The Mirror King (The Orphan Queen, #2)(11)

Dawn seeped around the curtains, lighting the dark room into gray. Candles had drowned their flames or been put out—I couldn’t remember—and the smothering air of encroaching death had lifted.

Tobiah was still lying on his back, but he’d turned his head and hints of color lit his skin. When our eyes met, his were bright and alert, and so, so familiar.

I sat straight, heart pounding with hope. “You’re alive.”

“My dear Wilhelmina, you’re amazingly accomplished at stating the obvious.” His voice was groggy, deep with the remnants of his long slumber.

“And you’re well enough for sarcasm. I think you’ll live.”

His grin was all Black Knife. Because of the mask, it was an expression I’d only sensed before, never seen, but I knew it just the same: the lift of his cheeks, the light in his eyes, and the way the world seemed to pause.

This was the boy I’d fallen in love with.

Please forgive me for what I’m about to do; know that it is duty and honor that compel me to act against my true feelings.

Forgive me.

I took a ragged breath. “I should send for your mother. She has no idea you’re—” Alive. Awake. He’d been so close to death just hours before.

“In a few minutes.” He closed his eyes. “Just give me a few minutes before I have to be . . . what they all need me to be.” He went still, as though he’d drifted off again, but then he smiled. “You’re the one with the no-talking-or-get-stabbed rule. Not me.”

How did he not have a million questions? Maybe he was saving them. “How do you feel?”

His hand moved beneath his blankets, as though touching the bandages or testing the wound. “Like I got shot a month ago.”

“It was yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” He started to sit, biting back a grunt and gasp as blankets fell around his waist. Bandages covered his stomach, but his chest and shoulders were bare, exposing muscles built from years of sword fighting. “Wilhelmina.” His tone turned serious as he took in my appearance: the trousers, the disheveled hair, the knife tucked into my belt as though Patrick might strike again. “How did I recover?”

“How do you think?”

Light grew around the curtains. With a soft groan, Tobiah swung his legs off the bed; trouser hems brushed the tops of his feet. His dark eyes were wide and warm. “What did you do, Nameless Girl?”

“I couldn’t let you die.”

He leaned his whole body toward me, shoulders and chest and face. A hand slipped forward on his knee, almost reaching. “You never fail to amaze me.”

It took everything in me to stay put. Not move. He was for someone else, and for all the questionably moral things I was willing to do, that was a line I could not cross.

The bedroom door swung open and the gas lamps hissed to life, saving me from temptation. James strode in with Francesca and Meredith behind him.

Tobiah tugged on the blankets to cover himself.

The queen regent gave a little shout and hurried to embrace him. Meredith pressed her hands to her chest. Only James didn’t seem shocked, but for a whole second he sagged with naked relief.

I moved toward the writing desk, a safe distance away from the reunion. James bent his head toward mine.

“How long has he been awake?”

“A few minutes.”

Across the room, Tobiah was reassuring his mother that he felt fine, and he wasn’t going to die. Meredith perched on the edge of the chair I’d slept in, leaning forward with her hands still clasped by her heart. The flush of someone who’d cried herself to sleep was brightening into hope.

“Where were you?” I asked James. “I expected you to be hovering.”

“I had work to do. If you recall, I was made head of palace security and there was an assassination attempt five minutes later. Then you escaped.” James shook his head. “Apparently, I have a big job ahead.”

He had a point. “So you didn’t warn the queen regent and duchess about Connor?”

“I intercepted them on my way here. The royal physicians insisted Her Majesty be, ah, helped to sleep last night, and this morning she decided she wasn’t happy about it.”

“Hard to blame her,” I muttered.

“Anyway, I thought you were plenty capable of protecting my cousin while I looked into securing the palace. Even if you couldn’t, there are half a dozen men of the Indigo Order in the next room.”

“Patrick might have killed Terrell in his sleep, and with nothing more than a knife, but twice now he’s attacked Tobiah from a distance.”

“Which is why the windows are shut and there are guards on the balcony. But all of our intelligence suggests Patrick has left the city.”

“That’s my thought, too.” The guilt churned in me.

“What are you two talking about over there?” Tobiah lifted his voice, looking beyond his mother, who sat on the bed beside him. “And James, grab a shirt for me. It’s chilly.”

James fished through a wardrobe and handed his cousin a solid black shirt before beginning his account of the search for Patrick. And though I wished he wouldn’t, he included my involvement with drawings and telling the Indigo Order to search Fisher’s Mouth.

“So.” Tobiah finished shrugging on the shirt—Meredith demurely turned her head—and began buttoning while he spoke. “Lien has yet to be captured.” His gaze cut to me for a heartbeat, then went back to James. “I hope you’re still making your best effort.”