Ally of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  “No. I wouldn’t give up the past two weeks with you for anything. I don’t care if that makes me selfish.”

  He spoke with such conviction it sent a shiver through her. “Sebastian—”

  “It’s all right. I know what you’re going to say.” He half-turned toward her, leaving his face in shadow. “I just wish I knew what to do about Gizane.”

  “We’ll think of something.” Fiona’s eye fell on the little sack resting on the mantel. She picked it up and shook it, listening to the clack of ceramic tiles striking each other. How strange that she’d carried such a valuable relic for so many miles without knowing its importance. She’d have thought something like that would be more obviously important. Well, it was to the Veriboldans. She was just the wrong nationality to notice.

  “And then there’s that,” Sebastian said, pointing at the bag. “What the hell are we supposed to do with it?”

  “We have to return it if we don’t want to see Veribold fall into chaos. As snooty as Veriboldan landholders can be, there are so many ordinary people who will suffer even more if that happens.”

  “Return it without getting ourselves executed. It seems impossible.”

  “We have most of a week to figure out how to do it.” Return the Stones, see Gizane neutralized, all without implicating themselves—it did seem impossible. Fiona’s hand closed over the bag more tightly. If she could return the Stones, surely that would make things right between her and the Temple. She set the bag back on the mantel. It was as safe a place as any. “I’m…ready to sleep, if that’s all right.”

  “Of course.” Sebastian crossed the room to open the bedroom door. “I’ll sleep on the sofa. We’ll have to lock the door so no servant comes in and finds me there. That would spread the kind of gossip we want to avoid.”

  The thought left her feeling empty again. She dismissed it and said, “I’m sorry to evict you from your bed.”

  “I don’t mind. It’s just for the one night, after all.” Sebastian smiled. “I’m sorry I involved you in my family’s politics.”

  She couldn’t think of anything to say to that. I don’t mind was a lie; she minded very much the Queen’s high-handed co-opting of them. I don’t want to leave you would send entirely the wrong message. I want to serve my country was facile and stupid, especially since she wasn’t sure she was that committed to her country. So she smiled, then wished she hadn’t, because his cheerful expression turned more serious, his smile reflective. “Why can’t we leave in the morning? I’d have thought the Queen would want us out of here at the crack of dawn.”

  His smile faded, and she felt as if she’d kicked him. “I doubt we can get started so quickly,” he said. “We’ll travel in somewhat more grandeur than we did the last time, and that takes time to get moving. And you’ll need a wardrobe. But we shouldn’t oversleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day, even if we don’t travel.”

  “I see,” Fiona said. “Well…good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  She went through the bedroom into the dressing room and wearily stripped off her gown, then looked around for a place to put it. Both wardrobes were packed full of Sebastian’s clothes, and she took a moment to examine them. She’d never seen clothing this elegant and varied. Everything was of the highest quality, even the tunics and hose in the bottom drawer of one of the dressers. There were court costumes and riding gear and everyday clothing, enough that Sebastian could wear a different outfit every day for a month and never run out of options. She fingered the fine velvet of a cloak and sighed. This wasn’t her world. She would never belong, no matter what Sebastian thought. The reactions of his family certainly proved that.

  25

  She put on her nightdress and returned to the bedroom. Sebastian had shut the door on her, and it was only her imagination that it glowed with her awareness of his presence beyond it. They had slept near each other the whole trip, had even shared a room at one of the tiny inns, and yet being in his own bedroom felt intimate as none of that had.

  She turned down the coverlet and climbed into the bed. It had two soft mattresses into which she immediately sank. It felt like drowning. She struggled upright and arranged the pillows to support her, then lay back and closed her eyes. Sebastian’s bed. She drifted off to sleep trying not to wish he was in it with her.

  Snow sifted down from the sky, covering the cobbles with white, slick flakes. Fiona’s steps left no trace in the drifting snow. Houses rose above her on both sides of the street, tall enough to extend into the sky past the limits of her vision. She was alone on the street, and the houses were dark, without the gleam of candle or lantern that might indicate inhabitants.

