He glanced at my hand. “You can drop your hand too. I’ve already seen the cut.” The worry line returned. “How much did you hear?”
“Everything, Your Royal Highness.”
A fly buzzed past, landing above us on the serpent’s felt tongue.
“Call me Garth or Bion if you will.”
“Or Bash?”
He flashed a smile at that, but it vanished soon enough. “Truly, drop your hand, Tess. You’ve seen this, so we’re even.” The sleeve was still rolled up. Blue-green scales scalloped down his arm shimmering in the candlelight.
“Come away from the masks.” He righted God knocked over in the brawl, and stood the stool up again for me to take a seat. I chose to stand. There was no hearth in the tower room. Now it was night, I could feel the chill even in my flit gown and cloak. I wondered how he slept here on the cold planked floor. Had he blankets in the wardrobe?
“You put yourself in danger coming here, Tess. Tell me how you managed it. Tell me quickly. I want to trust you as I did before.”
I saw no reason to hide the truth if the man was in league with Onadon. “I came by invitation as one of the Irish princesses.”
“You’re half fey.” He heaved a sigh. “I thought you might be, but then when you agreed to ride south with me for Alice, I wasn’t sure.”
“Was that some test? I agreed to go south to right a wrong I’d done.”
“Of course, but I also knew the half-fey princesses would yearn to go north to DunGarrow.”
“I did… yearn. But I had my friends to think of. Doesn’t anyone consider loyalty important anymore?” I’d always thought myself loyal. It had made betraying my friends that much worse. But I shouldn’t have barked at the prince. “Forgive me, Your Royal Highness. I shouldn’t speak to you that way.”
“Sit, will you?”
I took the stool he offered. There was another reason I’d gone south. I’d wanted to ride dressed as Garth’s wife, trying on a role I’d never thought to consider until I’d met him. I was drawn to Garth as much as DunGarrow back then, though I’d not admitted it to myself at the time. If I was confused then, I was more so now.
“So you suspected I was fey when you took us in?” I was trying to piece it all together.
“At first I saw four starving people hounded by the witch hunter. Later I began to wonder, if you or Poppy…” He ran his hand through his hair. The locks fell again across his forehead. “Poppy enspelled me in a way I found distressing,” he confessed. “Her beauty was too overpowering.”
He admitted she’d charmed him, but I was glad to hear he’d not welcomed it.
“She’s here too.”
“The two Irish princesses.” His laugh was bittersweet, then he shrugged. “I agreed it was a good thing for the fey to bring princesses here. Give them a chance to meet my brother. Sackmoore wants his daughter on the throne, his hand in the affairs of state. He wants to destroy Dragonswood, even though it’s a sanctuary my grandparents Rosalind and Kye spent their lives building.”
He walked a little in the room. “After I began to suspect you or Poppy might be… If you were the ones chosen by the fey, I didn’t want to stand in the way of it.”
Was that why he kept deserting me at the lodge when he knew I wanted to go with him?
He turned and saw my face. “What’s wrong now?
“Nothing, Your Royal Highness.”
“Back to formalities? I thought we went over that.”
“I told you. Nothing.”
He rolled down his sleeve. “You have your secrets, I suppose. You had them before.”
“And you, king’s huntsman.”
“Don’t forget thief,” he added with a flicker of a smile.
He’d ridden off again and again. I could not leave the point hanging. “You said you did not want to stand in the way?”
“The fey need this marriage. I thought if you were indeed fey, if I left you alone, you might resume your journey to DunGarrow. I was right in that, I see,” he added.
Keys rattled in the door. I leaped behind the God mask as the guard came in with a tray. He set it on the table and quit the room.
“Come out from behind God,” Bion said.
I crept out.
“Share my dinner with me, Tess.”
He offered me the stool again and sat cross-legged beside me on the floor.
I’d not eaten since my small breakfast on the ship. “It’s not enough for two. You must be hungry. You go on.”
