He rose to find the king regarding him. “You presume much.”
Refusing to be cowed even by the only man in all of Dormiraa who outranked him, he said simply, “I will not be kept from her.”
“Very well. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
He nodded and left without a backward glance, certain if he looked at Thalia once more, nothing—not the king, not all the Thorn Guard combined—would compel him to leave.
Chapter Fourteen
She could feel pressure on her mouth.
Creasing her brow, Thalia pressed her lips together in an attempt to discover the source. Her lips cracked at the motion, and her tongue was just as dry as she tried to wet them. She couldn’t understand why she was so thirsty. She’d drunk water…. When had she last drunk water?
The pressure lifted, and she heard a voice, one so far away she could not tell who spoke. It seemed she should know that this voice was beloved to her even as it brought anger and disappointment. It was a struggle to open her eyes, and when she did, all was blurry and indistinct. The light hurt, so she closed them, moaning at the pain consuming every part of her. She shifted, and her hand hit something hard. Glass?
She heard the voice again, joined by another voice, and then another. They sounded excited.
Darkness beckoned, and she succumbed gratefully, leaving the mystery of the excited, familiar voices for another time.
***
More voices, and this time she knew who they were. Her father. Stahg. And another.
Thalia opened her eyes. Objects around her became distinct, taking on the shape of furniture, people. If she’d been in a coffin, she was no longer. Instead, she lay in the bed she’d had all her life, the Spindlerswood monstrosity she’d always disliked.
A few paces away, her father argued with a woman in healer’s robes. Thalia had never seen such emotion from him before. Voice cold, expression stony, he demanded the healer discover a way to make his daughter wake again.
Was she not already awake?
Stahg stood silent beside her father, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. He looked…ravaged. Eyes bleak, he watched the exchange between her father and the healer, but she could tell his attention was elsewhere.
A terrible suspicion rose in her. Where was Bharia?
She struggled to rise, but it felt as if a hundred thousand weights were upon her, and she moaned, a weak, pitiful sound as her arms collapsed beneath her again and again and again.
Someone took her hand, whispering words of comfort as his thumb stroked her flesh soothingly. Distressed beyond reason, she grabbed his care like a lifeline and slowly anxiety faded until she could raise her gaze and see clearly.
Sebastian sat beside her, his hand cradling hers.
Emotion filled her, intense and blinding, and it pulled her every which way until she didn’t know if it was love or anger or disappointment. He looked beautiful as he always did, but he had black circles under his eyes while deep lines bracketed his mouth and scored his forehead, lines that cleared as a quiet joy lit his face.
“Thalia’s awake,” he said softly.
Her father stopped his argument. Abandoning the healer, he strode to the bed, looking as if he hardly dared to believe. “Thalia?”
“Fath—” Her voice broke. Licking her too-dry lips, she tried again. “Father.”
Her father made a choking noise, and then she was enveloped in his arms. Astounded, she patted his arm weakly as she tried to make sense of his behavior. The last time he’d embraced her…. She couldn’t remember the last time he had embraced her.
Pulling back, he wiped at his eyes. Was he weeping? “You’re awake.”
“Yes.” Belatedly, she realized she was still patting his arm and returned her hand to her side. “I’ve been asleep?”
Her father nodded, silvery tracks winding down his cheeks. “Seven months now.”
“Seven months?” Her birthday. She’d missed her birthday. Then, she remembered. The woman. The explosion. Darkness. How many had been hurt? What had—? That must be what happened.
She looked to her silent guardian. “Stahg. How is Bharia?”
The ghost of a smile lightened his stern visage. “Recovering slowly. She would be here if she could, Thalia.”
Her father stiffened. “Address your princess correctly, guardian.”
“No.” Her father turned to her in surprise, and even she was surprised at the abruptness of her denial. “Stahg may continue to use my name, as may Bharia.”
“This is not correct.”