  At the end of the street, a much shorter house squatted, its windows blank and its door hanging ajar. It drew Fiona toward it as if she were a fish on a line, reeled in by an invisible fisherman. Urgency struck her, and she ran, faster than she’d believed she could. She had to reach the door before something bad happened. She had no idea what the bad thing might be, but her heart ached with the need to stop it.

  She slammed open the door. It was the farmhouse she and Sebastian had pretended to hide in, with its single hall running the length of the house and doors opening off it. At the far end of the hall stood a man, his face in shadow. Fiona ran, desperately reaching for him. He held out a hand, fingers outstretched, and just before the tips of her fingers brushed his, fire blossomed along his hand, running up his arm like a burning stream flowing backward.

  She cried out, but could hear nothing, not her voice, not the sound of the flames. Fire spread across the man’s body, up his chest toward his face. The stranger’s visage blurred, became her father’s. His eyes met hers, and his mouth moved, once more without sound. She screamed, grabbed his burning wrist, and tried to turn her power outward on him as she had done a hundred times before—

  She hit the hard floor, cracking her elbow painfully against the floorboards, waking out of her dream to a stunned incomprehension. She inhaled sharply and smelled smoke. Scrambling to her feet, she flung herself at the bed and whipped the coverlet off to smother the incipient blaze. Not too late. She pounded the smoldering sheets with the coverlet bunched in her fists, willing the fire to go out, though it wasn’t within her magical power to make it do so. The memory of her dream clung to her like cobwebs, insubstantial but persistent. It wasn’t real. None of it was real. She flung the ruined coverlet aside and ran her fingers across the sheets. Her fire had scorched a hole the size of her outstretched palm into the fine satin. That would take some explaining in the morning.

  Her legs suddenly nerveless, she sank to the floor and pressed her face into the side of the mattresses. The dull ache at the sight of her father’s face blossomed into a sharp, terrible pain, and she sobbed, howled out her grief and misery into the uncaring mattresses. She’d been so careful, hadn’t drunk or let herself become exhausted or any of the dozen other things that might trigger an…accident, but she’d forgotten her ritual and it had happened anyway. She was a danger to everyone around her, though not, curse heaven, a danger to herself.

  Someone knocked on the door. “Fiona? Are you all right?”

  Sebastian. How much noise had she made? “I’m fine,” she managed, but it sounded weak and tearful, not at all the voice of someone who was fine.

  After a moment, the door eased open. “I heard you fall,” Sebastian said, “and…this room smells of smoke. Did something catch fire?”

  She looked up at him. The fire in the fireplace had burned low, casting his features into shadow. “It was an accident,” she said. It was so inadequate an explanation that she began to cry again and had to once more muffle her sobs in the mattress.

  Footsteps sounded on the bare floorboards, and then arms went around her as Sebastian drew her close to him. “I didn’t understand,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  She let him hold her as she cried, unable to speak, not caring that it was everything she’d told herself was impossible. He smelled goo
d, like the pine forests surrounding Kingsport, he was warm and solid and held her without speaking, without demanding anything of her, and that made her cry harder. For a moment, she indulged herself in the fantasy that they really were married, that she had a right to take comfort in his arms. Suppose—but that was a fool’s game, and she was through being a fool.

  When her sobs died down to shuddering breaths, she shifted her weight, but Sebastian didn’t take the hint to release her. “What happened?” he said, his whisper almost inaudible. The room was so quiet it felt wrong to disturb that with speech.

  Fiona shuddered once more. “There’s a dream I have,” she said quietly. “If I don’t wake myself before…anyway, I use my magic in my sleep. It doesn’t happen often. It’s been over a year since the last time.”

  “I’m not afraid of you, Fiona.”

  It wasn’t what she’d expected from him. “Maybe you should be. I’m dangerous.”

