The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(24)

“Oh, I can find better sport than this,” you said lightly, and sat behind Artos on a chair by the edge of the porch. When Lleu came out a few minutes later you called to him, “Stay with me. Speak to me,” and he was too polite and not enough in awe of you to think to do otherwise. “You’re cold,” you said to him in a normal voice. “Talk to me, and I will chafe your hands.” Lleu sat on the tiles at your feet, and let you breathe on his hands and rub them gently as the two of you spoke together. I bent scowling over the patterned board as though I could not see you.

But your idle chatter ceased after a time, and at last Goewin attracted my attention with a scant, quiet gesture of one finger. Lleu was asleep: sleeping just as he had been sitting, on the floor at your feet, leaning with his head propped against your knee and one hand still resting in your lap. As I watched, you moved a thin hand to wander over his hair. When you noticed my slow glance you clasped Lleu’s hand firmly between your own, mocking, challenging, tempting. The playing piece I was holding suddenly snapped between my fingers.

Steadily I set the broken pieces on the board before me and rose from my seat, while Artos swung around on his stool to see what it was that so intrigued me. I bent to you and whispered past your ear, “What can yo Vny > whilu possibly want of Lleu?”

You smiled, unruffled. “What do you mean?” I whispered in anger: “You are unusually affectionate.” You laughed outright. When you spoke your words were directed at me, but your voice was pitched to include Artos and Goewin. “Here and now you scorn my affection, though when you were small you too crept to me for comfort after I had you whipped.”

I snapped, “What has that to do with Lleu?” and then tried hard to check my anger. I stood looking down at you with my hands resting unclenched on my hips. “You have not had the prince whipped, and he has not crept to you for comfort.”

“Has he not?” you said, ruffling Lleu’s hair. “My company must be uninteresting; I seem to have put him to sleep.” You looked toward Goewin and Artos, and said, “Medraut has not changed. Even as a child he found me suspect, always contradicting me, stubbornly at odds with me. He seemed to dare me to be strict with him. I sometimes had to have him punished for things Gwalchmei had done.”

“I only regret you were burdened with such a child for so long,” Artos said coldly. “I would have sent for him sooner if I had known.”

“Once he was beaten so severely that he was burning with fever when he came to me,” you continued relentlessly. “It was because he had accused me of lying. Do you remember, Medraut? You were only ten.”

“I was seven,” I said through my teeth, quietly.

You shrugged. “No matter. Young enough. But even then you would not admit afterward that you were wrong.”

I rapped out in exasperation, “Who cares what I did? It was almost twenty years ago.”

“Two years ago you were even more abject before me,” you said, gently stroking my damaged hand. “And still are, I think.” You took hold of the scarred fingers and kissed them.

I pulled myself free and choked, “You will not—”; but I broke away without finishing and turned to walk heavily down the stone steps into the rain and the dripping gardens.

I will never go back again, I thought, I will never again go creeping back to beg for your forgiving hands on my hair. I walked blindly away from the house and stopped at the stone wall on the edge of the estate, facing away and toward the hills. There I stood shaking with anguished, angry sobs, hardly aware that I was driving my knuckles so fiercely against the wet stone that I was tearing the skin.

Goewin followed me. She stood next to me for a long time, leaning against the wall without speaking, waiting for me to grow calmer. Finally she laid her own hand over my blighted fingers, and said, “She can’t control you now.”

“She can,” I gasped, “she can. Oh, God, I wish she’d never come. Why doesn’t she leave?”

“Why should she?” Goewin said reasonably. “She may never see her boys again. She talks idly, and stirs evil memories, but she is powerless here.”

I turned to look at her, measuring her with my eyes. She watched me, worried, wondering. Even then I was afraid to tell her, to tell anyone, but I must confide in someone or go mad. I said at last, “It was she who ruined my hand. The fingers were broken in a hunt, as I told you, and she was called in to set the bones. She twisted and broke them beyond repair, on purpose. Later they had to be broken [ to a hunt again. I reset them myself.”