Duty-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book II ]

37

After a particularly exhausting round on patrol, Uachi came back to his room to find two guards posted outside the door. He looked from one to the other with a frown. "What's the meaning of this?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, Uachi," said the taller of the two. "She insisted she had to speak with you."

Rolling his eyes, Uachi shoved past the two of them. "Next time, see to it that His Grace's guest remains where she's told." He swung open the door to his room.  

Inside, Ealin was seated on the bed. The hour was late; she had lit the spirit globe in its sconce on the wall by his door. His lip curling in disgust, Uachi reached up and touched it with two fingers, and the light went out at once. "I do not use magicked trinkets in my room," he snapped.

Ealin rose to her feet at once. When her wide-eyed gaze fell upon Uachi's face, he knew that he had frightened her; she edged back away from him along the bed. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"What are you doing here, Ealin?"

She met him with silence. Bristling, Uachi swung the door shut. "You cannot keep coming to me like this. Folk will think there's something unseemly going on between us, a Hanpean soldier and the emperor's pris...guest."

Her glassy eyes downcast, Ealin whispered, "Do you care what they think?"

"It doesn't matter whether I care or not. His High-and-Mightiness will give me a tongue-lashing, and I've not had one of those since I was a boy. Leave, Ealin. Go back to your room."

"Please," she whispered. "I cannot sleep there. I have stayed there these past many nights, but the last hour of rest I had was when I stayed in here with you."

"You cannot sleep? Nor can I." He laid his hand on the doorknob, prepared to turn her out. "You are in good company during each wakeful hour."

A soft sound came to him through the gloom. At first, he thought it was a chuckle, but then, as Ealin lifted her hands to cover her face, he realized she was crying. A sick feeling of guilt settled into his stomach. Peeking through her fingers as if hoping to hide the evidence of her weeping from him, Ealin edged toward the door.

Uachi reached out, closing his large hand over Ealin's narrow shoulder. "Wait."

She shrank away from him as if his fingers had been hot coals, coming up hard against the wall with an arm raised in instinctive defense. His hand hanging in the air, Uachi met her gaze. In every aspect of her being there was terror, from her parted lips to the tremble of her hands.

"Tell me," he murmured. "What is it that causes a Starborn mage such fear, Ealin? You are among the most powerful, most untouchable class of people in this realm. What can have made you so afraid?"

"I'll leave," she said. She slid along the wall toward the door, but Uachi took one step, and she came to a halt.

"I mean you no harm," he said. "My words were hard, that I'll admit, but I must make you understand that from me, and from the man I serve—the emperor—you need fear no violence or ill treatment. I had hoped that would be clear."

She looked up at him in silence, one hand still raised.

"I suppose you would be afraid," he said. "You haven't any of your bloody trinkets to use for working spells. Without a bloodstone, you're as weak a woman as any other in the realm."

Slowly, Ealin lowered her hand; Uachi watched that hand, alert, as always, to a stranger's every move. It was without thinking that he reached for his dagger when he saw her fingertips begin to glow. Stealing a glance at Ealin's face as the energy began to crackle up her arm, he unsheathed the dagger he wore at his waist and slid into a fighting stance at once.