Bring Me Their Hearts(69)
“Save your worry for a sweeter girl, Your Highness,” I tease, my cheeks burning. The yolshil is stronger than I thought it’d be. Lucien doesn’t enjoy the joke, frowning.
“I will worry for whom I please. Is your wrist all right? Did you get it looked at?”
I switched my shawl bindings out for clean gauze when no one was looking, just to maintain appearances, though by now the wound is long healed. I tamp my smile down, pretending to wince instead. “If by ‘looked at’ you mean some lady came along and poured herb water in it and sewed it shut with her mercilessly huge needle, then yes.”
“It’s my turn to ask you; does it hurt?” His expression is strangely soft as he looks me over. Why? Why is he looking at me like that? It’s tearing me apart. I take a huge swig from the yolshil. Maybe booze will lessen the pain.
“Not anymore. Is that girl you give the trinkets to all right?”
“She’ll live,” Lucien says. “But life isn’t kind to girls on the streets of Vetris with only one eye.” He falls quiet, golden firelight pooling in his dark irises. “You didn’t run when I told you to.”
“I might be a lot of things, Your Highness—a joker, a lightweight, a fool—but I’m not a coward.”
Lies. A coward by nature—killing unarmed bandits, taking this boy’s heart for your own gain, for the easy way out.
“Undoubtedly.” Lucien curls his fingers around my uninjured hand, his palm rough. “You’re far braver than anyone I’ve met before.”
It stings, coming from him. It soothes, coming from him. Pain and pleasure mixed, as if my brain can’t decide which one to embrace. Lucien’s serious expression doesn’t lift.
“Chin up, Your Highness,” I say. “We won this fight.”
“Lucien,” he exhales. “Call me Lucien.”
I start—first names are for friends. He can’t be my true friend. I can joke about it, it can be a farce, but it can’t come to honest fruition. Not him. Anyone but him.
“Lucien,” I whisper. The tavern’s wine was water compared to what I’m drinking now. The world blurs, the heart shard in my locket aching strangely as Lucien’s dark gaze pierces through me.
“It looks like you two stole my thunder.”
The moment breaks, and we look up at the voice—it’s the girl in the robe I passed the old woman off to. Her blue eyes glimmer as she lowers her hood to reveal curly, mousy-brown hair and a rosy-cheeked face. Her cane is missing, but her robe hides most of her uneven gait.
“Lady Himintell,” Lucien breathes. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing, Your Highness.” She raises an eyebrow at the gauze around my wrist. No doubt she wants to ask if Y’shennria and I planned for me to be here, but she can’t while Lucien is standing right next to us.
Lucien? The hunger slides in. You mean the target. The prey.
“I told you to stay out of your uncle’s business.” Lucien narrows his eyes at her. “But again and again you ignore me. Do you really want to be hurt that badly?”
“If I do, it’s none of your concern,” Fione snaps, and then as if realizing who she’s snapped at, she calms herself. “You shouldn’t be here, Your Highness. You know as well as I my uncle will take any chance he gets to lash out at you.”
Lucien glowers at her. There’s something between them I can’t quite put my finger on—some resentment, some history. More history than just Fione being shunned at her Welcoming, that’s for certain. Fione turns to me and plasters a smile on her face.
“If nothing else, the two of you make a lovely couple. But this is a very poor spot for a date, if you don’t mind my saying.”
A couple? A fleeting, impossible thought. It’s dangerous to say anything to her, to give away even one inkling that I know her outside of formality. Thankfully, Lucien asks the next question for me.
“You knew Gavik was going to be here, didn’t you, Lady Fione?”
Her smile doesn’t crack. “Of course. He’d been talking about it for weeks with the captain of the guard, taking walks in our lily garden and hashing out all the details. I’d planned to come ahead of time and herd away as many people as I could before the chaos broke, but—” Fione’s blue eyes flitter over the injured, exhausted crowd. “But no one would budge. There’s a tipping point in one’s desperation where the song of food and necessities becomes far louder than one’s safety. And these people have perhaps lingered on that point longer than possibly bearable.”
Lucien’s face grows somber as he looks over the crowd, too. He massages his forehead tiredly, muttering, “I could barely do anything. If she could see this, she’d be so ashamed. Disappointed in me.”
She. The weight with which he says it can mean only one person—Varia. Fione hears, her expression souring even through her actor’s smile.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Your Highness. Their suffering isn’t entirely at your hands. If she’s ashamed of anyone, it’s my uncle.”
Lucien falls quiet, and Fione snorts derisively, her hand resting on a small dagger at her waist. She pulls it out, inspecting the blade carefully. It’s a beautiful thing—jeweled with rings of sapphires and pearls, the blade gold-kissed silver. A noble’s dagger. No—a royal’s dagger.