The Beholder

by Anna Bright

  I’d thought at first that he must be the prince’s messenger, come to carry back my reply. I’d nearly slammed the door in his face, surprised to find him stretched against its frame—exhausted but perfect, eyes ringed like mine with sleeplessness. “I want to show you something,” Bear had said, nudging the door open again, running a hand through his shaggy hair.

  What could I have said but yes?

  I’d sat on my bed, chewing my pencil, and scribbled a note to Bertilak, saying I didn’t feel well and asking if we could postpone our lunch.

  Daddy and Godmother were counting on me to come home as quick as I could. My stepmother and the Council had ordered me to return with a fiancé, and the little thatch of tick marks in the back of my book told me that I had only two days left in England. That fewer and fewer days stood between me and the threat of the Imperiya.

  Every step I took toward Bear was a step off the path toward duty. Toward my rightful role. Toward Daddy and Godmother and home.

  I’d sealed the note and sent it before I could change my mind.

  “We’re only going about a half a mile as the crow flies.” Bear pushed open the back gate, and it gave with a long creak. The woods behind the castle were dark beneath the somber sky. “But the hills are rough, so it’s a bit further than that, really.”

  I eyed the gathering clouds uncertainly as I picked my way down the ridge, over fallen logs and scrub. The exposed skin on my arms and collarbone prickled under a cold wind. “Is it about to rain?”

  Bear smirked. “This is England. It’s always about to rain.”

  “It’s been mostly clear since we arrived— Oof.” My feet slipped over a stone slick with the morning dew. Bear reached out, bracing me.

  “Well, then.” He grinned, charming but still dangerous, palms dawdling over my arms even once my feet were steady. “I guess you brought the sunshine.”

  We came at last to a tall stone building nestled between damp green hills, its gray slate roof covered in moss, its leaded windows glowing with warm light. Vast oaks and thick tangles of willows and wildflowers crowded around its sides, trembling in the wind.

  “Where are we?”

  Bear took me by the elbow. The hair on my arms rose at his touch, at his private smile.

  You are making a mistake.

  “Come inside and see.”

  An old grandfather clock marked the time with pensive ticks in the dark-paneled foyer, dimly lit and otherwise empty. The sound followed us through a narrow corridor and into an adjoining room. When my eyes adjusted to the weak lamplight and the gray glow of the sky outside, I gasped aloud.

  Bear had finally brought me to the library.

  Thousands of leather- and canvas-bound books lined hundreds of chestnut shelves, like carved jewelry boxes stuffed with treasure. Rugs covered the walnut floor beneath my feet. The only sounds were the faint wooden tick-tick-tick of the grandfather clock and the whispery rattle of branches on the windows and the hum of my nerves.

  I ran my hands over the nearest spines—Parmenides, Plato, Pythagoras—and silently multiplied the shelves, the corridors, the spiral staircase just visible through a half-open door.

  For a moment, I felt the thousand books stacked quietly around us and imagined Bear had heaped them up just for me, like children in a fort of blankets and cushions. “Are we the only ones here?”

  “No.” Bear shambled forward to peer at another shelf—Aquinas, Athenagoras of Athens, Augustine. His slouched spine and hands in his pockets said nonchalant, but the smug set of his mouth said very pleased with myself. “Some of the staff are in the third-floor office.”

  I paled, thinking of the lie I’d told Bertilak.

  “Don’t worry,” Bear said quietly, smiling. “They won’t even know we’re here. They tend to keep quite busy.”

  “So I can just . . . ?” I glanced around, disbelieving.

  He nodded, grinning complacently, totally self-satisfied. “Go explore.”

  I tried to make orderly stacks as I pulled down volumes and thumbed through their pages, telling myself that I would catalog the titles and plead that they be lent to Potomac someday. But I was too excited to be organized. More than once I found myself sprawled between bookcases, two chapters into a story I’d only meant to look at.

