Kushiel's Mercy - Jacqueline Carey [4]
I lingered in the bedroom, overcome by memory. The bed was larger than I remembered; I’d grown accustomed to a smaller scale in Alba. I twisted the knotted gold ring on my finger without thinking, clenching my fist until it bit into my palm. It was here that Sidonie had given it to me. But in truth, this bedchamber held more memories of Dorelei.
Gods, I’d been an ass to her!
“I’m sorry, love,” I murmured. “You made me a better man in the end. I’ll try to be worthy of it.”
It had been Dorelei’s last wish to send me back to Sidonie. I’d done it, although I hadn’t wanted to. She’d been right to do it, though. If I hadn’t, if I hadn’t seized that bright thread of hope and joy . . . I don’t know what would have become of me. I might have become a cold and bitter monster, like the vision I saw of our grown son. I might have died in the far reaches of Vralia, bereft of all reason to live. Such things are never given to us to know, and in my experience, it is best not to meddle.
That had been a year ago.
A year since Ysandre de la Courcel found me kneeling, heartbroken, in her daughter’s embrace. A year since she burst into fury, speaking words that singed my ears. I’d left the City of Elua that day. Two days later, I’d departed on the trail of the man who killed my wife, the bear-witch who’d nearly taken my life, too. But in those few days, Sidonie and I had done a fair job of overturning the entire Court.
Now I was back.
The servants brought my trunk. I unpacked my things myself. There wasn’t much aside from clothing: a leather-bound book of love letters that Sidonie had given me, a wooden flute that had been a gift from Hugues, and a flint-striking kit. Everything else, I carried on me. My sword and dagger. The etched vambraces Dorelei had commissioned for me. Sidonie’s ring. The gold torc that marked me as a prince of Alba. Drustan mab Necthana, the Cruarch of Alba, had given it to me himself when I wed Dorelei there. And in the purse at my belt, a smooth stone with a hole in the center; a croonie-stone, the ollamhs called it.
It had been part of the bindings that protected me from Alban magic, and I carried it for remembrance. I never wanted to be bound like that again, ever. The bindings had protected me, but they’d severed me from myself, too.
Never again.
And yet if it hadn’t been for that binding, I might have spent all my days with Dorelei aching and miserable, seething in discontent. I might never have learned to love her, and grown from a pining, self-absorbed youth to a man in the process.
Or she might not have been slain.
I would never know.
“Prince Imriel?” The chambermaid appeared in the doorway, startling me out of my reverie. “Your bath is ready.”
“Thank you.” I racked my memory. “Delphine, is it not?”
“Aye, my lord.” She bobbed a curtsy. “I’m . . . We were all very sorry to hear of Lady Dorelei’s death. She was kind.”
“Thank you,” I repeated. “Yes, she was.”
The chambermaid hesitated, sympathy and avid curiosity warring on her pert features. “Is it true that you, that you and . . . ?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh!” Her eyes widened. “Well, then . . . well.”
“Indeed,” I agreed gravely.
Politics and gossip, the lifeblood of the D’Angeline Court. I dismissed Delphine from the bathing-chamber, sinking into the warm water and enjoying a few minutes of luxurious privacy before I heard a familiar voice arguing at the door to the antechamber. I listened, smiling.
“He’s right,” I called out at length. “You may admit him.”
“Name of Elua!” My cousin Mavros Shahrizai strode into the bathing-chamber and glared at me, hands on his hips. His midnight-black hair was loose and rippling, his blue eyes vivid with emotion. We bore an unmistakable family resemblance. “Do you never think to send word? We worry, you know.”
I stood in the tub, dripping. “Hello, Mavros.”
“Idiot.” He gripped my bare shoulders and gave me the kiss of greeting, then held me away from him, gazing with a critical eye at the pink furrows of flesh that ran at a raking angle from my right shoulder to my left hip. “Gods, it’s worse than I reckoned.