  “Not consciously. I don’t believe you’ve hurt anyone in your life.”

  She said nothing, but even she could tell it was the kind of silence that was filled with words she didn’t dare say. Sebastian’s breath stirred the hair over her forehead. “You did hurt someone,” he said.

  “No. I never have. But I couldn’t save him.”

  “Who?”

  The darkness was lowering her reserve again, as it had when they stood in the dining hall of the Irantzen Temple and he’d asked her to share her secrets. “There was a house fire. I didn’t start it, I wasn’t even in the house when it happened, but my father…he was trapped, and they pulled him out, but it was too late. It took him three days to die.” She drew in another shuddering breath. “I know I couldn’t have extinguished the fire because my magic doesn’t work that way. But I could have walked into the fire and rescued him before he was so badly hurt, and I didn’t because I was terrified of what people would do if they saw me walk out unscathed. Things would have been so different if I’d had the courage to act.”

  Sebastian shifted, sitting with his back to the bed. “How old were you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “So not even an adult. Fiona, you can’t blame yourself for being afraid. They would likely have killed you even if you’d saved the lives of a dozen orphan children and their puppies. Would your father have blamed you?”

  “He never did.” She remembered her vision, how her father hadn’t spoken words of recrimination. “I suppose even unconsciously I don’t believe he would. But—”

  “It was a horrible tragedy for which you are not to blame.”

  “You don’t know that.” It sounded stupid, but she resented him for being so certain, as if that dismissed her pain and all her fears.

  “Of course I do. You just told me as much.” He stroked her hair, and reflexively she leaned into his touch. “I can’t begin to imagine how hard your magic makes your life, but I am in awe of how you face the world so fearlessly. Don’t let yourself be burdened by this guilt. You don’t deserve that.”

  She’d been looking at her hands, clenched in her lap, but now she turned to meet his eyes. In the dimness, they were dark smudges, unreadable. He smiled at her, the faintest curve of his lips, and it made her heart turn over in her chest. She searched for something to say, anything that might tell him what it meant to her to have his good opinion, but came up blank.

  Sebastian’s smile faded. Slowly, giving her plenty of time to turn away, he lowered his head and kissed her.

  She hadn’t expected the first kiss back in Haizea, which had been hard and desperate and over almost before it began. This time, his lips on hers were gentle, questioning, promising more if it was what she wanted. Without hesitating, she put her arms around his neck and returned his kiss, not caring about what message it might send. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him, kissing her with a fierce joy that made her heart ache with longing. They explored each other’s lips in the near-darkness, touching each other tentatively, fingers caressing skin until Fiona thought his hands might start her body burning and not the other way around.

  The thought of fire, the smell of char that lingered in the air, brought her to her senses. Carefully she withdrew from him, resting her head on his shoulder so he wouldn’t feel rejected. What had she been thinking? She hadn’t been thinking at all, that was the problem. She had no right to encourage that level of intimacy when she couldn’t make a life with him. She was a fool, and she needed to control herself.

  Sebastian shifted position to draw her closer into his embrace. “I didn’t plan that,” he said, “but I’m not sorry.”

  Fiona couldn’t think of anything to say. She couldn’t let him believe their love—and she did love him—was that simple, but rejecting him outright would hurt them both terribly. They sat together in the quiet darkness, Fiona staring at the fire and wishing she didn’t need to lay hands on it to make it blaze brighter. Despite Sebastian’s arms around her, she felt a chill that came from deep within her. She shivered. Sebastian’s arms tightened around her. “Are you cold?” he said.

  “I need to stir the fire,” she said, gratefully seizing on an opportunity to move away from the forbidden comfort of his embrace. She knelt by the fireplace, shifting the logs and poking at the embers to make them glow. Heat bathed her face and arms, and she closed her eyes and sighed with pleasure.

  She returned to Sebastian’s side and knelt next to him. He raised his hand as if to put his arm around her again, but lowered it without touching her. “You regret it,” he said. His face lit by the growing flames was still and expressionless, and it made her want to cry again.

