“I am waking, and I cannot risk sleep again anytime soon. You have a few days yet.”
He seemed pretty damn awake to me on the battlefield, but sure, play word games. “Until?”
The Prince turns to face me, and somehow he's now too close. “There are still experiences I have not been granted, even in what most consider a long life. I fear what may happen when I am other than my whole self will not be to your benefit. I have never been kind, Aerinne, in any of my iterations.”
“I don't understand.”
“I know.” His voice is soft, the hand that cups my face softer still.
I already know it's a lie. I've felt that hand curl into a fist and nearly shatter my jaw but for an experienced warrior’s exquisite control and timing. I suppose I lie too, when I don pretty silk dresses and behave like I'm nothing more than a House ornament.
“They will make a sacrifice of you, as they always have to appease my line.” His hand falls away, expression hardening subtly.
There is something ancient and pained in his gaze; it halts my recoil.
“What will you do then?” I say.
The smile isn't a ghost now but it contains the same pain, framed as an exquisite work of art.
“Better to ask, what will I not do.”
I can't look at him any longer, not without my own answering pain crawling up my throat. I turn away, walking blindly to flowers. A stone bench. Trees.
I see none of it. “Why me?”
“The answer is neither short nor simple, and I find I am not yet willing to expose myself to you in that fashion.”
Hands settle on my shoulders, then slip down to cup my upper arms. He's close enough I feel the rise and fall of his chest and it's as if we've been here before. As if his arms have slid around and held me fast in some other time, other place.
“The fourth,” I say. Or fifth. Or tenth.
“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 three 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.
When was the last time my emotions. . .settled? I still. “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 I am beginning 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.
