But they had made love. And she was in love with him, whether he felt the same about her or not.
The words tore out of her before Charlotte could catch them, but she had summoned her poise, and when they came out, she said them calmly, with a touch of distance. “What if I lose you?”
“You won’t. You’re the best healer of your generation.”
* * *
RICHARD lay prone on the table under the harsh sterile light of the surgeon’s lamp. From this position, he had an excellent view of Dekart, a short, lean man, dressed in surgeon’s robes. His face had a look of complete concentration as he reviewed his instruments. On the table in front of him, an imager presented Casside’s face, enlarged to twice its normal size. The imager captured one’s likeness completely, and Dekart was very good.
Charlotte stood next to the surgeon. Her face was glacially cold, her iced-over beauty almost sharp enough to cut. He was on the receiving end of the coldest stare he had ever seen.
Dekart’s daughter-assistant tightened the last leather belt, pulling Richard’s left arm tight against the surface of the table. The buckle clicked, locking. He was strapped in.
“Suicide,” Charlotte said.
Richard smiled at her.
Ever since he pointed out that she was thinking with her emotions, Charlotte had shut them down. She had argued for three days with cold, flawless logic, trying to overwhelm him with facts. She explained the operation in detail as they sat by the fire. She found an anatomy volume on the shelf and detailed how easily a scalpel could cause damage. She threatened him with the lingering, chronic pain that came with reshaped bones and nerve damage. And when they made love, she took his breath away. She was trying to give him a reason to back off.
She had no idea she only made it worse. He wanted to keep her away from using the darker side of her magic at any cost. He had come up with a plan that would call for him to bear almost all of the danger. She wouldn’t have any cause to kill anyone. It hinged on his having Casside’s face, and so he had listened to everything she said and acknowledged the full validity of her arguments, but he refused to budge.
Dekart began drawing lines on Richard’s face, holding the ink stick in gloved hands. “How proficient are you in healing, my lady?” His voice was soft and quiet. A slight Louisiana accent tinted his words.
“I’m the Healer,” she said in a brisk tone.
“I understand you are a healer,” he said.
“Not ‘a.’ ‘The,’” she said.
Dekart glanced at her. “You will forgive me if I don’t believe you. The Healer worked miracles until she retired. Still, you must have some ability, since my patient places such confidence in you. Such procedures are . . . quite gruesome. I ask that you restrain yourself from healing until I ask, or you will prematurely heal the changes I will make.”
Charlotte fixed Richard with a deadly gaze. “If you die, I’m coming after you. Don’t expect a peaceful afterlife.”
It must be excruciating for her, he realized. If their roles were reversed, and she lay on the table, while he was forced to watch her face being cut open and mop up the blood, could he do it?
“Dekart, give us a minute.”
The surgeon gave a one-shouldered shrug, and he and his assistant stepped out.
“Did you have a moment of clarity?” she asked. “Should I undo the belts?”
“I’m sorry for making you do this. It must be difficult for you.” He couldn’t let her realize why he was doing it. If he did die, she would never forgive herself.
Her narrow eyebrows rose. “Have a care, my lord Mar. First you ignore my advice, now you insult me. I assure you that watching living flesh sliced by a surgeon is nothing new to me. Contrary to your expectations, you are not that special.”
She was furious with him. “If I could trade places with you, I’d . . .”
Her eyes sparked with anger. He’d clearly said the wrong thing.
She reached over and slapped him.
“If you could trade places with me, I’d die on the operating table. You deposited the responsibility for your survival on my shoulders against my will. Don’t offer me empty platitudes.” She turned away from him and walked out of his field of vision. “He’s ready.”
The door swung open. A moment later, Dekart loomed over him. “Please don’t damage the patient. If you feel the need to injure him, kindly do it on other parts of his body.”
“I’ll heal it before you start,” came the icy reply.
A cold needle punctured his arm.