  “It’s not that simple,” she said.

  “It is that simple. I love you, Fiona. And I think you’re not entirely indifferent to me.”

  He said it with such straightforward certainty she shivered again. “Does it matter?” she said.

  “Of course it matters. When a man tells a woman he loves her, he likes to know he’s not the only one feeling that way.”

  She could lie to him, tell him she was carried away by her emotions and the terror of her nightmare, but she was so tired of lying to people who deserved better. “I mean,” she said, struggling to keep more tears out of her voice, “what we feel doesn’t matter if there’s no way for us to be together.”

  Sebastian swore and went to his knees, clasping her hand in both of his. “You’d let fear come between us? Fiona, I keep telling you, I don’t care that you’re not wealthy or noble. Look—the Norths were commoners, worse than commoners, only four generations ago. You can be anything you want to be. If it doesn’t matter to me, what do you care what other people think?”

  She removed her hand from his and drew a deep breath. “You were at supper,” she said. “You saw how your family behaved. It’s not going to be any different with the rest of the court and all your social circle. I don’t want a life in which I’m constantly ridiculed or patronized or snubbed. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you, but you’re not the one who’d face that.”

  “No one would dare behave that way to you.”

  “Of course they would. Not in your presence. But you can’t fight all my battles for me.”

  Sebastian sat back on his heels, fists clenched on his thighs. “And my love’s not enough to overcome that.”

  It was a low blow, and Fiona didn’t know how to respond. She sat silently wishing he would leave and let her return to her stinking bed and cry herself to sleep.

  Finally, Sebastian rose. “You’re right that we come from different worlds,” he said. “Maybe you’re also right that it’s impossible we could ever overcome that. But I never dreamed I’d meet someone I’d love the way I love you. Every day we’re together fills me with joy. There’s no way I’m letting that go just because it seems impossible. And I’m not giving up on proving you wrong.”

  Fiona stared up at him, her mouth hanging open in astonishment. Sebastian turned and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him. She blinked away the d
ryness in her eyes and realized she had the ruined coverlet clutched in her hand. She let it go and flexed her hand to return feeling to it. For a moment, she’d felt the rightness of his position. So what if she knew nothing about being noble? She could learn their society’s rules. And should she really throw away love just because she was afraid?

  She almost went to him. She was at the door, had her hand on the knob, before common sense asserted itself. If she went to him now, their next conversation would almost certainly end with the two of them naked in his bed.

  She retreated to the bed and lay on it with her face turned away from the charred sheet. All right. So it was possible. But was it what she wanted? She knew very well how hard it was to make a marriage work when you shared a background. If she married Sebastian—neither of them had said the word, but she knew he wanted nothing less than a lifetime’s promise—how long would it be before he grew impatient with her lack of social graces, or she got fed up with being treated poorly by her newfound peers?

  She squeezed her eyes tight shut against a vision of herself blundering through a ballroom in a gown whose train she kept tripping over. She was jumping to conclusions, maybe not totally unwarranted ones, but who was to say that vision of the future was the only possible one? Sebastian wasn’t the type to lose patience with her just because she didn’t understand his world. Maybe he was right, and she’d make a place for herself at court. And when she thought about the two of them, just themselves without any of the trappings of their respective societies, it was with a sense of wonder that she’d found love again after so many years of being trapped by her youthful bad decision. Being married to Sebastian would be wonderful. It was being married to Prince Sebastian North that had her worried.

  She groaned and punched her pillow a few times, then fell back onto it and squeezed her eyes shut so tightly she saw yellow sparks. How ironic, that Sebastian was the one who’d shown her what she wanted after all those months of aimless drifting. She’d had ten years of marriage to the wrong man, and now what she wanted was someone she didn’t have to hide from, someone she could truly share a life with. If Sebastian wasn’t a Prince, he would be that man.