"We'll discuss it later," Garan said. His eyes slid to Fire's face and she met his gaze curiously. His eyebrows snapped down, making him fierce, and oddly like Brigan.
"So, Lady Fire," he said, addressing her directly for the first time. "Are you going to do what the king's asked, and use your mental power to question our prisoners?"
"No, Lord Prince. I only use my mental power in self-defence."
"Very noble of you," Garan said, sounding exactly like he didn't mean it, so that she was perplexed, and looked back at him calmly, and said nothing.
"It would be self-defence," Clara put in distractedly, frowning still at the paper before her. "The self-defence of this kingdom. Not that I don't understand your resistance to humouring Nash when he's been such a boor, Lady, but we need you."
"Do we? I find myself undecided on the matter," Garan said. He dipped his pen into an inkwell. He blotted carefully, and scribbled a few sentences onto the paper before him. Without looking at Fire he opened a feeling to her, coolly and with perfect control. She felt it keenly. Suspicion. Garan did not trust her, and he wanted her to know it.
That evening, when Fire sensed the king's approach, she locked the entrance to her rooms. He made no objection to this, resigned, seemingly, to holding a conversation with her through the oak of her sitting room door. It was not a very private conversation, on her side at least, for her on-duty guards could recede only so far into her rooms. Before the king spoke, she warned him that he was overheard.
His mind was open and troubled, but clear. "If you'll bear with me, Lady, I've only two things to say."
"Go on, Lord King," Fire said quietly, her forehead resting against the door.
"The first is an apology, for my entire self."
Fire closed her eyes. "It's not your entire self that needs to apologise. Only the part that wants to be taken by my power."
"I can't change that part, Lady."
"You can. If you're too strong for me to control, then you're strong enough to control yourself."
"I can't, Lady, I swear to it."
You don't want to, she corrected him silently. You don't want to give up the feeling of me, and that is your problem.
"You're a very strange monster," he said, almost whispering. "Monsters are supposed to want to overwhelm men."
And what could she respond to that? She made a bad monster and a worse human. "You said it was two things, Lord King."
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 was to turn this around: make Cansrel feel the need to prove his own trustworthiness to her.
She pushed herself away from him, pretending horror. She ran from the room.
That evening Cansrel stood outside Fire's closed door, pleading with her to understand. "Darling child," he said. "You need never fear me; you know I'd never act on such base instincts with you. It's only that I worry about the men who would. You must understand the dangers of your power to yourself. If you were a son I would not be so worried."
She let him make his explanations for a while, and was stunned, inside her room, with how easy it was to manipulate the master manipulator. Astonished and dismayed. Understanding that she'd learned how to do this from him.
Finally she came out and stood before him. "I understand," she said. "I'm sorry, Father." Tears slid down her face and she pretended they were on account of his bandaged hand, which, in part, they were.
"I wish you would be more cruel with your power," he said, touching her hair and kissing her. "Cruelty is strong self-defence."
And so, at the end of her experiment, Cansrel still trusted her. And he had reason to, for Fire didn't think she could go through with anything like that again.