by Jade Kerrion
“Did you really think I would turn against you?”
“You were angry enough with me in the carriage.”
“I wasn’t just angry; I was furious, but I understand you, Varian. Only you would come up with a plan like this—one that could very well cost you your life—and then still wonder if you could do more for the people of La Condamine.”
“I’m their prince.”
“And to you, it’s not a privilege, but a burden.”
“It’s an honor and a responsibility I take seriously,” Varian corrected gently. “But if I’d had a choice, I think I would have preferred being a nobody instead of a somebody.”
“You are you, Varian. You could have been a fishmonger on the quay, and you’d still be wondering what you could do to make the lives around you better. As prince, your sphere is far larger, but being nobody would not have changed what matters most about you—your heart for others.”
“She thinks I’m a tyrant.”
“Nithya?” Sabine looked surprised. “Didn’t you explain your plan to her?”
He shook his head. “It’s too technical. Nithya has hardly any magic to speak of. She’s not going to understand the complexities of what Ariel and I need to do.”
“And you’ve worked it out with Ariel?”
He nodded. “Flawlessly, several times now. She’s powerful and focused enough to filter the power I’m channeling.”
“And the plan is to take only a little from all.”
“Exactly. She’s the gatekeeper. While I am channeling borrowed magic, she keeps people alive by spreading out the cost.”
“And she’s your executioner.”
He did not flinch at the harsh word. “Someone has to be,” Varian whispered. “Someone I trust to know the limits of what the people can give without hurting them. When it’s too much, she’ll let me go. She’ll save my people.”
“But the spell is cast, and you’ll channel every breath of magic in you, until it’s all gone.”
He nodded.
“How will she know when it’s too much?” Sabine’s voice broke. “Why does Ariel Grimaldi get to decide when you die?”
“Mother, she doesn’t want to do this any more than you want her to do it.”
“Nobody wants you to do it. Why now, after you’ve found someone you could love?”
Because life is vicious that way.
“Have you told Nithya that you love her?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Why complicate our relationship? She’s happy with her shop, with her life, and soon, she’ll have her family around her to keep her occupied. There’s no reason to bother her with a fact that will soon become irrelevant.”
“You have to tell her. Don’t leave without saying the words.”
“Even if they mean nothing?”
“They always mean something, and often more than you know. Your father would have been proud of you.”
“Would he? I thought he approved of my friends more than me.”
“Like who?”
“Tristan. Father seemed to enjoy his company more than mine.”
Sabine stiffened. “Your father always loved you.”
But she too sounded defensive and cold—like how he often felt about his father. What kind of father would raise his son to spend all his magic on a spell that would mean his death?
A tyrant of a father…
Varian’s chest ached, and he turned his head to cough in his fist. The wrenching impact shook his shoulders, but the pressure crushing his lungs eased only slightly.
“Your cough is getting worse, Varian.”
“It’s just the cold night air,” he said. And I’m becoming more adept at lying about it. The cough is worse; the tonics help less. Maybe it’s stress.
Or maybe the people who killed my father are trying to poison me too.
Even if his council was innocent, the list of possible suspects was ridiculously long now that he had members of every noble and wealthy family “under arrest” in his castle.
Would his people kill him to save the lives of a beloved family member?
I would.
He had lost the love and respect of his people. He could only hope that he had not sacrificed it for nothing. Varian shook his head. Seventy-two more hours. I just have to focus on not dying for seventy-two more hours.
He bid his mother goodnight and mixed another tonic for himself before leaving the castle. The streets were quieter than usual, as if the city were shrinking in upon itself, his people hiding. The emptiness suited him. He was not in the mood for conversation or company. He would pick up the pendant from Nithya, arrange for payment, and be on his way.
He barely remembered to layer on the glamour that wrapped Dace’s face over his own. Dread tightened his chest. How could he have so many amazing interactions with Nithya as Dace, whereas all of his contact with Nithya as himself were either frozen by remote iciness on his part, or heated by accusations of tyranny and ignorance?
I want to be Dace. I want to be the Dace Nithya knows.
I don’t want to be the Varian she despises.
He had to stop spending time with her before he transformed from a tyrant to something even worse in her eyes. Even as Dace, he had to minimize contact with her. He couldn’t afford the distraction, couldn’t afford the longing, the need for what he could not have.
Go in, pay for the pendant, and leave.
The door of Nithya’s store chimed its familiar bell-like tune as he entered.
She was behind the counter, and she looked tired, with shadows under her eyes. No doubt, she was worried sick for her friend.
Ariel’s going to be all right, he wanted to tell her, but it would probably betray his identity.
“Your order is ready.” Nithya smiled at him and reached into the drawer for a small swath of folded velvet. She tugged back its edges to reveal a brilliant red rose set on smooth, green leaves. A single teardrop, glistening deep blue, pale violet, and every delicate hue in between, clung to one of the petals, as if quivering on the edge of falling.