“I will count to ten,” Dekart said. “I want you to repeat the numbers after I say them. Ten.”
“Ten.”
The room grew fuzzy. “Nine.”
“Nine.”
“Eight.” Dekart’s voice sounded as if coming over a great distance.
“Eight,” Richard whispered.
“Seven.”
The light blinked out. Everything went dark.
* * *
“Look at me.”
A voice called him. Richard swam toward it through the endless colorless water. He wasn’t sure whose voice it was, but it had awakened him, and now he moved. A small part of him wondered why he wasn’t drowning and where the surface was, but those questions were too faint to need his attention.
Below him, darkness gaped. It was reaching for him, its long tendrils twisted, ready to coil and pull him under. He knew it wasn’t death. Death was nowhere near. It was something else. As he swam, he felt its coldness, spreading through the waters underneath. It smelled like blood, he realized.
He wasn’t afraid of it. Far from it, it felt familiar, as if it were a part of him.
“Richard?”
Charlotte . . . He spun around in the water looking for her. Where are you, love? The water stretched out on all sides of him, a transparent eternity.
“Come back to me, Richard.”
I’m trying. I’m trying, my sweetheart. I’m looking for you.
“Come back to me.”
He felt warmth on his skin and turned toward it. A luminescent golden glow suffused the crystalline depth. He swam into it.
The darkness chased him. The icy restraints of its tentacles wound about his legs. It pulled, but the light anchored him, refusing to let him go.
“Come back to me, Richard.”
I love you, he wanted to tell her. Don’t let me go.
“Come back.”
He pushed away. The darkness broke. The torn shreds of its tentacles burned into his skin, long black marks. He knew they would be there forever. He kicked his legs and swam into the light.
His eyes opened, and he saw Charlotte leaning over him, her eyes luminescent. She had saved him. He wanted to tell her, but pain claimed his mouth, pooling in his jawbone.
She took his hand and kissed his fingers. He realized that the restraints were gone.
Dekart leaned against the cart with instruments. He looked ill.
Richard fought through the pain. “How did it go?”
“My finest work,” the surgeon said. He pushed from the cart and bowed to Charlotte. “It was an honor.”
“For me as well,” she told him.
Dekart turned on his foot and left the room.
Charlotte bent over him. He saw tears in her eyes and opened his mouth. She put her fingertips on his lips.
“Be quiet,” she whispered, and kissed him. He tasted tears and desperation on her lips. She held on to him for a long moment and let go, pulling on her composure like a mask. He almost wished she hadn’t.
“Would you like a mirror?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes.”
She nodded at the hand he was gripping. “You have to let me go.”
“No.”
She smiled back at him and sat in a chair. Ten minutes later, he finally decided she wouldn’t dissolve into nothing and released her hand. She brought a mirror. A strange man looked back at him. He could still see the old shadows of himself. His eyes were the
same. Possibly his eyebrows, and even his forehead. The rest belonged to Casside.
“It’s not me,” he said.
“That’s what you wanted,” Charlotte reminded him.
“Does it bother you?”
“Your new face?”
He nodded.
She sighed. “It bothers me that you risked your life for it. But I don’t care whose face you’re wearing, Richard.”
He realized he loved her, painfully, intensely, with the desperation of a dying man eager for every last moment of life.
TWELVE
WARM lips touched her mouth.
Charlotte opened her eyes. She had fallen asleep on the couch next to the fire pit. The marathon healing session had taken its toll. Fatigue blanketed her body. She had the absurd notion that it covered her like a blanket, draining her life force with each breath she took.
Richard was looking at her. She reached over and touched his new face, probing for any sign of infection. He was clean.
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
Dekart was truly an artist with the knife. What they had accomplished together was nothing short of a miracle. Richard’s face matched Casside’s with uncanny precision, but where the other noble’s eyes were guarded, Richard’s intelligence shone through, giving the blueblood’s features a dangerous air. Casside himself looked morose and melancholy, his expression pessimistic. Illuminated by Richard’s intellect and will, that same face became fierce—not just handsome, but masculine and strong, the face of a warrior and a leader. It was a pity Casside had done so little with the gifts nature had given him.
