A murmur went through the crowd; a few titters. The Prince was smiling, a cool little smile, and she suddenly hated him so much that it was as if she were back in her vision, on the tower, choking on smoke. Her whole body seemed to burn with hatred for his arrogance, his contempt. For the fact that he clearly saw her as a joke, a plaything.
And she hated that because he was beautiful he was loved and forgiven, no matter what he did. He would always be wanted. The whole world wanted him. She could feel a violent trembling in her hands, utterly at odds with her healer’s instincts: For the first time since she had been an angry child, she wanted to slap and scratch and claw. To wreck his pretty face, to stop his sideways smirk.
With a gasp, she hurled the black fan across the room. It hit the floor and skidded to the Prince’s feet. “I hope,” she said, her voice shaking with rage, “that you have been recompensed for your lack of entertainment. For, as you say, I am unskilled, and have nothing more of myself to offer.”
She caught a look of surprise as it passed across the Prince’s face, but she was already turning away. Pushing past Charlon Roverge, she strode from the room. Her grandfather had been right. These people were monsters. Let all their ships burn.
“Lin. Lin. Stop.”
It was Prince Conor’s voice. He had followed her, through the winding corridors of the Roverge mansion. She could not believe he had followed her. Perhaps he planned to arrest her, for throwing the black fan? An assault on royalty, they would surely call it.
She whirled to face him. She had fled the main room without knowing where precisely she was going—all she had thought was out, away. Away from the titters, from the people who had seen her dance, from the look on the Prince’s face.
But he had followed. And now he had caught up with her in one of a set of deserted and interconnected drawing rooms that seemed to occupy the front of the mansion, each one decorated in a different color scheme. This one was blue and black, like a bruise. A carcel lamp glowed overhead, its flame striking sparks off his rings, his circlet. He seemed to loom over her, reminding her again how tall he was. Up close she could see his dark hair was in disarray, the black-and-silver kohl around his eyes blurred into luminous shadow. His eyes were a very dark pewter color. He said, in a voice of controlled fury, “What are you doing here, Lin? Why did you come?”
Even through her rage, the question set her back on her heels. “After all that,” she said. “That’s what you want to ask me? You know Mayesh is my grandfather. You know he brought me—”
He waved this away, with a short, sharp jerk of his arm. “You’re a physician,” he ground out. “You healed Kel. You healed me. I have been grateful. But now you come here, like this—”
His gaze dropped to her dress. She felt it like a touch, the fierce drag of his eyes over the neckline of her gown, her collarbones, her throat. She had always thought of contempt and loathing as cold emotions, but now they seemed hot, radiating off him. If she were not so furious, she would have been afraid.
“Oh?” she spat. “You mean I should know my place. Stay in the Sault, not presume to think I might be welcome, or allowed, on the Hill.”
“Don’t you understand?” He caught hold of her. She tensed up immediately, even as his gloved fingers dug into her upper arms. She could tell he was something more than drunk. He had always been unreadable, but now she could see too much in his face. The yearning printed plainly there, the hunger to insult her, to belittle her. “This place,” he hissed. “The Hill—ruins things. Things that are perfect as they are. You were honest. This place has made you a liar.”
“You dare call me a liar?” She could hear the fire in her voice. “The last time I saw you, you made a pretty show about how guilty you felt. How you’d gotten yourself into this situation, how I should pity your bride. I thought you meant I should pity her for the situation you found yourself in, but you meant I should pity her for the way you planned to treat her.”
“Touching,” he said, in a low voice, “that you believe I have plans.”
She reached up and caught at his wrist. Soft velvet, crisp lace, the heat of skin underneath. She said, “Perhaps you have no plan. Perhaps your only goal is to be a selfish bastard who treats his wife-to-be abominably.”
His grip tightened on her. “The commerce in this city is gold, Ashkari girl. But the commerce on the Hill is cruelty and whispers. If the Princess does not learn from me and mine, she will learn it from worse tutors.”
“So you are cruel out of necessity,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm. “No—out of kindness. And what is your excuse for humiliating me?”
“I have no excuse.” He was so close she could breathe the scent that clung to his clothes: a mixture of spice and rosewater. Like loukoum candy. “Only I wanted to see you dance.”
She tipped her head back to look up at him. His lips were stained faintly red with wine. She remembered placing the morphea drops on his tongue, the soft heat of his mouth against her fingers. “Why?”
“To dance is to drop your guard,” he said, and there was a harshness in his voice that made her believe him. He meant what he was saying; in fact, he hated saying it. “I thought I would see you without that wall you have built around yourself, like the walls of the Sault. But you were only further away than ever. All I could see was how little you wanted from me,” he added, and there was a loathing in his voice that was directed entirely at himself. “You have wanted nothing from me since the moment I met you. You are and have everything you need.” He dipped his head; his breath stirred her hair. The scent of wine and flowers. “You do not look at me as if I have any power over you.”
She stared at him wonderingly. How could he think that? Power—he had all of it. Was armored in it. Wore it like his shining rings, like the strength of his body, the gleam of the circlet crown among the dark curls of his hair. “And that makes you hate me?” she whispered.
“I told you to stay away from me,” he said. “From Marivent—I was clear I did not want you there—” He lifted a hand, slowly, almost as if he could not believe what he was doing. He laid it against her cheek, his hand soft but callused at the fingertips. Her hand was still wrapped around his wrist. She could feel his racing pulse. Imagine his heart, frantic as her own, driving his blood. “I did not want you,” he whispered harshly, and kissed her.
He slanted his mouth over hers fiercely, parting her lips with a hard flick of his tongue. She twisted away from him—or meant to. Somehow he had pulled her against him and she clawed at his shoulders, digging her fingertips in. He groaned as she clung to him, almost tearing at the material of his jacket, and it was not simple hatred she felt, it was betrayal. She had liked him, that night he had been whipped. She had been unguarded. And then, tonight, he had been like this.
His right hand was in her hair now, fingers tangled in its thickness. He kissed her and kissed her, as if he could draw breath out of her and into his own lungs. She bit his lower lip hard, tasted blood, salt on her tongue. Arched up against him, into the sharp ache that was suddenly all she wanted.