He drew his breath in sharply. “It’s stunning. More beautiful than I imagined. You decided not to use the sapphire.”
“It was too one-dimensional. Tears are shed in grief and in joy. The tanzanite offers more texture. It captures the depth of sorrow and the heights of hope. Will she like it?” She darted a glance up at him through her lowered lashes. “Is it for your wife or your lover?”
Chapter 13
Dace’s familiar, ugly face tugged into a smile. “It’s for my mother.”
Nithya already knew the answer, but it was a relief to hear Varian own it instead of offering a fictitious response as Dace.
“It’s a birthday gift, the first since my father passed away last year.” He folded the velvet over the jewel and slid it into an inner coat pocket, before giving to Nithya a signed document that authorized the trading agents in the city to deliver large sums of wood, coal, food, and wine.
She glanced at the piece of paper. “It’s more than we agreed on.”
“A bonus, for completing the work earlier than you promised.”
“Thank you.” Nithya turned away to place the document in a drawer. When she glanced back, he was already at the door, on his way out.
But why wouldn’t he? He could have had me arrested after I called him a tyrant and a megalomaniac, before I knew all the facts—but he didn’t.
Why would he stay now for more abuse?
Her heart squeezed painfully. “Wait,” Nithya called out.
Varian looked over his shoulder but did not turn around.
He looked weary and lonely. His dark eyes all but screamed with pain—the kind that was so constant that he wore it like an old, comfortable coat, taking refuge in it.
Did he even know how to shed it? She blinked back the tears that stung her eyes. “Would you like to stay for some tea? It’s a cold night.”
“It’s always a cold night.”
“Colder than
usual. The tea’s already brewing.” Nithya bit her lower lip. She wouldn’t beg if he decided to leave. She stressed him out, wore him down. She already knew it. They’d had three fleeting encounters as their true selves. He’d utterly ignored her in the first two, and in the third, they had argued, viciously, bitterly.
She had called him a tyrant to his face, without caring if she understood the situation. She, who knew how utterly words could destroy, had been careless with them.
If only she could take back her damning words.
A smile trembled on Nithya’s lips. Seventy-two hours. She had all of seventy-two hours to tell him how sorry she was. Seventy-two hours to somehow convince him that she didn’t hate him.
She could not bear it if he died not knowing she cared and that her heart would break with his death.
“Would you like some tea?” she asked again.
He hesitated.
He wanted to say yes. She could see it in his eyes, but a denial passed through his lips. “It’s late. I wouldn’t want to delay your store closing. I should go.”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. His fae nobility was the absolute bane of her existence. “It’s already closed.” Nithya stepped past him to lock the door. She slid her arm through his. “The tea’s in the kettle upstairs.”
Nithya watched him as she added soothing herbs to the pot of tea she had left to steep. He stood at the window, looking out over La Condamine. Protecting La Condamine. Standing still, his shoulders relaxed, his stance unguarded, he blended into her small, cozy space as if born to it.
Yet, he fit perfectly in his large, marble palaces, too.
Whether he wore Dace’s homely face or Varian’s exquisite one, he was a man comfortable with who he was, a man who understood that glamour was merely an illusion, that it did not change the truth of who he was.
He was grounded in who he was and what he needed to do.
A man like that could drive a woman utterly insane with his pigheadedness. Others, more generous, might have called it conviction.
A faint smile crossed her face. What did he really look like beneath the glamour? Most likely a blend of Dace and Varian—neither ugly nor beautiful. Normal. Would she ever see him for who he was?
It doesn’t matter. It’s not why I love him.
Nithya carried his tea over to him. “I added lavender and honey,” she said. “It’ll soothe your cough.”
“Thank you.” He accepted the cup with a smile and sipped the steaming liquid. “It tastes better than my tonics.”
“I’m not surprised. You did not make a face when you drank your tonic, but you braced yourself before bringing your lips to the glass.”
He frowned. “When did you—?”
“A few nights ago. At the palace. After we argued.”
Surprise and then guilt flickered over his face. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize. I would be wearing a false face too if I were you.”
A muscle twitched in Varian’s cheek, and he looked away.
Oh, damn. Would she never be careful with her words? She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean—” She shook her head. “I meant to say I understand your desire for privacy. It’s hard to buy a gift for your mother and not be ripped off by unscrupulous storekeepers when you have the most recognizable face in La Condamine.”
“Busted.” He laughed; it was a beautiful sound, untainted by irony or bitterness. “You should expect business to increase when she wears that pendant around the palace. I hope you’re ready for the rush.”
“I might be. After all, I won’t be spending as much time visiting Ariel at your palace.”
Varian’s eyes flashed. For a moment, she thought he would respond, but instead, he ground his teeth. “I have to go.” He set down his cup and strode toward the stairs.
“Why are you leaving?”
“I don’t want to fight. You already think I’m a tyrant, and there’s nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. Arguing will worsen what you think of me, and I don’t want that, even if it won’t matter in a few days.”
