Page 145 of The Ragpicker King
“Because you have sent everyone you could depend on away,” she said. “My grandfather. Kel—”
“Kel has committed treason. It is my duty—”
“Your duty.” She shook her head. “Hewas doing his duty. He was protecting you. He never had any other intention—”
“You are awfully worried about Kel.” There was a quiet something in his voice—not danger and not jealousy. She could nothave said exactly what it was, but it felt like a cold finger on her spine.
“Of course I am. He’s my friend.”
“And you want a favor from your Prince, do you?” His hand slid up her back, cupped the nape of her neck. She felt herself shudder—though not with something that was cold. It was ridiculous that the touch of his fingertips on her skin could catch her breath and make her legs feel as if her bones had turned to feathers. Ridiculous, that she could not control it. “You want your friend freed from the Trick, whether he is a traitor or not.”
“He’snot,” Lin said. “And if you hurt him, if you have himkilled,don’t you see what it will do to you? If you let him swing from the Tully gallows, or have him thrown from the cliffs like Fausten? It will wreck you, Conor. You will never get back what you lost.”
She felt a shiver go through him; thought for a moment he had heard her. Really heard her. He brushed a kiss at her temple, his lips hot. “What makes you think you know me so well?” he whispered.
“Because,” she said, “I love you.”
She felt his body go rigid as iron. “Lin,” he said. “You sent me away—”
“I know. I couldn’t bear it, that all I could ever have was a tiny part of you. That marriage and children with you would belong to someone else, someone who didn’t even feel about you the way I do.”And Kel made me see it,she thought.He made me understand.“You said you wished you could cut your feelings for me away, and do you think I have not felt the same? Do you know how often I have thought of you? In my dreams, my waking hours, you never leave me, Conor.” She tightened her hands on his shoulders. “Nothing can be perfect. I want you—all of you. You do not know how much.” She took a shivering breath. “But I will take what I can have. It is not nothing. I do not think I can bear nothing.”
His gray eyes searched her face, and at last there was something in his expression she could read: wonder, bewilderment. And a bitterness she did not understand.
“Conor?” she breathed.
“You are accepting my offer? You are telling me you will be my mistress? Because I cannot offer you anything else, Lin, not even now, with Anjelica gone.”
“I told you,” she said. “I will take whatever I can have of you—”
She thought she heard him say her name. Then he was pulling her against him, crushing his mouth to hers in a kiss. His mouth was hot and hard against hers, and he had never kissed her like this, not even in the folly, not with such force that she tasted wine and blood on his lips. His hand cradled the back of her head as he devoured her mouth, his tongue flicking between her lips in a way that had her aching for his hands on her body, the feel of his skin against her skin.
And then he pulled back, breaking the kiss abruptly. Lin could feel that he was shaking, small tremors that rocked his body, but his voice was steady when he spoke. “It is ironic,” he said, “that I have always known you were an excellent liar. I depended on it when I took you into my confidence about my father.”
“What do you mean?” Lin could hear the bewilderment in her own voice; she was not like Conor. She could not keep her voice steady even as her body screamed at her that it was being deprived of something it desperately wanted, even needed.
“You come here and beg me for Kel’s life,” he said. “You say that you know he was only protecting me. That you knew he was working for the Ragpicker King. And don’t bother denying it; I am already aware of your own association with Morettus. You and Kel had this shared world of secrets, it seems. One you both hid from me. Although in your case, at least, it is not treason. Just the ordinary, boring sort of lies.”
It was as if he had shaken her or slapped her. She choked, “I was trying to protect you, too. All we ever wanted was to find out who was responsible for the murders in the Gallery, who was targeting House Aurelian. All Kel ever thought about was you and Castellane—”
His lips twisted into a sneer. “Allweever wanted?” he echoed. “You seem to be positing a sort of conspiracy of kindness. A group of people who lied to me with the best intentions. All while you warn me of a conspiracy of unkindness, an opposing group who lied to me withbadintentions. Pardon me if I see little difference between the two.”
“What are you saying?” Lin whispered. “You can’t really mean it. You can’t be intending to murder Kel—”
He flung her away from him. Lin stumbled back, shocked, as Conor hurled the bottle he was still holding against the far wall; it shattered, releasing a silver rain of glass.
“I never thought I would trust anyone like I trusted Kel,” Conor said, and the bitterness she had sensed in his voice before was now at the forefront, turning every word to a curse. “And then I trusted you. You never seemed to need anything from me. I thought that meant I was safe with you, but there is no safety, is there? Not when I am weak, and I have come to understand now, finally, where weakness lies. You are my weakness, Lin—and so is Kel. You are chinks in my armor that can be pierced through.”
“Trust is not a weakness,” Lin said. “And if you cannot trust me, at least trust Kel. He has only ever tried to help you.”
Something flickered across Conor’s face, and for a moment Lin thought that he might have heard the truth in her words.
He raised a shaking hand to his face. “Castellane cannot afford me to be weak,” he said. “I have to be my own shield now. And a shield must be iron.”
“No.Turning yourself to stone will not make you strong. Hurting Kel will not cauterize the bleeding—”
“Look at you,” Conor said, “so sure I plan to murder him. And yet at the same time you say you love me. What am I meant to believe? For to imagine that you love a murderer, Lin, seems out of the question.”
He was white as a sheet, but the mockery in his voice cut at her.
