Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(39)

She catches her breath. Thankfully, no one else seems to be in the room at the moment, or surely there would be hollering and she’d have been apprehended by now, and dragged to the dungeons. She has thrown caution away as easily as she lost her borrowed “cloak,” and by this point she’s hardly even thinking straight.

Isbe realizes her hand is bleeding, but there’s no time to worry. She gropes for something to hold on to—the room must be sparsely appointed, as it is difficult to find anything. She ends up yanking a drape off a large chair in the process, probably leaving a bloody handprint. This must be Edward’s or Philip’s room—why else would the furniture be covered?

She crashes into a table next, banging her hip hard. This is a disaster. In her hurry to find the door, she smashes an object that sounds valuable as it breaks. A servant is bound to have heard. She can only have a few seconds left before someone discovers her.

Ah. The door. She exits and runs her hands along walls oddly bare of tapestries, down a hallway, her mind racing, not even caring that she might be tracing blood. How is she to find William? Will he believe her story? Will he even remember who she is? She notices a faint fragrance coming from every direction, citrusy and fresh, as though the windows have been purposefully kept open—so different from the sweet floral musks preferred by the Delucian palace.

“You there!” a female voice calls in a thick Aubinian accent. Probably a servant. She’s been spotted. The voice is about fifty paces away—likely at the very end of the long hall.

Isbe doesn’t turn around.

“Stop!” the woman behind her cries.

She pushes open another door and stumbles into a room, slamming the door closed behind her.

Then she is roughly shoved down, and the air is knocked out of her.

Someone is pinning her arms to the floor. He smells of fresh sweat masked by lime soap.

“State your purpose if you want to live,” the young man says. His voice is quiet, a tree in the wind, but his grip on Isbe’s arms is tense. She feels the vibration in his entire body and recognizes it: fear.

“It would . . . be easier . . . to . . . state my—” she huffs out, finally giving up.

The man rolls off her, taking his exotic lime-soap smell with him. Isbe heaves a deep breath.

There’s a rapid knock on the door, and a woman’s breathless voice comes through, the same servant who tried to stop Isbe moments ago. “An intruder, my lord!”

“I have it well in hand, Elise,” he calls through the closed door. “You may return to your duties. Now tell me,” he demands, turning his voice back toward Isbe, “the name of the person so bold as to enter the chambers of the prince without invitation. And in your condition,” he adds.

“I have been blind for sixteen years. I am quite capable of getting around in my condition,” Isbe declares, sitting up with effort.

“Actually, I didn’t mean that,” he says, less roughly. “I meant your . . . well, the disarray of your attire, the hideous stench emanating from you . . .” He lifts her hand and then drops it again. “The fingers nearly blue from cold. And there’s the haphazardly shorn hair . . .” He sucks in a breath. “Gods help me—are you a woman?”

Insulted, Isbe pushes a stray clump of soggy hair out of her face, feeling something wet streak her forehead. Blood, most likely. Then she remembers what she must look and smell like, her hair having been hacked short with a knife, and having sailed the open sea, nearly died, and then tunneled into the castle village via its sewage system before bloodying her hand from a broken window. She crosses her arms over her chest. “How’d you figure it out?”

“Your frame is much too small to be a man’s, your voice too high, your lips too delicate.” He is still sitting beside her on the cold marble floor, and she can feel the weight of his gaze on her, more intense than the weight of his body had been.

“I fooled the entire ship of sailors who brought me to your shores.” She feels a zing of pride when she says this aloud.

“And let me guess—you paid your way aboard this ship.”

“Yes, but—” She stops. Could he be right? Were they just playing along, pretending to believe she was a boy and that Gil was her brother? Would the captain have simply given passage to anyone carrying the right amount of gold coins? Humiliation sweeps through her, heating her cheeks. “Well.” She swallows. “Since you asked my name, it’s Isabelle. Daughter to the late King Henri of Deluce.”

The man emits a sound that resembles a choke and a snort.

“What?”

He makes the sound again. It is, she’s horrified to realize, a laugh.

“I’ve been through far too much to be made fun of now,” she says, trying to steady the slight tremor in her voice. She begins to stand, hoping her weakened legs won’t wobble.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his cloak giving a low, velvety swish across the floor as he stands too. “I’m not making fun of you. I just . . .”

There it is again, the laugh. She glowers.

He clears his throat. “So, Isabelle of Deluce, if that really is who you are. What did cause you to go through so much just to seek admittance to the prince? Did the Delucian council send you? Because it certainly wouldn’t appear so. And how did you possibly get across our borders? They’ve been closed to travelers from Deluce for the past week, ever since news spread here of the—”