“I don’t care if it’s correct.” Refusing to quake under her father’s scrutiny as she had a hundred times before, she lifted her chin. “I only care that my guardians, the ones who have been with me these seven years past, continue to use my name.”
Her father regarded her strangely for the longest time. It must seem strange to him. She had not before stood her ground in such a direct manner. Eventually, he nodded his agreement, and, abruptly, exhaustion came upon her. Collapsing back on the bed, she struggled to keep her eyes open.
“You will all leave,” she heard her father say, followed by a quiet murmur in return. Sebastian?
A kind of panic forced her still. She didn’t want to speak with him, not now, maybe when she was stronger, maybe when….
Darkness beckoned once more, and she sank into it.
***
There were no voices this time Thalia woke. All was silent but for the ticking of a clock. Night shrouded the room, the only lights a flickering lamp by her bedside and the moon shining through the window.
Staring at the gossamer canopy over her bed, she knew Sebastian sat beside her as he had every time she woke. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you to wake.”
At the sound of his voice, she closed her eyes. The well-remembered timbre was a shiver against her skin, and the slight crack of disuse spoke of time silent by her side. Swallowing, she forced herself to remember her anger. “I’ve woken. You can go.”
“I can’t. I can’t leave you again.” Cloth rustled as he shifted. “I was going to wait,” he said, almost to himself.
There was no need for him to say anything at all. Hands shaking, she pushed them under herself even as her stomach churned. “Then wait.”
“This isn’t the right time.” Exhaling, he stared at his hands. “You’re still ill.”
“Then don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t. Sebastian….”
“Thalia.” His voice was so gentle. “Thalia, I love you.”
Her gaze snapped to his, and time stopped. It just…stopped. He looked at her, his expression gentle, and a light in his eyes she’d never before seen.
“You love me?” She laughed, and she could hear wildness edging the sound. “A fine jape, that.”
“It’s not a jape. I love you.”
“You can’t love me.”
“I know how I feel, Thalia,” he said dangerously.
That tone. That was the tone. The one that meant don’t push, don’t ask, because I won’t tell, I won’t ever tell. Always, always, he’d hide a part of himself from her, and she’d never know him. Never.
“Do you? Do you, really?” Her heart hurt as if it were breaking into a hundred thousand pieces. “How can you love me when all you do is lie?”
He blinked. “What?”
“You lie, Sebastian. You lie and you lie and you lie. How can I trust anything you say?”
He paled. “I don’t—”
“You do! You do lie! You’re doing it right now! You lie to get what you want, and you lie to hide who you are.” Emotion rioted inside her, a push and pull she wanted stopped, gods, how she wanted it to stop. “You lie with your clothes and with your jokes and your false face. You pretend to be foppish and frivolous and vain, but you’re more than those things. You’re…capable. You’re so capable, and you won’t let people see it.”
“Capable of what?” he said bitterly. “Violence? I left such things behind an
age ago.”
“But you haven’t, and you never will. You carry that part with you. You carry the boy you were with you.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “He has nothing to do with us, Thalia. Nothing to do with you and me.”
“He has everything to do with you and me.” She felt wild. Did she look wild? Shaking, she dug her hands into the bedding. “You won’t admit who you are, the boy you were. I don’t want the tailor to love me, this man you’ve created. I want the boy who grew in Dyerston and the man who remade himself. I want him.”
His throat worked. “You ask too much.”
“Too much?” She laughed, only a moment from tears. “How is that too much? I want you. Just you.”
“It’s not. I can’t…. I don’t….” He exhaled slowly. “I can’t.”
Pulse a frantic beat, she shook her head and shook it and shook it. “You’ll always hold that piece of yourself from me. You’ll always hide and lie, and I won’t ever know you. I don’t want a man who will only give me pieces of himself.”
