Page 86 of The Court of Venus

“I’m aware how much trouble you are.”

Another deep breath. I stared at my slippers, knowing if I faced him, I would soften. “I’m here to help you finish what Prospero began. We save the king, and so we save you. We avenge Hal. That is all.”

“That is all,” he repeated. With his thumb, he drew my gaze back to his. His brow knitted. How I melted when he looked like that.

I knew he was inside my mind. I tried to concentrate on what else I wanted most, besides his touch: to be alone in bed, the fire crackling, far away from him, away from this terror.

Resolved, he nodded to himself and stepped back. Released my waist.

Roland, wait, I should have said. Nearly said. I reached for him, but he’d already turned away.

The last thing I saw was him standing on the table, arms outstretched. A maid of honor opened her mouth, and he poured wine onto her ready tongue. Palms struck against drums. Dancers spun and spun, staring up at him as if he were their god of pleasure, of revelry.

Roland, wait. Long ago, I loved a boy who is now a ghost. You know him well. You loved him, too. Just now, I felt his hands beneath your hands and almost screamed.

Twenty

Hal is eager to see the world. He has a fiery, adventurous heart. A Sagittarius, like me and Richard. In many ways, he reminds me so much of his father. But Richard had a younger brother—dead now of the sweat, of course, but a security when the two boys were growing up. Hal must accept there is no such security when you are the only heir. He must give up all that does not serve his father’s aims.

—PROSPERO THE ALL-KNOWING, DIARIES, UNDATED

Four Years Ago

I waited for Hal in the meadow.

I’d counted the days until his return, sleeping through long afternoons so time would move faster.

The ground was damp, and a layer of mist slid over me until I was lost beneath it. Hal’s mind was close. Moving closer. He broke through the trees and slowly spun around until I raised my head above the mist. The war had roughened him—his stubble was longer, and so was his hair. There was a puckered scar on his chin.

As he strode toward me, the mist parted, then was sewn shut behind him. “Hello, Mouse,” he said.

We had sent so many letters. I was nervous, suddenly, whether we would know what to say without paper. But as he flopped down onto the grass, head lolling onto his shoulder as he grinned, I remembered he was my friend above all else. I should not be afraid of someone who smiled so readily, even if such people had always made me suspicious.

“Back so soon?” I teased.

He flicked hair from his eyes and blinked up at the canopy. “Unfortunately. And … fortunately.”

“What was it like?”

He offered me his memory. I was brought to a sweep of tents, mud torn up by hooves, the howls of dying men, wounded men, men holding their own bodies together. Hal gritting his teeth as he slept in layers of furs, Hal watching, as he had predicted, from the crest of a hill as the armies clashed below on the beach, watching in cold horror as bodies were dragged into carts and thrown into ditches. “I saw one battle. I didn’t write you—I didn’t want you to worry. But I stole someone’s armor and rode in with the soldiers. I knew more about combat than all of these men, and—”

His eyes began to well up and I clutched his hand. Mine, so small in his. “I can take the memories away.”

He shook his head. “No, no,” he said roughly. “I’ll keep them, only to remember that I was a fool. You were right. I wanted to fight because I thought it would make me feel important. It did the opposite. Anyway, King Philippe slipped through our fingers, disappeared somewhere to the northeast. Father is hoping to convince Carmin and Bastian to support us there near their shared border.”

He glanced down at our entwined hands. I quickly returned mine to a patch of grass and began to pull up clumps. The sun was filtering through the mist now, streaking across our chests. “You know, I missed you,” he said. “I was thinking about that treatise you’re writing on transformation magic.”

I threw grass at his face. “I’ve abandoned it entirely.”

His brow furrowed as he brushed the grass from his doublet. “Whatever for?”

“Prospero said he may be able to include portions of it in his own book instead.”

“Under his name?”

“Yes,” I mumbled. “I assume I will be credited. And I would rather that than nothing at all. So that perhaps in a thousand years, when another girl is born under the Moon, she’ll have some understanding of her potential. I’m still guessing.”

Hal scoffed and rolled over, studying my face. “I don’t have to guess. I thought that as soon as I returned, you’d understand. I thought it was like you said. When we were close enough, you’d be able to sense it.”