  The old grandfather clock had just clanged a warning—two o’clock—when Bear discovered me holding court on the second floor between shelves of fairy tales and folklore. Rain clinked against the windowpanes as he surveyed the towers and cities I’d built of heavy volumes, gold and silver foil gleaming like pieces of jewelry against their deep red and green bindings. “Are you hungry?”

  I bit my lip and let the book fall closed around my index finger. “I’m not ready to leave.”

  “I thought not. Come on.” Bear held out a hand, eyes flickering.

  I let him help me up. He didn’t let go as he led me to the spiral staircase, as we climbed up, up, up the stone steps. Somewhere on the walk, his fingers laced through mine. I swore to myself that the shaking in my limbs was from the cold air whistling through the old tower wall.

  At the top of the stairs, Bear retrieved a key from a chain around his neck and unlocked the door to a small circular room.

  Flames inside a crumbling brick fireplace and lamps misted with ash threw light on mismatched chairs and couches. A rickety old desk was stacked with books and papers, and a half-dozen teetering shelves were so crammed with volumes they looked in danger of collapsing. From its patched wooden ceiling to the hodgepodge of worn rugs spread across the floor, the room had a makeshift sort of coziness, its comfort cobbled together from things cast aside or forgotten.

  His insistent hands drew me over the threshold, floorboards creaking beneath my feet. I watched Bear, careful, careful, questioning.

  “It’s mine,” he said quietly. “Myrddin thought I’d like a place here, and the library staff don’t mind me using the attic.”

  Myrddin thought.

  But why? Why did Myrddin think? Why should the king’s adviser care what would make a no-one boy—a castle guard of no name—happy?

  Unless he wasn’t no one. A spy, certainly. Maybe a nephew or a cousin or a grandson to someone important.

  And if that were so, what kind of betrayal to the king’s adviser was it that he was here, now, with me?

  Unable to hold Bear’s gaze, I swallowed and broke away to pace the room’s perimeter. I’d studied political philosophy, but even I flinched at the stern, dry-looking tomes on law and justice heaped upon the desk.

  “As I said, Constantine and Bertilak studied at Oxford,” Bear said quietly. I whipped around, staring at him. “The prince has got as many degrees as he’s got limbs. Law and philosophy and such. Makes education rather a thing at court.” He smiled.

  The space between us was silent, but only in the way of a concert hall before the music began.

  On a displaced sofa cushion before the fireplace, another book lay abandoned. Not a textbook—a slim thing, with a dark green binding. “Beowulf?” I asked.

  “I just finished it a few days ago.”

  I settled onto the cushion, turning the volume over in my hands. “Old English poetry and legal textbooks. I don’t know what to make of your taste.”

  “Skepticism from the girl with what can only be an encyclopedia on her bedside table?” Bear laughed.

  I flushed at the teasing shape of his mouth.

  “They’re about the same things, really. The rule of law can’t survive where bravery dies.”

  He took a basket of food off the old redbrick mantel, tugged another cushion off the couch, and settled in beside me—close, too close.

  You are making a mistake.

  I knew it was wrong. Infidelity was always wrong. I owed more to Bertilak. To my father, weak and worrisome. To Potomac, which deserved to have someone honest and steady at its steward’s side. And Perrault had warned me: the tsarytsya was always listening.

  But my insides ached at the warm firelig
ht thrown over the curve of Bear’s eyebrows and his long nose and soft lips.

  I had nothing. Months of time had been stolen from me outright, given away to strangers and to courts about whom I knew nothing. But in this moment, I had this: Bear, next to me, and a room full of quiet and firelight.

  He is so very handsome, and we are so very, very unwise.

  “Will you read to me?” My voice cracked.

  I chose a sandwich from the basket and burrowed deeper into the cushion, exhilaration burning bright in my chest as our shoulders and knees brushed.

  “Yes,” Bear said. “I’ll start at the beginning.”

  Sometimes I watched his fingers move over the old pages; sometimes I shut my eyes and listened to his liquid voice rise and fall as rain drummed on the roof outside. Bear didn’t stop reading until the grandfather clock reminded us twice more on the hour that the outside world was waiting.

