The Queen's Assassin (The Queen's Secret #1)(53)
Shadow climbs onto the other side of the bed. He feels her leg brush his as she slips between the covers, and senses the slight pressure from it in every part of his being. He is a fool who should have slept on the floor.
“Can we discuss it in the morning?” she asks, voice groggy as she turns to the wall.
“As you wish.”
She doesn’t move again, so he assumes she drifted off to sleep. After the day they’ve had, she must have been exhausted. Cal is too, but the knowledge that Shadow is so terribly within reach gnaws at him, pushing sleep farther away with each passing moment.
Shadow of Nir, from the Honey Glade, a beekeeper, a maiden of the farm.
He remembers how she nestled up to him in the dark cavern, and how she didn’t move away when she awoke to find them so entwined. He wishes they were back there a moment, huddling for warmth, instead of in a cozy room with so much air between them.
At last, after a very long while, he falls asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Shadow
LINDEN GARBANKLE KEEPS HIS WORD. The following afternoon Cal—or should I say Lord Callum—and I are summoned to tea at the vizier’s grand town house in the city.
We don our new finery and borrow the innkeeper’s carriage to take us to the side of town where the nobles live. The carriage is close quarters, and my wig, a towering concoction of curls, is heavy on my head, so wide that it practically brushes Cal’s cheek. The entire journey I’m hyperaware of every inch between us, every jolt of his arm against mine.
Last night, in his sleep, Cal rolled over from his side to mine, and his arm draped itself around my waist, his legs over mine, his nose in my hair, his chin resting on my neck. I felt his warm breath on my cheek, but instead of moving away, I burrowed even closer to him, my back against his chest, my hand on his arm, pulling him closer. In answer he tightened his embrace, so that we lay cleaved to each other, the hot center of him against my body.
When I shifted against him, I swear he moaned a little.
I didn’t want him to wake up. I didn’t want him to realize what he was doing, or what was happening between us. I didn’t want him not to want this.
What am I doing? He is the Queen’s Assassin and yoked to a blood vow. He’s sworn never to have a family, never to have children. Just a few days ago I thought he was the most arrogant, irritating boy ever to live.
I must find a place in the Guild, and I cannot allow anything—even him—to distract me. If I am to be a spy and an assassin, I cannot have emotional attachments.
When we woke up, we were huddled on opposite sides of the bed. So far it’s been an uncomfortable morning, and while nothing has been said about last night, it feels as if something has shifted between us. There’s a new shyness, as if we hadn’t just survived a harrowing prison escape together and spent days camping in the woods.
He’s been quiet all day, and when my arm falls on his, he practically flinches. Perhaps last night was just my imagination. Perhaps nothing happened between us, and I am merely delusional.
“What?” he asks, sounding annoyed.
“What?”
“You keep staring at me; do I have dirt on my face?” he asks.
I shake my head. The tailor made him a midnight-blue Montrician-style day suit, more fitted than what I’m used to seeing men wear in Renovia, with leather shoes rather than tall boots. The jacket is long in the back, shorter in the front, and the vest has similar gold-and-silver embroidery to my gown. He’s had a closer shave, so I can see his face even more clearly, that strong jawline and chiseled nose, knife-sharp cheekbones. He’s had a haircut too—thankfully they didn’t take it all off, but they did clean it up so that it falls perfectly around his eyes. Besides the obvious physical changes, he seems different somehow, distant and more detached.
It’s like a handsome stranger is suddenly sharing my space.
I try to keep my attention focused out the carriage window. There’s a clear dividing line where the struggling areas, with their modest dwellings, become stately manor houses. The homes’ iron gates and barred windows make me think of the children at the fountain, giving money that should have been for food toward the vain hope of luck instead.
A tall footman opens the door before we even finish our approach up the steps, then whisks us into a small parlor off the main hall. He offers us large cushioned chairs and then disappears into the house to inform his master that we’ve arrived.
The walls are lined with animal heads—hunting trophies, which represent species from many different lands: boar, bears, foxes, a type of striped horse, and a scimitar-toothed jaguar like the one that almost took my life. A narwhal horn. A giant rare pink sea star, easily three feet wide. Strange fish—antennae-like eyes and rainbow scales—mounted on plaques. Everywhere I look I find more: a small winged rodent posed under a glass dome sits on a shelf; a framed montage of butterflies hangs near the window.
I already don’t like this vizier, this collector of dead things.
The door flies open. A short, bald man strolls in, followed by the footman, who closes the door. The footman remains by the entrance, his arms clasped behind him, awaiting further instruction.
The vizier is draped in furs—so many furs that I become confused trying to count them. At least two of them match the fur of the heads on the wall. In fact, one of them still has a head on it. A mink, I believe. I try not to think about that. Or look at it.