Fire - Kristin Cashore [62]
He took a breath, as if to clear his head, and spoke more steadily. ‘The other is to ask you, Lady, to reconsider the issue of the prisoner. This is a desperate time. No doubt you’ve a low opinion of my ability to reason, but I swear to you, Lady, that on my throne - when you’re not in my thoughts - I see clearly what’s right. The kingdom is on the verge of something important. It might be victory, it might be collapse. Your mental power could help us enormously, and not just with one prisoner.’
Fire turned her back to the door and crouched low against it. She held her head up by her hair. ‘I’m not that kind of monster,’ she said miserably.
‘Reconsider, Lady. We could make rules, set limits. There are reasonable men among my advisers. They wouldn’t ask too much of you.’
‘Leave me to think about it.’
‘Will you? Will you really think about it?’
‘Leave me,’ she said, more forcefully now. She felt his focus shift from business back to his feelings. There was a lengthy silence.
‘I don’t want to leave,’ he said.
Fire bit down on her mounting frustration. ‘Go.’
‘Marry me, Lady,’ he whispered, ‘I beg you.’
His mind was his own as he asked it, and he knew how foolish he was. She sensed plain and clear that he simply couldn’t help himself.
She pretended hardness, though hardness was not what she felt. Go, before you ruin the peace between us.
ONCE HE’D GONE she sat on the floor, face in hands, wishing herself alone, until Musa brought her a drink, and Mila, shyly, a hot compress for her back. She thanked them, and drank; and because she had no choice, eased into their quiet company.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FIRE’S ABILITY TO rule her father had depended upon his trust.
As an experiment, in the winter after his accident, Fire got Cansrel to stick his hand into his bedroom fire. She did it by making his mind believe that it was flowers in the grate, and not flame. He reached in to pick them and recoiled; Fire took stronger hold and made him more determined. He reached in again, obstinately resolved to pick flowers, and this time believed he was picking them, until pain brought his mind and his reality crashing back to him. He screamed and ran to the window, threw it open, thrust his hand into the snow piled against the windowpane. He turned to her, cursing, almost crying, to demand what in the Dells she thought she was doing.
It was not an easy thing to explain, and she burst into quite authentic tears that came from the confusion of conflicting emotions. Distress at the sight of his blistered skin, his blackened fingernails, and a terrible smell she hadn’t anticipated. Terror of losing his love now that she’d compelled him to hurt himself. Terror of losing his trust, and with it her power to compel him ever to do it again. She threw herself sobbing onto the pillows of his bed. ‘I wanted to see what it was like to hurt someone,’ she spat at him, ‘like you always tell me to. And now I know, and I’m horrified with both of us, and I’ll never do it again, not to anyone.’
He came to her then, the anger gone from his face. It was clear that her tears grieved him, so she let the tears come. He sat beside her, his burned hand clutched to his side but his focus clearly on her and her sadness. He stroked her hair with his unhurt hand, trying to soothe her. She took the hand, pressed it to her wet face, and kissed it.
After a moment of this he shifted, extricating his hand from hers. ‘You’re too old for that,’ he said.
She didn’t understand him. He cleared his throat. His voice was rough from his own pain.
‘You must remember that you’re a woman now, Fire, and an unnatural beauty. Men will find your touch overwhelming. Even your father.’
She knew that he meant it plainly, that it contained no threat, no suggestion. He was only being frank, as he was with all matters relating to her monster power, and teaching her something important, for her own safety. But her instincts saw an opportunity. One way to secure Cansrel’s trust