“You must try to look less like yourself,” she told him, caressing Richard’s cheek with her fingertips. He was still hers, no matter whose face he wore.
He caught her fingers and kissed them. “When the time comes, I will. Do you feel up to walking?”
“Depends on how far.”
“To the back door. I have someone I would like you to meet.”
“I think I can do that.”
Charlotte pushed off the couch and followed him to the back, past the table filled with precisely organized stacks of paper and crystals. Days of peering over the documents had paid off. They knew the Five, as they had come to call the slaver bluebloods, better than they knew themselves, and they had formed the plan. Richard’s face was the first part of it. Her part involved befriending Lady Ermine. She would do it with pleasure, Charlotte reflected. She would become her best friend and confidante; all for that moment when their scheme came to its conclusion, and she could snuff her out like the flame of a foul candle.
“Once I become Casside, I can’t watch over you.” Richard paused at the back door and took an orange from the fruit dish on the kitchen counter.
“I’m hardly helpless,” she told him.
“Yes, but you can’t use your magic in public, or you’ll risk an arrest. And you don’t have a fighter’s reflexes.”
Charlotte didn’t argue with him. He was right. She could easily kill on a massive scale, but an average fighter would cut her down. Her reaction time wasn’t honed enough. Her trek through the island had demonstrated that.
“A bodyguard would be a welcome addition,” he said.
“I can’t be a part of blueblood society with a bodyguard,” she told him. “It isn’t customary and more importantly, the presence of a trained fighter among them would set the Five on edge, including Brennan.”
“Not this one.” Richard opened the door.
Sophie stood on the lawn. She wore loose blue pants and a white shirt. Her dark hair was pulled back from her face into a neat ponytail. A sword in a sheath hung from her hip.
“No,” Charlotte said.
Richard threw the orange at Sophie. The girl moved, too fast, her strike a blur. The four pieces of the fruit fell onto the grass. Sophie flicked the juice off her blade.
“No,” Charlotte repeated.
“Just as a precaution,” he said. “It’s typical for you to have a companion. Why not her?”
“Because we’re playing a dangerous game, and I don’t want her to get hurt.”
Sophie didn’t flinch. Her face remained placid, but hurt pulsed in her eyes. She was used to being rejected, Charlotte realized.
“Why don’t the two of you discuss this?” Richard said, and stepped into the house.
Oh great.
The child on the lawn looked at her with an almost canine expectation, like Sophie was some half-starved puppy and Charlotte held a steak in her hand. Charlotte stepped down onto the grass, fighting the slow burn of her aching muscles. “Shall we walk?”
* * *
RICHARD watched Charlotte and Sophie walk away into the forest. The dog with no name trotted after them.
The faint sound of steps came from behind him. He recognized that walk.
Kaldar came to stand next to him, his face thoughtful. “Very pretty, both of them. The two women you care about most.” There was a slight hint of disapproval in his tone.
“I suppose you came by to inform me I’m making yet another grave mistake.”
“No.” Kaldar grimaced. “Yes.”
Richard sighed and motioned to him with his hand.
“I checked on her,” he said. “Do you know who the first ten are?”
“The first ten blueblood families who arrived in Adrianglia.” The cream of the crop.
“They took Charlotte from her family when she was seven and brought her to Ganer College, where she met Lady Augustine al Ran, a direct descendant of the Ran family, who just happen to be one of the first ten. The Lady adopted her.”
“Mhm.”
“Richard, you’re not listening. She formally adopted her. Charlotte’s full name is Charlotte de Ney al-te Ran. If the king hosts a dinner, she can sit at the first table, right next to the royal family.”
Richard turned to him.