“Thalia, I can’t. You don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand?” Hysteria forced her voice to a higher register. “Of course I don’t understand! You won’t talk to me! I had to force you to tell me what was wrong after the docks, and then you shut yourself away and abandoned me the first moment you could.” Chest tight, she couldn’t stop the roil of emotion. “I just want you to leave, Sebastian. Just go away, and leave me alone.”
“Thalia—”
“Get out,” she screamed. “Get out, get out, get out!”
The door crashed open and in stormed Stahg, his great sword drawn. Sebastian pushed back from her bed, his expression a moment from devastation. She didn’t care for his devastation, didn’t care what he felt at all. She just wanted him gone. Gone, gone, gone.
Bedclothes clenched in her hands, every muscle tense, she watched as Stahg spoke with Sebastian, as he convinced him to leave. She watched as the door closed behind them both, and she watched as the world fell apart about her. She curled up in a ball and let the storm take her.
Chapter Fifteen
The leaves had turned a hundred shades of brown, though they stubbornly clung to the branches of the trees, and a chill rode the breeze, lifting Thalia’s hair and heralding the approach of winter. The gray of the sky put her in mind of another kind of gray, one found warring with blue, but she refused to think on him.
Pulling her cloak tighter, she struggled through her next step. It annoyed her she couldn’t walk the gardens she’d grown up in any faster than this, that she struggled to breathe with each step she took. She’d been awake a month, and though the healers told her she was recovering with pleasing speed, she was frustrated with this slow recovery. It didn’t help she couldn’t go anywhere alone.
Five paces behind her, Stahg followed, keeping a watchful eye. She had but one guardian, Bharia recovering slower than Thalia and apparently just as annoyed by it. However, when Stahg told tales of Bharia’s healing, his eyes lit with warmth and humor and, by all that was holy, love. It seemed while she slept, her guards had spoken of their feelings. She was happy for them. Nay, joyous.
Rubbing at her dry eyes, she struggled through another step.
Her father had been to see her most every day. The first time, she’d been at a loss of what to say and even more so when he’d sat by her side and carefully drawn her into a hug. Cheek against her father’s shoulder, she’d had no notion how to react. She couldn’t remember ever receiving an embrace from him, apart from when she’d awoken. When he’d pulled back, and she’d seen the sheen to his eyes, she’d been even more confused. Then all the fear and worry and loneliness of the past seven years, of her whole life, had crashed over her, and she’d buried herself in his embrace, great shudders wracking her as he’d awkwardly tried to soothe her.
Every day since, her father had sat with her, telling her of the realm, of what she’d missed. He’d told her of his life since she’d left, how he’d been bored through more than one official event, how he’d learned of her kidnapping soon after she’d left Queenstor and had been terrified for her. She’d listened to his stories and told her own, the strangeness of sharing with her father fading into something almost familiar.
Her father had told tales of Sebastian, too, mostly of his Houses and their showings. The tailor hadn’t come to court, and her father had not seen him for private audience in over a month.
It had been a month since she’d screamed at him.
She stared as the breeze bent the branch of the tree before her. As she’d done every day since he’d left, she wondered if she’d overreacted. She’d been tired and hurt and ill, and he’d been saying half of what she’d wanted to hear. He hadn’t given her truth, and she needed that. She needed one person in all the world she could share herself with and who would share himself with her. Just one. She wanted Sebastian, wanted him with a fierceness that stunned her, but she wanted truth, too.
Wiping at her face, she cursed her weakness and forced him from her thoughts. She had greater concerns, namely growing well, perhaps having five minutes to herself.
Turning, she beckoned Stahg near. The guardian came silently, his face impassive as always.
Painting a smile on her face, she pushed a strand of hair from her face. “Stahg, I would like to be alone for a time. Can I tempt you to visit with Bharia for an hour or two?”
Stahg crossed his arms before his massive chest, the sword at his side glinting dully in the autumn light. “I’m not to leave you alone, Princess.”
“I’m in the palace gardens. What harm can befall me?”
“And what harm could befall you at a ball held in your father’s palace?” He set his jaw. “I will not leave you, and Bharia would not welcome me if I did so to see her.”