“Eat with me or I won’t eat at all.”
“You’re a stubborn prince.”
“Not half as stubborn as you are.”
We lingered over the small bowl of stew and split the single piece of bread. “Is this how they feed a prince of the realm?” I said bitterly.
“It’s how they feed a thief in the tower. And I’m sure it’s better than what those in the dungeon get.”
I nodded, remembering Osric’s filthy cell.
Wind gusted through the window. The scent of the sea was on it. Prince Bion looked out as if he also caught the scent, a cold freedom in it and the dangers of the ocean. Smells like these had awakened my grandfather’s sea lust. I put my elbows on my knees and leaned over, suddenly tired. My head pounded trying to think it all out. He’d left the lodge to clear the way for me so I could go to the fey. Had he wanted that for me? Or did he wish I’d stayed with him? I had no way of knowing.
“Do you need water?” Before I could answer, he dipped from a bucket below Eve’s hung skin, and brought the filled tin cup. I drained it in three thirsty gulps, the metal stinging my teeth.
Bion reached for it, his cool fingers brushing mine. I held on a little longer and caught his eye. “Did the fey know you took the treasure?”
Chapter Thirty-four
BION HELD THE cup between us longer, his look intense. “Ore and I worked alone, Tess,” he whispered. “No one knows about Ore’s part in this aside from you and one other unless you told someone of it.”
His eyes were on me, hoping, fearing, and the gaze lightened with my answer.
“I’ve told no one what I saw, Bion.” I’d said his name aloud and did not mind the taste of it in my mouth or the look he gave me after. He went to fill the cup again, drinking himself this time before bringing me another cupful.
He’d said one other. “Who else knows?”
“The dragonlord, Kahlil.”
Somehow this didn’t surprise me. “Ore attacked us on the road.” I recalled the way she’d swept down so low, she’d knocked me from my horse.
“She was alarmed that I’d left the lodge to travel so far south with a lady when we had the king’s treasure to guard.”
“I can understand her concern.”
“Women will stick together,” he said with a sigh.
I laughed at that, then all was silent awhile, God and devil, prince and fey girl, mute in the candle’s glow. Only the serpent seemed to speak, his orange felt tongue lifting in the wind.
I drank more slowly this time, tasting the freshness of the water and remembering Ore’s blue eyes. “Is Ore the same hatchling Princess Rosalind raised?” I knew the youngest was blue-eyed.
“She is the same. My grandmother watched her and Lord Faul’s other three pips hatch from their shells in his den on Dragon’s Keep. Can you imagine what that must have been like, Tess?”
“I thought of her story often growing up, and tried to imagine her living there,” I whispered. Our shadows wavered on the wall in the dim candle glow. “You said your grandmother walked the coals. Now I know who your grandmother was, I see you were telling the truth.” Princess Rosalind was thought to be a witch when she first returned home from her time with the dragons on Dragon’s Keep. Who but a witch could dwell with dragons and live? Or so it was thought back then. She was imprisoned and witch-tested before she was proved innocent.
It was still hard to believe I’d just shared a meal with Queen Rosalind’s grandson. That I’d eaten from the sam
e bowl; drank from the same cup.
“Are you all right?”
“I am still getting used to who you are.”
“I’m the same man you met in the wood, Tess.”
“Hardly that!”
“And should I treat you differently, now I know you’re half fey?”
I pressed my lips together, unsure of how to answer him. If he was the same man I met in the wood, it was not so for me. I had changed since he’d found me hiding with my friends in the cave. I knew a little more of who I was now I’d met the fairy folk. I didn’t have to feel ashamed of my attraction to Dragonswood, or be quite so afraid of my fire-sight. Still, I couldn’t think how to share this with him. Looking up from my lap, I caught Bion’s intent gaze.
“You have some fey powers, Tess. You proved this by coming in here unseen, but you’ve not explained how you—”
Before he finished, I stood and pulled the sponge and vial from my waist pouch. “Sleeping potion. I drugged the guards.”