“They didn’t publicize the adoption, probably to give Charlotte a fair chance at a normal life. It isn’t even on her marriage license—she signed it as de Ney. I don’t think that moron she married ever knew. But it is in her Mirror file. Do you have any idea how many men would kill for a chance to marry into a first-ten family?”
He had a pretty good idea. “Your point?”
“Princesses don’t marry swineherds in the real world,” Kaldar said. “When people hear her name, they stand up. You’re an Edger, a swamp rat.”
“I remember,” Richard said. “But thank you for reminding me.”
Kaldar ground his teeth. “Let me remind you of something else: when Marissa left, you drank for two months straight, then tried to drown yourself.”
“For the last bloody time, I didn’t try to drown myself. I was drunk and out of wine, and I walked out onto the pier because I remembered I had left a bottle in the boat.” And then he’d slipped and discovered that swimming while drunk was a lot more complicated than it seemed. He’d made it to shore and passed out on the bank from exhaustion, where Kaldar had found him. For some reason, everyone in the family insisted it was a suicide attempt, and nothing he said could convince them otherwise.
“You’re the only brother I’ve got,” Kaldar said. “If you follow through with this plan of yours, she will enter society without you. I’m not faulting your plan—you can’t keep her locked up, and she would have to dip her toe into those waters sooner or later. The reality is, she’s unattached, beautiful, and has the kind of name that will turn every head. The moment she’s announced, they will start circling around her like sharks. These are people who have never in their lives had to worry about where their next meal was coming from. They can rattle off ten generations worth of ancestors at the drop of a hat. They’re a different breed. Someone young, handsome, with the right pedigree and the right amount of money might catch her eye.”
“You are really worried about me.”
A muscle jerked in Kaldar’s face. “When Marissa left, you were still young. A part of you knew you still had your whole li
fe to live. You’re older now, and you’ve lost your head over her. You don’t fall for women often, but when you do, it’s all or nothing.”
“Since when did you become an expert on my love life?”
Kaldar waved his arm around. “It’s obvious. You watch her. You try to make her laugh. If she leaves you, it might break you, and I might not be here to hold your head above the water. I just want you to consider the possibility now, so it doesn’t shock you when it comes.”
“If I need help swimming, I’ll let you know.”
Kaldar opened his mouth as if to say something else and snapped it shut.
“Is there more?” Richard asked. “Out with it.”
“If you marry her, you would become a member of the al Ran family. Lady Augustine al Ran, the woman who adopted her, must grant her approval.” Kaldar pulled a small clear imager cube out of his pocket and handed it to him. “Watch this before you do anything else.”
He walked away.
“Kaldar!”
His brother turned and looked at him. Kaldar was genuinely worried for him. His brother wore his jokes and humor as armor. That he’d dropped it for his sake spoke volumes. When Declan had first approached him with his proposition to hunt down the slavers, Richard never considered what might happen to Kaldar if he failed. Seeing families torn apart had taught him to pay better attention to those who mattered most to him. His brother had a wife who loved him and the support of what remained of their family, but if something happened to him, Kaldar wouldn’t take it well. At the very least, he could give Kaldar the satisfaction of knowing he did everything he could to save Richard from himself.
“We’ll watch it together.”
Kaldar grimaced, turned on his heel, and joined him. They walked to the house side by side. Richard had considered the possibility that Charlotte might leave him, stolen away by the glamour of blueblood society. Her adoption into the first ten made it even more likely.
The cube was cold in his hand. He entered the house and approached the imager. It sat to the left of the couches, a tall, round table about a foot and a half in diameter, with ornate metalwork decorating its single leg. A brown-and-gold carapace of polished metal guarded the top of the table. He touched it, and it split down the middle, the two halves of the carapace sliding down the table’s sides, revealing a delicate surface inlaid with strange designs. A pale blue glow shimmered along the surface, bathing the designs in its gentle radiance. At the center, three metal prongs rose in the semblance of an inverted bird leg armed with wicked talons.
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