Lips Like Ice

XXXII

Lydia is hiding under the bed when the Prince is brought into the room. She has her little glass knife with her, in her hand and ready, and her writing box jammed up into the corner between the legs of the headboard. She didn't dare go back into the basket, for fear that they would drag it out, or run a sword through it, or something. And after seeing how the Indigo Queen treated the Prince's body, she didn't have much hope that she would treat his possessions any better.

As she suspected, the guards who drag the Prince in kick Lydia's basket, deliberately punting it aside. They throw the Prince onto the bed, and the mattress dips enough to touch Lydia's back but not squish her. The guards say something in the language that Lydia has lost nearly all ability to understand. She can't see them from this angle, but on the wall she catches the shadow mirroring the gestures of one as he points to the bathroom. They're not wrong. The Prince reeks of stale sex and rotting flowers. Lydia gags and holds her sleeve over her mouth.

One of the guards lights the fire in the hearth, and then they retreat, taking, Lydia assumes, the firelighter with them. Not leaving behind the potential weapon – or any method of mortal escape. The slam of the door and the click of the lock are loud and final-sounding. The Prince groans and the mattress shifts and Lydia wiggles out of her hiding place, sets the shard on the bedside table, and climbs up onto the bed beside him.

"Hello," she says. "You probably can't understand me now. But you look like shit."

The Prince cracks an eyelid at her. He is naked, and sweaty, and his crotch is covered with something viscous and light purple and drying. The chains are pulling, digging into his skin, leaving purple bruises in some places. The welts on his thighs are angry indigo, and when Lydia brushes her fingertips over one, it is swollen and hot.

"Your confirmation of the fact does not exactly make me feel any better," the Prince says dryly.

Lydia jerks back, startled. The Prince tries to sit up, fails, and Lydia shoves one of the pillows behind his neck so he can at least look at her easily, without straining.

"So, you speak English?" Lydia asks. The Prince nods.

"I learned as I studied your home world." His accent is strange. Before he spoke with a perfect North American broadcast accent— he sounded like a news anchor. Now his words are filled with clicking consonants and weird, dipping, buzzing vowels. Lydia has to watch his lips to catch everything that he's trying to articulate.

"Convenient. You learned fast."

He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand, as if to say no faster than any other ice-elf-alien-prince-thing. The room is getting warmer, so Lydia strips out of one set of her socks, and one of the dresses. She looks around, and someone has left a carafe of water and one tin cup on the bedside stand. Lydia retrieves this, helps the Prince take a drink, then takes one for herself.

"Your mother's scar-spell is dying," Lydia says, refilling the cup and holding it back to his lips. "Or maybe it's dead already. I don't know."

"Do you remember things?"

Lydia swallows her heart, willing it back down into her chest. Pain beats against the inside of her skull, like memories pounding at the doors of bone, trying to get out. She squeezes her eyes shut and grimaces. "I'm trying not to. At least, not all at once. Maybe not at all."

"Why?"

"Not remembering has made this easy. If I know what I've lost, who I miss, what I've left behind..."

The Prince reaches out, curls his long fingers around hers. "I do understand. It is better not to dwell, not to pine for things and places and people you cannot have." His voice crackles on the end of the sentence, and Lydia sets aside the water and carefully lays down beside him, wrapping her arms over his shoulders, breathing gentle and warm into his hair.