“Delightful,” he said, a boyish look on his face. “So the one my brother shouted ‘Get up, man’ to down at the bottom of the stairs wasn’t just sleeping on the job.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“The poor man was likely discovered by a fellow guard and sacked.”
“I’m sorry for that.” I chewed my bread. Sorry, yes, but I would do it again to be with Bion.
“Any fey powers I should know of?” he asked.
I sat again, squeezing the sponge in my hand. I’d shared my power with Grandfather long ago, no one else. It was time.
“Remember when I said I’d had the nightmare about Princess Augusta? It wasn’t a dream.”
“Go on.”
“I saw her in the fire.”
“Fire-sight,” he whispered. “How many times in your life?”
“Often enough. I saw you in the blaze.”
“Me?”
“Twice before I met you.”
His face grew very still. “What was I doing?” he asked cautiously.
“Waving your sword.”
“Was that why you were so frightened when I found you and your friends in the cave?”
“I had any number of reasons to be afraid of you back then, but that was one,” I admitted.
Bion drew his knees up to his chest. “Now I know how you entered the tower. You must also tell me why. What made you climb the stairs? Did Onadon send you?”
“My father doesn’t know I’m here. I came on my own.”
“Then how did you know where to find me?”
Suddenly my hands were damp. I wiped them on my gown, remembering the feel of death. “I searched for you first in the dungeon. Osric the soothsayer told me to look in the tower.”
“Poor man. How is he?”
“He… died,” I whispered.
Bion sat heavy with the news. “I knew him since I was a boy.”
We talked on in the night about his boyhood. I was hungry to hear all—to piece together a new understanding of the man I’d known as Garth, to see Bion for who he was. In the passing hours he quizzed me about my life back at home, before I’d had to flee the witch hunter. He’d shared much with me, but I couldn’t return his openness. I spoke little of my time in Harrowton. “I was unhappy,” I admitted.
“There’s something I’ve been wondering about,” he said. “You said that Onadon didn’t send you, that you came on your own to the tower. I assume you guessed I was the prince and so determined to find me?”
“I didn’t know who you were other than Garth Huntsman, liar and thief, when I came.”
“Tess. You climbed up here to free a thief?”
“I rescued Tom from the sheriff’s cell. Why not help a man who’d risked his neck to save me and my friends?”
“You’re brave, Tess, if a little foolhardy. You’d be condemned to death if you were caught trying to free a man who’d stolen the king’s treasure. Why put yourself in so much danger?” He looked up from the floor, his dark face brushed silver with the pale predawn light creeping through the tower window.
“I had to come. I had no choice after all you did for us.” I fought the urge to touch his cheek. His face was unshaven and would be rough as dry lichen. I knew it would be warm. Don’t. He’s a Pendragon prince.
The faint light beyond the barred window was changing hue. It was hard to believe we’d talked till dawn. All the folk at the castle would be roused from their beds before long. “Listen, we haven’t much time. When they come with your morning meal, I can help you escape.”
“I can’t run, Tess.”
My breath caught. He couldn’t mean it. “I’ll use the rest of the potion to put the guards to sleep. We can plan a way.”
“I’d go if my brother allowed it, but I cannot leave the way things are. I have to stay here and be my brother’s conscience.”
“What, be his conscience when he locks you in the tower? Why? I saw the way he treats you. You’re in danger.”
“I’ll be in greater danger if I go without his blessing. Leave Pendragon Castle now and Sackmoore will have Arden’s ear with no one to counterpoint. Sackmoore will convince Arden I’ve fled to raise an army against him and claim the crown myself. My brother will believe it. He half believes it now. It is how my brother thinks.”
I knelt on the floor. I’d been uneasy sitting with my head above a prince of the realm. The thick wood was hard on my knees and I was too close to him by this, so much so, that my cloak fell across his knee, but I didn’t draw away and call attention to it. “Why would he believe Lord Sackmoore over you?”
