The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(61)

My fingers were dripping. Lleu pushed away from me with his free arm, but I caught at him with my sound right hand, and held his gloved fingers so tightly they began to feel stiff. He screamed again, out of sheer desperation.

“Wild thing,” I whispered. “I’d like to cut your hands off, burn you, blind you… I should crush your slender fingers. I could break all the bones in your hand if I closed my own around yours tightly enough. You are as pure and dangerous as an untamed cat; your beauty makes me sick. And oh, God, you have hurt me, you have hurt me…”

I steadied my voice. “But I am afraid to risk my father’s trust in me, or what is left of it. I am afraid to kill you outright. I thought of ruining you in some irreparable way, so that you could never be king, though you’d still be alive and I’d seem blameless. I could deafen you; there’s a way to direct blows against your ears that will take away your hearing.” Lleu tried to pull his hand away, and my iron hold on his fingers grew even more impossible. “Do you doubt me?” I said. “Or I could half smother you; when you go without air for too long it damages your mind, though it need not kill you. And there are things I can do to punish you that you will find more dreadful than any hurt. Be still.” I bent over, my wounded hand in his hair, and pressing my mouth to Lleu’s warm, windburned lips, kissed him gently.

He lay rigid, as though he had been scalded.

“Your mouth is sweet,” I said.

“God,” Lleu breathed. His hair was cold. He smelled of earth and snow and blood.

“Lie still,” I said. “Lie still. Am I not well armed against you even without steel? I need no more than a few drops of blood, and this…”

“Don’t,” Lleu said quietly. “Don’t, my lord.”

He spoke without fear. In his voice I heard only authority and reproach. It was as though he meant to remind me how very much I had to lose.

He struggled again to escape my grip, but I held him fast. “What do you want, Medraut? The inheritance you would win from our father will never give you power over me, me; and I will never beg for your mercy, even though you try to drive me mad. I may be afraid of death, but I do not fear you.”

“So you say,” I spat.

He winced and turned his face away. “Then do what you will with me,” he choked. “You are just like your mother. You would gently ruin me if it served your ends; and in revengeful punishment you hurt and hurt and hurt. I wounded you in self-defense, I did not mean to do it! If I must pay for that with my sight, then put my eyes out! Is that just? Is that fair? Hurting me will not heal your hand, or make me regret that I tried to save myself. By that law you should have been buried alive for your mistake in the mines at Elder Field.”

“You are right,” I said slowly, letting go of him and struggling to my knees. “But you have never been held accountable for anything you have ever done.”

He sat up also, savagely wiping his mouth, and began to say, “You thr#x2beeow this in my face as though—”

“No,” I interrupted. “I mean, you are going to atone for what you have done to me now. You are going to stitch shut my hand.”

“I am not!” he cried.

“By God, you are,” I said fiercely. I had grown accustomed to the dark, and I could see the strip of white linen at Lleu’s wrist, and beyond my reach the silver gleam of the brooch that should clasp his cloak. I felt for the cloak and bound it around my hand, trying to stanch the bleeding. It would not stop. “Now, damn you: there. There by the fire, the lantern’s lying there.” I prodded him in the right direction. “I don’t know what you’ve done with the flint and tinder, but there’s needle and thread in the black leather bag. You must pass the needle through a flame first, to cleanse it. And you’ll have to clean the cut, too; you can use snow for that.”

“Do it yourself,” Lleu said desperately.

I answered with equal desperation, “I can’t.”

He found the lantern and set about lighting it with trembling hands. He dropped the flint in the dead fire at first and had to search for it in the hot, feathery, gray ashes; but at last he was rewarded with the scratch and spurt of a tiny new flame, and he lit the candle in the little lantern and opened the grated door so that as much light as possible spilled from it. I sat bent over my hand, and glanced up at Lleu impassively. “Ah, little brother, don’t cry.”

Lleu rubbed his eyes angrily. “I’m not It’s the light.”