cannot hurt him.”
“I do not want to love him,” she said. “It frightens me more than anything has ever frightened me. Can you understand that?”
I need you to become what you are destined to be—for
Should the Goddess be reborn, she could destroy them forever.
For without the Goddess, all are doomed.
“The Malgasi fear a legend,” he said. “Claim your power. Give them something true to fear.”
Heart roaring in his chest, he said, “Conor?”
Even Conor’s pace was familiar to him. He would have known it anywhere.
She tipped her head back to look up at him. He was so young to be all that he was, she thought. He was a grown man, but there was still a boyish softness to the curve of his mouth. “I have been so worried about you.”
You will never get back what you lost.”
“Because,” she said, “I love you.”
Kel knew that Conor feared the fall, the tumble into the vast empty abyss of despair. Anger was better than despair—even anger against someone you loved. Anger was fire, and despair was darkness. And Conor had for years been afraid of the dark.
He said, “You are my unbreakable armor. And you will not die.”
Who she really is.”
Somehow, you have fallen in love with a person you do not know, a person who may still be only a dream or a figment. You must come to know her, this new Antonetta; you must know your own heart before you can know hers.
changing into something else altogether. And yet he felt it to be true. Conor had always inhabited a world in which he only trusted a few things: his connection to Kel and, later, his feelings for Lin.
They have to think I’m all alone. Can you understand that? They must believe that I am at my weakest, completely undefended.
“Yes,” Markus rasped. “Together.”
