The Queen's Rising (Untitled Trilogy #1)(83)

I spluttered after the first sip. “This tastes like dirt, Cartier.”

“Drink it.”

I glared at him. He returned the glare, until he ensured that I had swallowed three more mouthfuls. Then he swept the goblet from me and I lay back down so he could clean my wound.

“Tell me,” he said, kneeling at my side, threading his needle. “Who did this to you, Brienna?”

“Does it matter who did it?”

Cartier’s anger kindled, his gaze like the blue heart of a flame. That Maevan lord had returned; I saw it in the set of his jaw, in the taut muscles of his posture, in the vengeance that gathered about him as shadows. In my mind’s eye, I could see him standing in his reclaimed hall with a circlet of gold upon his head, walking through morning light, and beyond the windows his green meadows flourished, brightened by the Corogan flower. . . .

“It matters,” he said, breaking my vision. “Who stabbed you? And why did they do it?”

“If I tell you, you must swear not to retaliate,” I said.

“Brienna . . .”

“You will make it worse,” I hissed impatiently.

He dabbed the blood from my skin and began to stitch me. My body went rigid at the bite of the needle, at the pull of my flesh as he brought me back together.

“I swear I will not do anything,” he promised. “Until this mission is over.”

I snorted. It was suddenly difficult to picture him holding a sword, returning the favor to Rian. Until I remembered that day in the library, when Cartier and I had stood on chairs with books on our heads. He had bled through his shirt.

It might have been the shock, or the northern air, or the fact that he and I were reunited. But I lifted my hand and traced my fingertip down the sleeve of his upper arm, where he had once bled. He stilled as if I had charmed him, pausing halfway through the stitching, and I realized this was the first time I had ever touched him. It was wickedly delicate; it was fleeting, a star moving over night. Only when my hand returned to the quilt did he finish his stitches and cut the thread.

“Tell me your secrets,” I whispered.

“Which one?”

“Why did you bleed that day?”

He rose and took the needle and spool of thread to his desk. Then he wiped the blood from his fingers and drew a chair to the bedside. He sat down, folded his hands, and looked at me. I wondered what crossed his mind at the sight of me lying in his bed, my hair spread out over his pillow as I wore his pants and his stitches.

“I cut my arm,” he answered. “During a spar.”

“Spar?” I repeated. “Tell me more.”

He chuckled. “Well, long ago, I made a pact with my father. He would let me study to become a passion as long as I also took sword lessons. I continued that promise, even after he died.”

“So you must be very proficient with a blade.”

“I am very proficient,” he agreed. “Even so, I still get cut from time to time.”

We both fell quiet, listening to the crackle and pop as the fire burned in the hearth. My wound had gone numb beneath his careful stitches; I hardly felt the pain anymore, and my head was beginning to feel airy, as if I had breathed in a cloud.

“So . . . how did you not know that I was Amadine?” I finally asked; it was the foremost question that continued to sift through my thoughts. “And why were you absent for the first planning meeting?”

“I missed the first planning meeting because of you, Brienna,” he said. “I had just discovered your disappearance. I forced myself to wait all summer, I forced myself to stay away, thinking you did not want to see me after my letters began to go unanswered. But I finally roused the courage to go to Magnalia, believing that I had time before I needed to be in Beaumont for the meeting. The Dowager informed me you were gone, that you had left with a patron, that you were safe. She wouldn’t tell me anything more, and I spent the next week searching Théophile, thinking you were there since it’s the closest city to Magnalia. It obviously made me late.”

I stared at him, my heart twisting in my chest. “Cartier . . .”

“I know. But I couldn’t rest if I didn’t at least try to find you. I originally worried that your grandfather had come for you, and so I went to him. But he had no inkling of your whereabouts, and that only quickened my fears. There were so many nights that I thought the worst had befallen you, and the Dowager was merely trying to shield me from such a blow. All the while, she kept insisting that you would contact me when you were ready.”

“And so you finally gave up the search, and came to Beaumont for the second meeting,” I murmured.

“Yes. And Jourdain sat across the table from me and said he had adopted a daughter, a young woman named Amadine, who had passioned beneath Augustin House, who had inherited the memories we needed to find the stone. I was so worn and vexed, I took it all for truth, not once suspecting he was feeding me your alias.”

“But I still don’t understand,” I softly argued. “Why wouldn’t Jourdain tell you who I was, where I came from?”

Cartier sighed and leaned deeper in the chair. “All I can figure is Jourdain didn’t wholly trust me. And I don’t blame him. I had evaded him for the past seven years. He had no idea I had taken the name Cartier évariste and was teaching at Magnalia. And when I missed the first planning meeting . . . I think he worried I might bolt on the mission. So when the plans were divulged to me, I volunteered to be the one to infiltrate Damhan under pretense of the hunt. It was supposed to be Luc, but I offered myself, to show my commitment.”