The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(50)

“But you don’t want to do this!”

“How could you know what I want?” I said. “Under her orders I can take vengeance on your beautiful brother and let the blame fall on her.”

Goewin said forcefully, “Revenge for what?” Neither of us spoke for a few moments. At last Goewin ventured, “Then you’d torture Lleu and turn over what’s left to her? That would please her as much as if she did it herself, wouldn’t it? Either way you are seduced—”

“No!” I burst out, so violently that Agravain stirred in his sleep. My fingers had gone taut and white around the small horn cup Goewin had given me. “I follow my own will!”

“Then why are you doing this?” Goewin pressed.

I coughed and pushed my hair back from my face; it was dry now, and tangled. Goewin took the cup from me and watched me in apprehension. I said, “You of anyone should understand.”

“I understand your mother,” she said unexpectedly. “I understand her all too well. I live in constant fear that I will be kept prisoner as she is, because I am dangerous and powerful, and because I am a woman. I would not betray Lleu even if { Llstant f I wanted to; he is my sole ally, my one defense against such a fate. But you, Medraut, you have been offered the regency of his kingdom, you have power in your hand. So why?”

I drew my fingers across Lleu’s cheek and lips as though I were touching something beautiful and delicate, an exotic flower, a piece of old silk, the skeleton of a leaf. “For a word. For my father’s word. For something I want Artos to say. I want him to admit, before all, that it is his own iniquity that keeps me from the kingship. That the shame is his, not mine.” I paused, my fingertips trembling above Lleu’s still face, and then went on speaking as though to myself, as though she were not there. “And I want Lleu to be afraid of me, to know and admit to my authority. I want—” I hesitated again, lost. I did not know what I wanted. “Lleu’s grown so confident and cruel.”

“He’s not cruel!” Goewin said.

“He is,” I said. “He is ever conscious of his beauty, his power. And he never quite stops sneering at me for my being so… scarred.

“I might end by killing him,” I finished bitterly. “I would do it if I had a reason, if I were given the command. He would deserve it.”

“He would not. You fret like a jealous child,” Goewin whispered roughly. “I am as much in the way of your kingship as Lleu is. Take me in his place. Let him go.”

“I couldn’t take you,” I said slowly. “I am too much afraid of what I might do to you.”

“What could be more terrible than anything you might do to Lleu?” she asked.

I looked at her hard and straight, perplexed, unable to believe her so naive. Then I took her face between my fevered palms and held her close, so that we must look directly at one another. My hands moved down her throat, across her shoulders, until at last they were cupped gently beneath her breasts; and then she knew what I might do to her. “I am your sister,”





she said.

“You see how it happens,” I said, and let her go.

She sat still for a moment, her eyes lowered, as though in prayer. Then she carefully set the horn cup on the floor away from us, and moved back to her place between Lleu and the cave wall. She lay on her back with her eyes closed and said in an icy voice, “If you don’t bring Lleu back alive and unharmed I’ll kill you, I swear it, surely, I will find a way to kill you.”

“I fear you as little as you fear me,” I whispered.





XII


Peak and Forest




MORNING, NOW. LLEU WOKE up and was sick. I began to help him dress, but he shrank from the touch of my hot hands over his bare arms and back; Goewin, watching, barked out, “Let him go!” I glanced at her with half a grin, but shrugged and gave Lleu his dry shirt and jacket and then drew away. Afterward he crouched dejectedly next to the fire with his head in his hands, not yet able to eat or to stand. Goewin said to me severely, “You who never lie, have you thought what quarry you will bring away as proof of this week’s hunting?”

The young lion raised his head with an effort and answered in quiet, “Has he not?”

I took Goewin outside to speak to her alone. I wanted to be certain she knew her wa ~;

“Why would he wait,” Goewin asked, “once he knows what you intend?”