  “Here.” He passed me the book. “You should have this.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, but already I was thumbing its pages.

  “I’ve already finished it.” He traced a finger over the back of my hand.

  My breath caught, and I grew very still.

  “Read it.” Bear’s eyes were soft. “It’ll make you brave.”

  We collected ourselves in silence and returned to the great front doors, waiting fruitlessly for a break in the rain. “Thank you for bringing me here today.” I hesitated. “My mother would have liked this place. She would have liked you.”

  “Really?” Bear pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around me. He settled it onto my shoulders, tugging it by its front snugly around my waist. I breathed in the smell of its leather, soft and warm and aged with work.

  Bear’s hands pulled me closer as if of their own accord.

  I nodded, swallowing. “Momma and I used to hole up in our library for hours. ‘It’s not what you look like, it’s how you see,’ she used to always say, and she believed someone who didn’t read only ever saw through their own eyes.”

  But my eyes hardly saw the torrent of rain outside the dim foyer, hardly felt the shrieking wind dashing it into our faces as Bear fixed me for the thousandth time with his heady blue gaze.

  “I love your eyes.” He ran a thumb along my hairline, his gentle, precise accent undoing my will. “Myrddin insists our fates are written in omens and dreams, but yours is written in your eyes. Green as England. I knew you’d understand.” He cradled my jaw with one hand. My pulse tore off in a sprint beneath his palm.

  I’d never felt this before. Peter—perfect Peter, with his earnest words and careful fingers and the gap between his teeth that showed when he smiled—had only liked me as a friend. He’d never put his hands on me.

  “Bear—”

  “Blindman’s buff,” he broke in, tone strangled. “Did you know that sometimes the children play so the blind man has to guess who he’s captured by the touch of the person’s face?” I shook my head; his fingers grew more tangled in the hair at the nape of my neck.

  My heart was a burning star, singeing my lungs, setting fire to my nerves.

  Was it my fault, really, that my chest couldn’t hold it?

  I dragged tremulous fingers over Bear’s cheekbone and down the corner of his mouth. His breath caught. “I could guess yours,” I said, voice uneven. “Could you guess mine?”

  Somewhere far off, lightning flashed and split the pewter sky.

  He laid his hand over mine, leaning his flushed cheek against my palm. “I could,” he whispered, “if only I could catch you.”

  My heart stilled. I withdrew my hand, taking one, two, three steps back into the downpour.

  Rain traced my scorched skin, coursed through my hair and down the back of my neck.

  You are making a mistake.

  We were doomed, but I was smiling.

  “Try,” I said, and we were off and running.

  31

  We chased each other, slipping over stones and moss and catching each other around the waist time and again. I won, and he won, and we both lost, and by the time we got back to the castle, Bear and I were drenched and out of breath and laughing like fools. My neck and wrists and fingers burned everywhere he touched them.

  Once inside my room, he tugged his jacket off me and stoked the fire, sending sparks up the chimney. I dragged a chair closer to its flames, teeth chattering as he draped me with dry towels.

  Bear knelt and grasped my shaking hands, caked with mud and wet leaves, warming them with his own.

  “I would have crossed from Potomac to England,” I whispered, “just for today.”

  Guilt pooled in my stomach, sharp and icy. I had not crossed for this. For him. I pushed the truth away.

  I knew I was cold. But with his eyes on me, suddenly, I couldn’t feel it.

  My fingers curled slowly around his.

  A thousand tiny moments.

  Yeses and nos that change the world.

  There would be a price for this betrayal later. I hoped I could afford it.

  And then Bear was kissing me.

  I’d never been kissed before, except for by family or friends; pecks on the nose when I was little, parting kisses scrunched against cheeks. Peter had never come nearer my lips than a friendly hug permitted, but even with him, I’d never imagined anything like this—brilliant, glowing, breathless.