“We might be brothers, Tess, but we’ve not been close for a long time. Arden’s bullheaded. He blamed Augusta for our mother’s death and refuses to see her. I can’t make him change his mind about her. As to kingship, my brother craves the throne so much, he can’t believe it when I tell him I don’t feel the same. He’s always seen me as a threat. Lord Sackmoore knows it and plays into his fears.”
He fingered my cloak, the flit weave soft as silk, hued pink and lovelier than he had seen on human folk, even royal ones. I read that in his look as he examined it. “I wrote to Arden while he was away, but I know Lord Sackmoore also wrote to him, filling his head with lies about me, adding fuel to a fire that was always there, when all I truly want is to live year-round with my sister in the modest castle on Dragon’s Keep. I’m happy there as I am in Dragonswood. I was never quite at home here at Pendragon Castle.”
He looked at me. “I’m boring you with this.”
“No, not at all.” I was glad to hear he wanted to live free on Dragon’s Keep, to be with his younger sister, and the dragons there, but his confession came with a pang. All I truly want, he’d said. He’d not mentioned wanting a lover or a wife.
“What can I do to help you, Garth?” The old name was a slip of the tongue, but he grinned at my mistake. His smile was sunlight to me. “It’s hard to get used to the new name. Forgive me.”
“Tess. What is there to forgive?” He leaned closer, touching my neck just under my wound.
“Does it hurt much?”
“No,” I lied.
I should have said yes. Wouldn’t he have held his hand out longer then? But the gesture lasted only as long as a single breath. Some folk believe when the breath leaves the body, our spirit can flee by it. I am not sure of this, but I felt something go out of me in that breath when his hand fell.
“How,” he asked, “with your chin sewn up, were you introduced at court? I only wonder…”
I blushed. “The fey cast a glamour over my face.” I knew the spell went against their agreement with Bion. “It was only to cover the wound and no more,” I added.
“You need no glamour. You have all you need.”
I was drinking this in when he added, “There’s nothing you can do for me just now, Tess. They will bring my breakfast up soon. I’ll distract the guard long enough for you to creep out the door. Failing that, you can use your potion. Once you’re back downstair
s, you can continue to play your part as an Irish princess.”
“I don’t want to.”
He looked stern. “And if I order you to?”
I sparred back, look for look. One candle burned out. Smoke rose in gray rivulets from the wick. I thought of the wisp he’d called to the window.
“Tell me what you made with the candle wax.”
“You’re stalling, Tess.”
“Tell me,” I insisted.
“A message,” he said simply.
“There was no writing on it.”
“In thought and fingerprint there is message enough for Onadon to read, but it’s no more than what transpired between me and my brother, so you saw and heard it all yourself.”
“All of that was in those three wax petals?”
“All I could think to put in them before the warm wax dried.”
“I didn’t think the Pendragons had such powers.”
“Just a little thing I learned from Onadon,” he said, eyes twinkling.
“So my father’s read the wax and knows you’re in danger.”
“He knows, but can do little about it. My brother needs persuading.” He leaned back on his hands. “He has to learn to trust me again. Would magic do this? Would violence?”
I knew he was right; neither magic nor violence could be used to sway Arden back to his brother’s side.
“You could do what he asks,” I said.
“Return the treasure, you mean?” He sat up straight. “Do that before he’s crowned and Lord Sackmoore takes control again.”
“I don’t want to leave you here in the tower.”
“And I don’t want you getting into any trouble over me. It’s best if you go back downstairs and do what you came here to do, Tess.”
What I came to do? What did he mean by that? Did he still think I’d come to marry his brother? Red light streamed through the window bars now it was truly morning. Again time pressed in and I had no answer. Two gulls flew past, dipping on the sea air.
“I should tell you I’m not in agreement with my father’s plans for me.”