The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [133]
“I can’t bear to see you doing his bidding,” Areana exploded, and he saw sudden real fury in her eyes. “It’s obscene, a perversion of your talent.”
He stared at her for a moment, unblinking, as he registered something she hadn’t quite said.
“What did they do to you?” he asked at last.
She blushed and took a further step back. “They did not hurt me, not as they did you,” she said quietly.
“I can see that,” he said, growing angry. “But what did they do to you?”
She flinched at his tone.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing I want to talk about.”
“Tell me,” he said more softly.
Her eyes teared up. “Please, Leoff. Please leave it be. If I don’t tell you—”
“Don’t tell me what?”
Her mouth parted. “I’ve never seen you like this,” she said.
“You’ve barely seen me at all,” Leoff hissed. “You think you know me?”
“Leoff, please don’t be angry with me.”
He took a deep breath. “Were you raped?”
She looked away, and when she turned back, her face had a grimmer cast. “Would that make a difference to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, could you still love me if I had been raped?”
Now he was aware that his jaw was hanging completely open. “Love you? When did I ever say I loved you?”
“Well, you didn’t, did you? You’re too shy and too preoccupied. I don’t know; maybe you aren’t even aware you love me. But you do.”
“I do?”
“Of course. And it’s not that I think everyone loves me, you know. But sometimes a girl knows, and with you I know. Or did.”
Leoff felt tears streaming down his face. He held his hands up. She shook her head.
“That doesn’t matter to me,” she said softly.
“It matters to me,” he replied. “What did they do to you?”
She lowered her head. “What you said,” she admitted.
“How many times?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“I’m so sorry, Areana.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said, looking back up. Her eyes were smoldering now. “Make them pay.”
For a precious moment he wanted to tell her his plan, to take her in what remained of his arms. But that would only weaken him, and now, more urgently than ever, he needed the worst he had in him.
“Robert doesn’t pay,” Leoff said. “Robert gets away with it, and we pay. Now, please go. I have work to do.”
“Leoff—”
“Go. Please.”
He turned away, and a few heartbeats later he heard footsteps retreating slowly and then picking up speed.
When he looked again, she was gone, and his feeling of sickness returned, stronger than before.
He settled back in front of the score and began again.
ANNE SURVEYED herself dubiously in the looking glass.
“You look every inch a queen,” Austra assured her.
To that Anne could only answer with a dour chuckle, thinking of her mother with her alabaster skin, flawless hands, and long, silky hair. What she gleaned from the flecked mirror Artwair had found somewhere was a very different image.
Weather had chapped and reddened her face, and her freckles—always ubiquitous—were fatted on Vitellian sunlight. Her shorn hair was tucked underneath a wimple of the sort that hadn’t been popular outside of covens since before she was born. The gown was nice, though, a red-and-gold brocade, not too fancy, not too simple.
Even so, she felt like a toad in a silk slip.
“You have the bearing,” Austra amplified, clearly understanding her doubts.
“Thank you,” Anne replied, having nothing else to say. Would anyone in Eslen agree? She supposed she would find out.
“Now, what should I wear?” Austra mused.
Anne raised an eyebrow. “It shouldn’t matter, I think. You aren’t going.”
“Of course I’m going,” Austra said firmly.
“I thought I asked you never to question me again,” Anne said.
“You never said that,” Austra protested. “You said I might argue with you, try to persuade you, but in the end your word would be my law. That is still the case. But it would be foolish not to take me.”
“And how is that?”
“How will it look, a queen