“Ariel explained your plan to me.”
“What?” He turned around.
The astonishment in his beautiful eyes hurt her. He had clearly never expected her to understand or care. Several seconds passed before Nithya could speak without her voice quavering. “As I sat in Ariel’s luxurious prison, hating you for sentencing my best friend to die for your dreams, Ariel explained your plan. All you need is a little from everyone. The only one risking his life would be you.” Nithya walked up to him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What’s there to tell?”
“You let me think you would willingly, cheerfully kill your people for your dream.”
“If you believe that of me, then you don’t know me.”
“In that case, no one knows you. You let people believe the worst of you. You let people believe that they would have to die for your dreams.”
“I said repeatedly in public and in private that no one was going to die. How many more ways and times do I have to say it?”
“Your people are not fools. Someone is going to die; everyone knows it.”
He stiffened. “By no one, I meant not them.”
“It’s not how they’re hearing it. If their prince’s life means so little to him that he would sacrifice it for a great cause, why would he not sacrifice all their lowly lives as well?”
“Because they are my people—the people I swore to lead and protect.”
“How much leading are you doing right now?”
He glared at her. “I don’t want to argue with you, Nithya. I have to act for the greater good of La Condamine, but that doesn’t mean destroying my people or dragging my country into total disaster. I am leaving behind a powerful council that represents both witches and fae. My cousin—” He grimaced. “He needs time, but he will learn. The council will guide him. My mother will be safe. With my father gone, with me gone, she’s not a threat. No one will try to poison her.”
“Poison?” Nithya’s eyes widened. “Your father was poisoned?”
He shook his head sharply. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did Tristan…?”
Varian frowned. “Did Tristan what?”
“I was in the old section of the palace yesterday when I overheard—”
“That was you?”
“Tristan didn’t tell you?”
“He told me about the so-called plot against my life, but he didn’t say you’d overheard it.”
The latter statement should have offended her, but the former stoked her anger first. “So-called? I know what I heard.”
He glanced away.
Her mouth dropped open. “Someone actually tried to kill you?”
Varian inhaled sharply. “I…didn’t say that.”
“You don’t need to. You look away before you lie.”
His head snapped up. “I do what?”
“You’re a terrible liar, Varian. What happened? When?”
“This morning, when I went to visit my father’s grave. Tristan came with me; he saved my life.”
“Did you find out who else was behind it?”
“No.”
“Tristan thinks it’s Lord Grimaldi and several others on the council.”
Varian shook his head. “The evidence isn’t compelling enough, and I won’t accept anything other than an unforced confession. They were my father’s closest friends and most trusted advisers for decades. They would not have turned on my father without extreme provocation.”
“And the casting of the spell, the losing of their status isn’t provocation enough?”
“Lord Baudin’s bluster notwithstanding, no. It is the prince’s job to be unrealistic—” Varian’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. “—and the council’s job to guide him back to reality.”
“They’re not succeeding this time, are they?” Nithya asked. Her voice gentled. “What happened to your father?”
&nb
sp; Varian sat across from her. “His cough worsened. Within a month, he went from full health to hacking out blood and pieces of his lungs with each strained breath.”
“You think he was poisoned?”
“He may have been. He recovered in the evenings when only the physician, my mother, and I tended him. During the day, he insisted on visits from his friends, and he worsened. Perhaps it was the strain of conversation with his visitors, but the rapidity of his decline suggests it may have been something else.”
“Poison…” Nithya murmured. “Did the autopsy reveal anything?”
“Ruined lungs.” Varian’s smile turned bittersweet. “A glimpse of my future.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The disease has followed the male bloodline of the Delacroix for generations. Its symptoms can be alleviated, but not cured. Magic sustains life, but it cannot heal a broken body.”
“Is your cough getting worse?”
He turned his face away.
She could almost feel the blood drain from her cheeks. “And you’ve said nothing to anyone?”
“I’m tired. Stress aggravates my cough. I have no proof—not of my father’s death, nor of my worsening condition.” His smile turned wry. “I’m not sick enough to die within the next seventy-two hours. That’s all that matters.”
She rose from her seat and crossed over to him. Impulse led her to kneel between his legs. She stared up at that unremarkable face and those astonishing eyes that had come to mean so much—everything—to her. “It’s not all that matters.” She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and drew his head down to hers. You matter…
A single breath lingered between them. The stiffness in his neck told her he was fighting both her and himself. That damned fae nobility—she sighed mentally. “Say no,” Nithya whispered. “Only if you don’t want me.”
His shoulders shuddered. She could almost feel his heart wrench with surrender. His lips seized hers, not gently, but with urgency of a man fighting desire, resisting love, for too long. His kiss claimed her mouth long after he had claimed her heart. Its heat scalded her as he trailed his lips along her neck. He nipped the tender skin at the delicate juncture of her neck and collarbone.
