A wiser part of him whispered that it was better so. Tallain deserved all of her heart. But it hurt; Goddess, how it hurt to know that his own words had cost him Sionell’s caring, lost him that part of her he had always thought of as his alone.
He got to his feet, more drained now than even the strain of a powerful Sunrunning had made him. “Thank you for your honesty. What was it Mother told you when we were little? That a prince who reminds others of it isn’t much of a prince? How much less a prince he is if others have to remind him! If you’ll excuse me, I’ll have preparations to make for my coming act of fratricide.”
“Stop it, Pol!”
But he strode away from her, seeking the shaded silence of a little grove near the grotto from which she had come. She did not come after him. And perhaps that hurt most of all.
“So,” Miyon drawled. “My little hothouse rose, so carefully nurtured, has grown thorns.”
Meiglan froze. Miyon smiled down at her where she sat on a flat rock near the grotto pool. His quiet, silken approach had terrified her more than if he’d come here roaring out his rage. Good.
“You have few usable wits, but enough to understand that this has not endeared you to me. Had you thought about what will happen once you have no highborn allies to protect you?”
She looked sick, her skin turning slightly green.
“At Castle Pine there will be no one to rescue you when I whip the skin from your bones.”
“I won’t go. I’m staying here.”
The defiance infuriated him, but he made himself laugh. “By the Goddess, it has a brain after all! Yes, you will stay here! Can you guess why?”
“Stay—?” she whispered. “You will let me stay?”
Miyon loomed over her, and menace replaced the laughter. “Until the Rialla at Dragon’s Rest. After that, you will stay there. As Pol’s wife.”
Meiglan stared up at him dumbly. Breath rasped in her lungs and she trembled like a captive wild thing.
“He can’t keep his eyes from you. It should be fairly easy for you to trap him into a formal Choice. Use these newfound wits of yours. Because only when you are his wife will you be safe.” Her mute anguish ignited his temper at last. Plucking her up by the shoulders, he shook her until her bones rattled. But she did not cry out, which angered him even more.
“Do you understand? Do you hear what I’m telling you, daughter of a whore? Your mother schemed to become a princess. You will be High Princess once that dragon-spawn who sired Pol is dead. It’s the only way to save your own life.”
“And yours,” she breathed, and light came back into her eyes.
Miyon dropped her to the ground, where she crumpled like a rag doll. “I was afraid I’d have to use words of one syllable,” he snapped. “You’re quite right, my precious jewel. Rohan can scarcely execute the father of his son’s wife.”
“No.” But it was not agreement with his analysis; rather, defiance.
“You will do it,” he said. “Wed him and bed him and make him the perfect little princess. Goddess help him!” He managed a real laugh this time. “A mouse has more spirit, a plow-elk more intelligence! You have beauty and music, and that’s all. No use to a prince. He’ll rule alone. You’ll never be any worth to him except in breeding his heirs and playing him to sleep with your lute.”
She flinched, but there was something in her eyes—something. He must not lose his advantage of terror over her, lest she see his own fear. His life was in the hands of the daughter he despised. She held the whip now; he could not let her feel it in her fingers.
“No,” she said again, this time with more voice in it. “I won’t do this. Sionell will protect me—she’s my friend, she said so just now—”
“Brave try,” he sneered. “There’s only one problem. You want Pol. Don’t you, sweet little flower? Don’t you!”
He had her now. It didn’t much matter why she obeyed him—through fear of him or love of Pol—as long as she did obey. And she would, or lose the dragon’s son forever. She bent her head to her knees and quivered, but the sound that came from her was not a moan. It was “Yes.”
Satisfied, Miyon gazed down at her for a moment more. Then he hauled her up by the shoulders again. “Future High Princesses do not bury their faces in the dirt,” he mocked, “not even to their fathers.”
She looked up at him, dark eyes sparking with some of the courage of that morning. He slapped her across the face, snapping her head to one side and nearly breaking her nose.
“Remember that,” he growled, and released her. She staggered but managed to keep her feet. With a last contemptuous glance that hid his relief, Miyon turned on his heel and strode away.
Meiglan’s ankle stabbed painfully as she limped to the pool. She knelt to wash her face, crying out softly when her scraped and bloody hands contacted the cold. The water she splashed on her face dripped dark. Her cheek was on fire, her nose not quite numb. With movements which after a time became automatic, she kept rinsing her face until the bleeding stopped.
For the second time that day she was startled by a voice behind her. But this one—soft, worried, weary—caught her heart. “My lady? Are you all right?”
Frantically she sluiced more water onto her burning face. Though there was no more blood, she could feel the bruises swelling her cheek and nose. Yet she could not avoid him. So she stood, trying not to favor her injured ankle, and met his gaze with what she hoped was pride enough.
His reaction was immediate and frightening. His eyes kindled with fury, lips thinned to a lethal slash, it was a face she had never seen him wear. “Your father?” he demanded.
She nodded helplessly. “I don’t want to go back to Castle Pine! Ever!”
He came toward her, mist from the waterfall gathering in his hair. As he passed from shadow into a shaft of sunlight through the trees, the droplets shone like a crown of tiny rainbows. “Ah, Meggie,” he whispered, brushing the curls from her brow. “You needn’t be afraid of him ever again. I promise.”
The sound of her childhood name was so piercing sweet that tears came to her eyes. And again she surprised herself, for she had not wept in front of her father, not even when he had slapped her. But now—now a sob strangled her breathing. It escaped as a soft moan and she turned away.
“You don’t believe me?” he asked.
She made herself answer. “If you say it, then it must be true.”
His hands rested on her shoulders, light and tender over the bruises her father had given her. “It helps me, knowing you trust me. That seems to be in rather short supply.”
She risked a glance over her shoulder. His face was pensive, solemn. “How could anyone not trust you?”
Her honest amazement made him smile, and he turned her to face him. “You are the most wondrously innocent person I’ve ever met. There’s no subterfuge in you, is there? None of that proud cleverness that surrounds me—that I flatter myself I possess.”
She remembered her father’s mockery, and flushed.
“That’s the difference between me and my father,” he went on, more to himself than to her. “He has a patience I envy but will never possess. It’s the patience of cunning—but I’m not comfortable with it. I can’t emulate him.”
She struggled for understanding. “You have your own way of doing things, my lord.”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I think what it must be is that he feels things more deeply than I do. He takes them personally. Not in the sense of being offended, but—as if he’s responsible even when he isn’t. I don’t have the courage to inflict that on myself. I don’t know how he does it, quite frankly—or why. I don’t have patience or strength to fight the way he does.”
“But not everything that goes wrong is your responsibility,” she ventured, trying to comprehend him. “Your way is better than his.”