“I need some time alone, Stahg. Please.” At the last, her voice cracked, and she cursed herself for showing her weakness.
Stahg’s expression softened, and he studied her for a long moment. “Ten minutes, Thalia. I will leave you for ten minutes and ten minutes only. Use them well.” He bowed, and then she was alone.
Exhaling, she wrapped her arms about herself. With Stahg gone and granted the solitude she craved, she didn’t know what to do. She could walk the gardens, as she had a hundred times before. She could search her thoughts, her feelings, but that way led to pain and confusion. Was it so much to ask for a moment of peace, a moment where she could simply sit in this garden of her childhood, feel the breeze on her face, feel it tugging at her hair and think of nothing at all? She wanted to be happy. She wanted to be well. That wasn’t so much to ask, was it?
“Thalia.”
Every part of her tensed. It couldn’t…. It couldn’t be.
Slowly, she turned, and he was there.
Sebastian.
A host of emotions filled her, joy and anger and love and fury, and a hundred others she didn’t care to name. He stood in the palace gardens as if he belonged, his feet planted wide and his head bare. The breeze picked at the short strands of his blond hair, and his pale face held dark circles beneath his eyes, as if his nights had been as sleepless as hers.
Thoughts a whirl, her pulse began a thunder in her ears, and she wanted to scream, to yell, to ask him why. Why couldn’t he love her enough to share himself with her?
To distract from the emotions tearing at her, she ran her gaze over him and his peculiar garb. He didn’t look like himself. He looked as he did when they were aboard the ship, his hair uncovered by wig and his face bare of cosmetics. His clothes were simple, made of homespun fabric, and he stood unpolished and undisguised, the violence and strength hidden by his exquisite garments on full display.
And still so beautiful he made her eyes hurt. Recovering her voice, she managed, “What are you doing here?”
His strong jaw clenched. “I wished to see you.”
“And your wishes must be granted?” Pulse pounding, she forced a laugh at his appalling arrogance. “
You forget yourself, Tailor.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he bowed his head deferentially. “Princess Thalia, I wish to see you. Will you allow it?”
She didn’t want to. She wanted to send him from her, far away, make him hurt as she hurt. Pulse a thunder in her ears, she inclined her head as a princess would. “Speak, Tailor, and unburden yourself. Then leave.”
His throat worked. “Thalia, I—” Closing his eyes briefly, he started again. “Thalia. I should like to tell you of my life.”
Her breath caught, and her knees buckled. Leaping forward, he caught her before she fell, his strong arms around her, beloved and well-remembered. Carrying her to a stone bench, he sat her carefully upon it, his hand gentle as he smoothed her hair from her cheek. “Are you well?”
Pressing her hand between her breasts, she counted the frantic beats of her heart. “Yes. I-I think so.”
His fingers brushed her forehead, her cheek. “Are you certain?”
Turning into his touch, she closed her eyes. His touch was warm and gentle, and she’d missed him so much. “Yes.”
His fingers traced her jaw. “I’m sorry, Thalia.”
“For what?”
“For what I did when you woke.”
Her eyes snapped open. Memory brought with it reality, and she pulled from him, berating herself for forgetting so easily.
His hand fell to his lap. “I shouldn’t have said what I said so soon after you woke. I don’t know what I thought would happen. You were still recovering, and I forced a conversation that should have waited.”
The weeks of doubt and second-guessing crashed over her. “No, I overreacted. I shouldn’t have—”
He shook his head. “I was at fault, Thalia, and I am sorry. So damn sorry. I never meant to cause you pain.”
Folding her hands in her lap, she nodded.
An awkward silence rose. She could feel his gaze upon her, but she kept her eyes downcast, her laced fingers gripped tight, and her mind carefully blank. She didn’t know what to say, how to feel. Stomach a mass of knots, she tried for even breaths though her heart still beat loud in her head.
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