The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [187]
She closed the window and sat on the bed to think. Her leg was really bothering her, and she wondered how long such a wound would take to heal. Would it mend entirely, or would she limp for the rest of her life?
About a bell later, she heard the key scraping in the door again, and, clutching the spindle, she waited to see who it was.
A man stepped into the room, and immediately she knew him. Deep down she’d known she would.
“Well,” he said. “I mistook you for a boy once before, and did so again when I saw that hair.”
“Roderick.”
“Well, I’m glad you remember me now,” he said. “After meeting you on the road, I wasn’t so sure you hadn’t quite forgotten me.”
“Roderick,” she repeated, searching for something plausible to say.
His tone sobered a bit. “You terrified me, you know. I thought you were dead.”
“I’m in your father’s castle, then?” she asked.
“Yes, welcome to Dunmrogh.”
“I had friends back in the forest. We were attacked.”
“Yes, I know—I’m sorry, they were all slain. Brigands, I suppose. We’ve had our troubles with them, lately. But look, Anne—it’s impossible that you could be here. How in the name of Saint Tarn is it that you are?”
She studied his face, the face she had dreamed about for so long. While hers had seemed older, his seemed younger, and not as familiar as it ought to. It came to her that she had really known him for only a few days, not even a month. She’d been in love with him, hadn’t she? It had felt like that. Yet now, looking at him, she didn’t feel the overflow of joy she’d been expecting.
And it wasn’t just because she knew he was lying.
“Stop it, Roderick,” she said wearily. “Please. If I ever meant anything to you at all, just stop it.”
He frowned. “Anne, I can’t say I know what you mean.”
“I mean my letter,” she said. “The one I sent from the coven. Cazio did have it delivered after all.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I doubted him.”
“You’ve left me behind someplace, Princess. I thought you would be happy to see me. After all, we—I mean, I thought you loved me.”
“I don’t know what love is anymore,” Anne said, “and there’s too much else in the way of me wanting to remember.”
He took a step forward, but she held up her hand. “Wait,” she said.
“I’ve no intention to harm you, Anne,” Roderick said. “Indeed, quite the opposite.”
“I ask you once again, don’t lie to me,” Anne said. “It won’t do you any good. I know you betrayed me. I’ve been chased over all the earth by men who tried to kill me, but when I finally started chasing them, where did they come? Here. They’re here, aren’t they?”
Roderick stared at her for a moment; then he shut the door and locked it. He turned and walked back toward her.
“I didn’t have a choice, can you understand that? My duty to my family—that’s always first. Before king, before praifec, before love.”
“It was no accident that we met,” she accused. “You were looking for me, that day on the Sleeve.”
He hesitated. “Yes,” he said at last.
“And my letter—you showed it to them.”
“Yes, to my father. And then I hated myself—I still hate myself for what you went through. The whole thing began as a charade, to get you to trust me. But I got stuck in it somehow. Do you know how I’ve dreamed of you these months? Everything faded when I thought you were dead. I wished to die myself. And then, by a miracle, I found you here.” He put his right hand to his forehead. “The dreams, Anne. The dreams of you, of holding you—I cannot sleep.”
Roderick’s voice shook with desperate sincerity, and she suddenly remembered the day she had met him. She and Austra had gone into the tomb of Genya Dare, below the old horz in Eslen-of-Shadows, and they had written a curse against Fastia on a lead tissue and placed it in the coffin so Genya could take it to Cer, the avenger of women. Only she hadn’t really cursed Fastia, but simply asked that her sister would be nicer. And on a whim she had added, “And fix the heart of Roderick of Dunmrogh on me.