Page 99 of The Ragpicker King
“He fled,” Conor corrected her. “Though he has never spoken of his time there.” His hand tangled in her hair, the strands winding through his fingers. He watched her sidelong, as if ready for her to pull away, but Lin would not have moved for the world. “Why do you ask me about Malgasi? Because of Fausten?”
“It is not just Fausten. When your father is distressed, he speaks Malgasi. It is clear his mind is fevered with some wound of the past, some memory of his time in Favár...”
Conor frowned. “When I found you,” he said, “you were babbling in Malgasi.Atma, atma, sur az koval.I didn’t know you even spoke the language.”
“I do not,” said Lin. “What do the words mean?”
“‘The fire, the fire, the blood and the cage.’”
“The blood and the cage,” Lin said. “What did theydoto him?” Her stone pulsed at her wrist, like the touch of a match tip. She winced.
Conor sat up straight. “Youarehurt,” he said, almost accusingly. “Lin, if this is magic, a curse, it’s too dangerous. I should never have asked you to be involved.”
“You didn’t know,” Lin said. “And I am not hurt—Conor.”
But he had risen to his feet. He raked his hands through his hair, almost disarranging his circlet. “I should never have let you come here alone,” he said. “I wanted you in the square. I wanted you to see me with Anjelica. I wanted you to be—” He flung his hand out, slammed it against the wardrobe, making the remaining contents rattle. “I should never have asked you to fix a problem that is mine and mine alone.”
“You didn’t ask,” Lin said, and though she said it softly, she saw him flinch.
“You mean I gave you a royal order.” He was clenching his hand so tightly at his side, she worried his ring would cut into his skin. “Well, I rescind it. You are no longer under a royal order, Lin Caster. I release you from this and any other obligation you might feel to me—”
Lin rose from the bed. She had been worried she would be shaky on her feet, but thankfully she was steady. “What about the obligation I feel to my patient? I want to help your father. To treat him. This is what Ido.”
“The only reason you are involved at all is because I demanded it,” he said. He closed the few steps between them, caught her face between his hands. His thumb brushed along her cheekbone,unraveling something inside her, like Mariam unpicking a row of stitches. “When I found you on the floor, I thought you were dead,” he said roughly. “And I realized what that would mean. If you were hurt, even a scratch, because of something I’d demanded you do—” He closed his eyes as if against the vision of something he could not bear. “I rescind the order, Lin. And for the Gods’ sake, if I ask you to do something and you know it to be stupid and dangerous, tell me no. Refuse me, the way you like to do.”
“Then I am refusing you now,” she said. “Not the rescinding of the order. The treatment of your father. You drew me into this; you cannot cut me away from it now.”
“I could order you not to involve yourself.”
“Conor.” She laid her hands on his chest, felt his muscles jump under her touch. He looked at her almost in disbelief. “Not everything has to be orders, demands. I am asking you to trust me.”
“I already trust you,” he said.
“Then trust yourself.” She could feel the beat of his heart under her right hand. It was racing, as if he were running. She wanted to press her hands harder against him, wanted to pressherselfagainst him, the ache of desire like a fishhook caught under her skin. “You aretrying,” she whispered. “To be a good Prince, a better King someday. I believe you could be a great King of Castellane. You must believe that about yourself, too. You do not want to put me under an order. It is not your instinct. Trust yourself.”
His eyes were wide. So beautiful, she thought; he was so beautiful it hurt, black-ink hair and the bones of his face graceful as a soaring heron. “I have never trusted myself,” he said. “But I think, if you did—I could.”
She did not know what madness seized her then. Only that there was an ache in her chest, in her bones, that she could not understand or explain; only that her body impelled her upward, onto her toes, her hands pressing down on his shoulders as she brushed her lips against his cheek—a quick kiss that was barely a kiss at all.
She drew back to see that his eyes had darkened, the gray almostswallowed up by the blackness of his pupils. His hand curled in her hair, catching at the strands, letting them slide through his fingers. “Lin...” he breathed. “Don’t do that.”
She had never been so close to him; she could see the flecks of lighter and darker color in his eyes, the lighter skin at his temples, the base of his throat, where the sun did not touch, the glint of the circlet in among his curls. The beat of the pulse at his throat, so fast it was visible. “You just told me,” she whispered, “not to take orders from you.”
His breath hissed between his teeth. “You,” he said, and then he caught at her, pulling her against him, her hands flattening against his chest as he drove his mouth against hers.
The force of the kiss would have set her back on her heels, but his hands were already at her waist, pulling her against him, holding her in place. She could taste honey and spice on his mouth, the sacramental wine of blessing. When he sucked her lower lip, running his tongue across it, stars exploded behind her eyes.
The tight coil of control she held around herself whenever she was near him loosened. She slid her hands up his chest, and the pleasure of touching him like that, even without her skin on his, was sharper than pain. She smoothed her palms down his shoulders, took hold of his arms, the muscle of them hard beneath her grasp.
Without her hands in the way, she pressed even closer against him, every part of her fitted against his body. He moaned against her mouth at the touch. Kissed her again and again, each time harder, his tongue curling against hers, her fingers biting into the soft velvet of his jacket. And still she wanted.
People dying of thirst, when they were given water, sometimes drank until they died, unable to assuage the need that had become part of them. She could understand it now, how you could have something and still not have enough of it, ever. He was shaking against her, tremors that curled his clenched muscles tighter, forcing her awareness of the heat of him against her, the strength of him, the pressure of his hand at her hip—
He jerked away from her. It felt like a wound, and not a clean cut: bone and muscle torn apart. Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Conor,” she breathed.
He stood a few feet from her, his hands half raised, as if to ward her away. His voice shook. “You had better go.”
