A Thief of Nightshade(18)
Aislinn
grinned.
“Trust
me,
sweetheart, he’ll manage. How do you think I met him in the first place?” As Lipsey scampered toward Rheavon, they found comfort at the base of an oak big enough to forge a road through. She’d seen trees like this once on a trip to California.
“You aren’t feeling well.” Aislinn hadn’t meant it as a question. “Talk to me about your past.”
She shrugged. “Nothing to tell.”
“Tell me anyway. How did you meet Jullian?”
“He taught graduate classes at the university where I studied.”
Aislinn seemed amused. “You were one of his students?”
“Yes, eight years my senior, full of life and wisdom and absolutely nothing like me. My baby brother Harrington loved him dearly...” Her voice trailed off and her throat tightened with sudden and undeniable panic.
“What is it?” Aislinn asked calmly.
“I don’t know. Something feels ... I can’t...”
“Tell me about your family.”
“I have a younger brother, Harrington and an older sister. I can’t remember her name.” She sucked in sharply, pushing back against the wave of emotions that slammed against her.
“It’s all right. It’s the Lessening. It will come and go. You said Jullian was your professor? Keep talking.”
She forced herself to focus on what she
could
remember.
“Jullian
is
everything that I will never be. He’s fearless,
selfless
and
completely
convinced in the innate goodness of people.”
“You don’t trust others?”
“Not usually. There are those who I’d trust my life to and those who I know firsthand would feed me to the wolves given the chance. Jullian managed to keep his annoying optimism and yet still be ridiculously overprotective. He told me once that he hadn’t had faith in anyone for a long time before he met me. How I could have possibly changed that, I’ll never know.”
Aislinn
shifted
to
get
more
comfortable. “The Prince, I’ve heard, led a life that was nothing but a carefully plotted lie. His parents, in their guilt, granted him everything he desired, allowed him total and absolute freedom and yet told him nothing of what was really to come. It’s a wonder with all the privilege and power he had that he didn’t turn out to be a total jerk. What you read in his books, about the deal made with the Fae, isn’t common knowledge in the world of Man. It’s a carefully guarded secret. His brother discovered the truth and told him, revealing that the family he dearly loved had smiled at him, all the while planning his death for their own benefit. When the Prince confronted his parents, pleaded for help in finding another way, they made plans to take him to the court as a prisoner, two years prior to his coronation, where he could sit and wait in a cold cell for his succession to the Fae throne.”
“Did he suffer ... Jullian’s brother?”
Aislinn sighed, “Depends on your definition. Merrial, his own wife, betrayed him.”
“How?”
“Rumor holds that Merrial became a nightshade addict after the birth of their second child. It was an addiction that proved more important to her than her husband and children. When the Sidhe found out about Jullian’s escape, they pressed all the members of the royal family and those closest to them. All who didn’t turn on Jullian found themselves at death’s door. Merrial, in her withdrawal, traded her husband’s whereabouts for enough nightshade to last her just two weeks.”
“How do you know so much abou...”
Just then, as though it moved on its own, a leather carrier made its way up the hill in front of them. She watched as Aislinn snatched it up with Lipsey clinging to the bottom of it.
“You carried that?” Aubrey blinked in amazement.
Lipsey beamed, his little chest puffed up as he struggled to catch his breath.
Aislinn
laughed,
“Criminal
extraordinaire.”
Aubrey opened the bag to see an empire waist dress made of red satin overlaid with black lace at the sleeves and an embarrassingly low bust line. She slipped behind the tree to change, put on the makeup Lipsey had pilfered and couldn’t have been more grateful for the lack of light when she came back around.
The dress was a tad tight on her and after wearing conservative clothing most of her life, she felt positively naked.
Lipsey giggled.
Aislinn was a little harder to read.
He remained deathly still at first, then grew visibly agitated. “Absolutely not,”
he huffed.
Lipsey shrugged. “She needs to blend in, yes?”
Aubrey reached into her satchel, digging until she found the button Tabor had given her, and carefully tucked it and the necklace Jullian had given her into the hidden pocket at her bust. “I am looking for a madame, after all.”
Aislinn paced nervously. “You don’t know what men here are like, Aubrey. I can’t let you do this. Not this way. Lipsey, go back and find more suitable clothing, something more modest.”
Aubrey snatched up Lipsey before he could run off. “And I will never get within a hundred yards of the madame. There may be safer ways to do this, but we don’t have the time or...” She tapered off as another spasm seized her. She lost her hold on Lipsey, who luckily grabbed onto her arm and leaped from her to Aislinn.