The Black Prince: Part I (20 page)

Her smile returned, just the faintest upturning of her lip. She’d seen Callas eyeing Greta appreciatively. Not Hart, although she hadn’t seen much of Hart and from what she had seen, he’d cooled a bit. Where once he would have been tumbling the serving girls into his lap, one after the other, and them squealing with delight, now he barely seemed to notice their existence.

Only the fire in his eyes betrayed a desire now kept hidden.

She wondered if Hart would marry. She hoped so. He was too good to be alone. For all that he thought himself a monster.

He thought her pregnant, too. Or had. And with that turn in her thoughts, her smile vanished altogether. She watched the flames dance, sweetened with pine cones and cedar. Cedar was used often in winter, as it was an insect repellant.

Caer Addanc was cleaner than her old home had been but still, lice and worse were an ever-present problem. As stale as the air was during winter, a moment’s lapse in vigilance could lead to being overrun. Isla shuddered at the thought.

Hart had always made fun of her for being so fastidious, Hart who now bathed daily and never cracked a smile. She wished he’d been right: that she had been pregnant and was now cradling a baby, or would be soon. She’d happily give up her nights of undisturbed sleep for the throaty, wailing cries of a brand new person. Chubby, moist fingers wrapped around hers and a wrinkled, angry face.

It was only sinking in now, the painful truth that she’d never be that woman.

Never be like the other women at court, their eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep as they competed to out-horrify each other with tales of screaming and vomit. Of course, some women waited years to have children. Some never did. Rumors had begun to circulate that the queen was barren. But at least the queen had hope. Barring her possession of some secret knowledge that Isla did not have, she had every reason to believe that she
could
be with child. Eventually.

Outside the natural order of things, that’s what Tristan had said.

She sighed.

And then started, a moment later, as a hand rested on her shoulder.

She hadn’t sensed him approaching, because he hadn’t wanted her to. She suspected that he liked catching her in unguarded moments like these, not because he wanted to humiliate her but because he craved her unvarnished reactions. His hand was gentle, a steadying touch. His full strength would crush her.

“Darling.” His voice was rustling leaves.

“I decided to wait up.”

He walked around behind her to stop before the couch. Where he stopped, studying the fire. “Has it been difficult on you?”

“Actually, I feel a bit better.”

“I’m pleased.”

And he was. She felt that. She was pleased, too. That he was, and that he was home. She worried about him, when he left. As ridiculous as that was. Theirs was a world of danger, to be sure, but if anyone was equipped to survive it then Tristan was.

Still.

She felt better when he was home. Safer. Not because she feared for herself, too, but because she truly was her other half and without him she felt lost. She supposed that that was because she knew, now, finally, what it was to be complete. Before, when she’d thought herself so capable, she hadn’t known anything but that sense of loss. That void.

Now….

“Asher loves you as a mother,” he commented.

A long moment passed. “I hope so.”

“He does. He…needs a mother.”

Isla agreed.

“We could…adopt another child, if you wished.” He turned to face her. His eyes flickered in the gloom. “No one need know that it was not yours. Provided, of course, that it was a girl.”

A girl, because a boy would threaten Asher’s primacy. Gideon the Conqueror aside, natural children weren’t accepted in the South as they were in the North. A second boy, a boy ostensibly born in wedlock, could become a rallying point for those who found disfavor with the current regime. As Asher almost had.

But for his father’s intervention.

“But…how?”

“It is custom, is it not, for a woman to sometimes recuse herself during her latter months?”

It was in the South. Although, from what Isla could see, not necessarily in the North. Several members of the household, including the chief brewer, were up and about well past a point that would be considered proper in Ewesdale. The chief brewer was in her ninth moon. Still, she nodded.

“And before that point, many women show no sign.”

Isla nodded again, uncertain where this was going.

“There are…other women. Village women. Tribeswomen. Brought to bed of children they do not want. Such women often seek arrangements. No one need know.” He paused. “If a woman should choose to spend her last months apart, in the company of a trusted handmaid, and reappear after the birth…?”

“Someone would know. And tell.”

“Not all women survive childbirth.”

“I don’t….”
I don’t want to kill anybody.
But didn’t she? Hadn’t she all but killed Alice? Wouldn’t she kill for a child of her own?

“A great many deaths occur in this kingdom, on a daily basis, unaided by me.”

There was no reproach in his tone. Her concerns were valid. There might be certain aspects of his life that he chose not to share but there were no true secrets between them. There never had been, from their first meeting. The ring only validated the preexisting desire of her heart. And, she supposed, of his.

“This…would please you?”

“It would please me to please you,” he said.

He sat down beside her, his eyes still on hers.

“I love Asher,” she said. And she did.

“Many women conceive, and bear, multiple children. My understanding is that they love them all equally. Nor is the desire for another indicative of a lack of fulfillment but, I would think, rather the opposite.”

“This is true.” For a demon, Tristan understood his human fellows rather well.

Leaning forward, he caressed her cheek. Gracefully done, with the back of his hand. A practiced gesture that spared her his claws. What would, from another man, be an expression of tenderness. “Do you know why I didn’t kill you?”

“No.”

She swallowed. And then she waited, uncertain. She shouldn’t be startled by his lack of humanity, not by this point, but he still had that almost uncanny power over her. To make her melt. To make her stomach turn. To terrify her. She dared not even swallow as he traced a single finger down the curve of her jaw, and underneath her chin. The lone curved claw pressing into the soft flesh there. Dimpling it.

“Because you saw me as a man.”

“Oh.” The word was barely a whisper.

“And that…was precious to me. Is precious to me.”

