The Pearl of the Soul of the World - By Meredith Ann Pierce Page 0,22
"I have told you that."
He had told her! Incomprehension filled Aeriel. Her fingers on the pole beneath the pavilion silk tightened. She had thought only she and perhaps the Lady Syllva privy to that secret. All Erin and the camp could know were rumors. Yet he had told Sabr. Why? She whom many still called the queen of Avaric dropped her hand from him, her face falling.
"Yes," she said quietly. "And the only satisfaction it gives me is that you cannot love her either."
"Don't speak of her so," whispered Irrylath. Sabr turned abruptly away.
"She frightens you, doesn't she?" the prince's cousin snapped. "Almost as much as the Witch. You fear her sorcerous green eyes see everything." Sabr snorted. "Do they? Do they see us now?"
Only half hidden by the corner of the tent, Aeriel stood riveted, too stunned to move. She felt powerless, exposed, standing in plain view. Yet neither her husband nor the so-called queen of Avaric took note of her, their eyes on one another.
"She stood in the temple fire at Orm," continued Sabr bitterly. "It has burned her shadow away. She wears a pearl on her breast that is full of light. What sort of mortal creature is that?"
The bandit queen turned back to Irrylath, seizing his arm. This time he did not move away.
"I tell you, she is no mortal woman! She is some unworldly thing, Ravenna's sorceress. How could you love her? Surely the Witch's spell is simply what you have told her to keep her at bay."
The prince shook his head. His voice was hoarse. "Would that it were."
His cousin did not seem to be listening. Her knuckles were pale where she clenched his arm. "But I am a mortal woman. I would be content with just your heart. Truly—"
At last, at last he pulled free of her. Watching, Aeriel held her breath. Her knees felt shaky, weak.
She clung to the pavilion pole.
"I am not free to give it," said Irrylath. "My heart is not my own."
" She took it, didn't she?" Sabr snapped.
The prince bowed his head, looking away from her. He touched his breast. "And gilded it with lead."
"I wasn't speaking of the Witch," the bandit queen replied. "When she rescued you and took the Witch's gilding off, she didn't give you back your own heart, did she? She kept that for herself."
Sabr strode around to face him and laid her hand upon his breast.
"The heart that beats here is not yours, is it?" she pressed. He would not look at her. "How then can you say," Sabr insisted lowly, "that she did not seek to make you hers, exactly as did the Witch?"
Aeriel felt rage surge in her again, dangerously. Not true, not true! She had only wanted to save him, by putting her own living heart in his breast. It had been Talb the Mage who had taken the enchanted darkangel's heart, purged it of the Witch's lead, and placed it into the dying Aeriel's breast.
"I love you," said Sabr.
"Don't say it."" The prince's voice was ragged.
Sabr's hand remained upon his heart. She answered, "I don't care whether you can lie with me or not.
I only want you to love me in return."
He looked up, then hard away. Aeriel saw the despair in his eyes. "I can't," he whispered to Sabr. "I don't know how. The Witch has got her talons in me still. I can't love you, or her, or anyone while the White Witch lives."
The sky seemed to spin over Aeriel. There, he had used it, Sabr's word, that nameless her. Sabr reached to cup the prince's face in her hands, but Aeriel hardly saw.
"I'll show you," she told him. "I'll help you." Again he shook his head.
Jealousy consumed Aeriel. How dared the bandit queen? How could Sabr, who had known Irrylath only a few short daymonths, become so close to him? Surely she, Aeriel, had tried every whit as hard to touch him, to lend comfort, to know his heart—only to be repeatedly rebuffed. You cannot help me, he had told her once by starlight. No one can help me. But she did not hear him say so to Sabr now.
"Whether you love me or not," she told him, "whether you can lie with me or not, I love you. And I only wish that your heart were your own to give as you choose, not some scrap to be tugged to pieces between the teeth of the White Witch and a green-eyed sorceress."