  Kneeling by my chair, Bear’s other hand grasped my shoulder. Unbidden, my free hand found his burning cheek, fingertips winding their way into the dark hair clinging damply to his temple. He pulled back only a heartbeat later, questions in his eyes.

  He was still crouched beside me, our interlocked fingers resting on my knee, when Perrault and Captain Lang walked through the open door.

  “There you are!” Lang said, looking relieved. But they both stopped short when they saw Bear. He patted my hand awkwardly and dropped it, rising to his feet.

  Perrault blinked, then his eyes narrowed. “I thought you weren’t feeling well.”

  I swallowed. “I thought a walk would help.”

  “It was brilliant, until the rain drove us home.” Bear dug back into the linen closet and dumped six more towels on my lap.

  Sure, I thought wryly. That’ll convince them. Lang’s stare was as heavy as my rain-soaked clothes.

  “You’re shivering,” Lang said tightly. “Perrault, have someone bring hot water.”

  Perrault drew himself up. “I’m not an errand boy—”

  “But you are only fourth in command on this expedition,” Lang said tautly. “And I’m the captain. The seneschal-elect needs to get warm. Please, have someone send a bath.”

  Perrault turned on his heel and stalked toward the door. “I’ll call for tea,” Bear said quickly, following him.

  Later, he mouthed to me. My heart skidded, disastrous, over the reluctance in his eyes.

  And then I was alone with Lang.

  “You told the prince you weren’t feeling well enough to join him for lunch.” His voice was quiet, hard as a stone.

  I twisted the hem of my shirt over the basin by my bed, watching water run in rivulets down the painted ceramic. “I thought I’d go for—a walk,” I said haltingly. “Bear suggested the library. I—”

  “Selah.” Lang cut me off. His eyes were agitated. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

  I tried to laugh. “What are you talking about?”

  “Vanishing for hours? With a member of the household?” He tripped over the words, voice growing heated.

  My face reddened. “What does his status matter?” I demanded.

  “He’s not the prince.” Lang flung his arms out. “Don’t you care— Selah, what are you even here for?” He was breathing hard, as if he’d been running. As if my foolish truancy left him breathless.

  Lang, who even when we were all together, was always somewhere else.

  I narrowed my eyes at him and dropped my voice. “What are you here for, Lang?”

  He froze, one smudged hand midway through
his tousled dark hair. “What are you talking about?”

  “I hear the things you say,” I said sharply. “You’re everywhere but by my side. Perrault follows me around like a nanny, but despite the fact that you keep insisting that you’re in charge, you’re never around, even when I might need you. You’re looking for something. For—someone.”

  “Selah, trust me.” He eyed me keenly, his very words careful enough to walk a tightrope. “That has nothing to do with you.”

  “Trust you?” I asked. “How can I trust you, when you ignore me for days at a time, then come in here making accusations?”

  Never mind that they’re true.

  “I don’t understand.” Lang shook his head, eyes confused. “You were so concerned about making this work, and now you’re—with him? Of all people?”

  My voice was nearly inaudible when I finally spoke. “What would you do, if you were in my shoes?”

  “I’d do what I came here to do,” Lang said, low and intent. “Court the prince or not, but stick to the mission either way.”

  “Fine.” I leveled my gaze at him. “Then I’d say the same to you. Do your job, Lang. If you’re concerned about me, be around to see what’s happening.”

  Lang shook his head, and left me alone, silence deafening in his wake, cold anxiety creeping over my bones.

  The kiss.

  It clouded my brain through the next day and during the final state dinner before the tournament. I hardly heard the prince when he called to me from his father’s side during the banquet. “Do you have anything to share with us tonight, Seneschal-elect?”

  I’d spent the day with Bertilak, meeting his knights. They’d sat circled at the table in his throne room, discussing the next day’s tournament. Bear had stood sentry behind me, hand on the back of my chair, stealing my concentration.

  The books. The fire. The rain.

  The kiss.

  Bertilak sat at the far end of the table, half my entire hope of avoiding the Imperiya.

  He smiled pleasantly. He meant absolutely nothing to me.