A man. A terrifying man, to be sure, but a man nonetheless. She could scarcely think of him as anything else. And he, in turn, had been the first person to see her as something desirable. As a woman, not simply a cheesemonger or scullery maid. Who had wanted
her
, not what she could do. Or, by some lights, should do.

He’d offered her devotion, and all he’d asked was hers in return.

She smiled slightly, her lip trembling just a little.

He leaned forward, his eyes fixed on hers. Black pools of night that seemed to sap the light from the air around them. She felt herself losing herself in those eyes, in that penetrating stare that she’d known from the first wasn’t entirely human.

She tilted her head up as she fell against him, one hand pressing down between her shoulder blades as the other guided her mouth to his. She sighed, half in bliss and half in stupor, giving herself up to him completely.

His lips on hers were cool. Firm. Unhurried. He knew what he wanted and knew, too, that he’d take it. Take what she was all too ready to give. Sliding her hand up, she twisted her fingers in his short hair. A warmth was growing inside her and with it, a need.

She arched her back, opening her mouth more fully to his. He guided her down onto the couch, pinning her with his weight as he transferred his attentions to the hollow underneath her ear, her neck, and then further down as his hand slid up the bodice of her dress.

She sighed. He kissed the swell of her breast. He pinched her nipple cruelly through the fabric and her mouth opened in a silent exclamation. Her skin was on fire, every bit crying out for his touch.

He liked to toy with her, drawing out her agony until he gave her release.

Waiting until she craved it above all else.

Would do anything for it.

His lips, against her flesh, curved into a slight smile.

Easing a finger underneath the low, squared neckline he—

The door banged open. “Your Grace!”

Tristan’s head shot up. To an observer, he might have resembled more wolf than man. A wolf caught hunching over its prey, delighting in the warm innards and now on alert toward aggressors who might attempt to poach its meal.

His eyes flashed.

Isla wanted to sit up but she couldn’t move.

The guard who’d barged in on them, at first so eager, realizing what he was seeing, sputtered to a halt.

“Yes?” The word was a sibilant hiss, devoid of emotion.

Which seemed to frighten the guard all the more.

“I—”

“I
sla, what are you doing?”

The scandalized tone demanded immediate response.

Isla let Tristan help her up. He seemed unruffled, as usual. Isla, on the other hand, had rarely felt so humiliated in her life. She brushed down the front of her dress, pretending that no one could see her do it. Her breasts were still in her bodice, thank the Gods.

She drew a deep breath. And then, trying to sound as calm as her husband, “hello, Rowena.”

“You’re—you were—”

“Where is Hart?” The words were out before she could stop them. She saw her sister, her stepmother, her
father
, but her her brother was absent.

Rowena stamped her foot. Just like she had when she was a child. “Hart this and Hart that. Who cares about Hart?
I’m
here and let me tell you, I’ve had a horrible winter.
Not
that anyone cares.”

No one said a word.

“I’ve been—forced to card wool and eat gruel,
gruel
, while you’ve been lying in the lap of luxury. Quite literally, I see.” She sniffed.

Tristan, ignoring Rowena, turned toward his bride. “Hart is well.”

She slumped against him. She’d been so worried. How worried, she hadn’t realized until that moment. He’d been so on edge and then he’d just vanished, and then the rumors had started. Of a stirring in the mountains. And then the two riders had appeared, cut and disheveled, and been ushered straight into Tristan’s office.

Of Hart, there had been no word.

She knew that Tristan would have told her, had they brought grim tidings, but—

“This is completely unacceptable!”

“A woman has certain…duties toward her husband.” The earl coughed.

“Rowena received a marriage proposal over the winter.” Apple sounded smug.

As though they were things to be collected. “Why didn’t she accept it?”

“Rudolph will…explain those duties to you, after you’re married.”

Isla burst out laughing.

She couldn’t help herself. It was all just so horrible. And just when the wound was finally starting to scab over. Or so she’d thought. Now the pain was back again in a single, sickening rush. As though the intervening months had never occurred; as though her time apart from her so-called
family
had meant nothing. The family who’d used and abused her and whom, for all that, she’d tried so hard to please.

“As for your precious
Hart
,” Rowena continued, as though nothing had happened, “he brought us here, to the gates, and then just left.
Left
.” She sniffed.

She was here, and alive, and indeed looked well to Isla. But still she was complaining. That was Rowena in a nutshell. Isla studied her. Well. Even a little fatter than she’d been at the wedding. The gruel couldn’t have disagreed with her that much.

“I demand to go home at once.” Rowena appeared to be addressing no one in particular, merely stating her wishes to the universe.

“Why aren’t you home?”

“Just—just
look
at me!”

She looked like a harridan. And bloated. There were twigs in her hair. But Isla said nothing.

“Rudolph will never want me now.”

“Then he isn’t much of a betrothed.”

Whatever girlish charm her sister had possessed had been burned off in the winter fires. Standing before her now, Rowena could clearly no longer summon the mask that had protected her for so long. She could pass for Apple’s age, and older. Hard lines had begun to form around her mouth. Lines that deepened when her eyes narrowed.

“Sit,” Isla said, surprising herself. “Rest. I’ll call for refreshments.”

After a moment, Rowena did. Apple joined her, while the earl went to stand near the fire. He was still uneasy around his daughter, the daughter he’d abandoned to Father Justin. He’d expected her to die; Isla knew that now. And yet, here she still was.

Undoubtedly he was trying to decipher the balance of power between them. Whether now, as she was still alive, she could be called upon for favors. Or whether she would, realizing that he was no further use to her in his current state, attempt to do her harm.