seeing, through blurry eyes, that hate reflected back from him. It was hard, in such a blinding storm of agony, not to hate the person that caused it, however unintentionally. It was hard to care about anything but stopping the pain.
In the end, the lesson took. Arkady cut a thin scarlet line across the width of Judah’s thigh and neither of them so much as flinched.
“Good,” Elban said, the first time he’d spoken. The Seneschal had nodded.
Very shortly thereafter, Elly had arrived from Tiernan. Judah was still bandaged under her clothes. She still hurt. She and Gavin could barely speak to each other. They were in too much pain and the memories were still too fresh. Theron was little and scared and didn’t understand. She felt utterly, completely alone, in a way she never had before.
And into the midst of this pain and confusion came Eleanor of Tiernan, wearing her nicest clothes (which still seemed old-fashioned and dowdy), her long hair braided into loops. Her thick-lashed eyes looked too big for her face and everyone who saw her was charmed by the quaint little thing from the provinces. Arkady examined the future Lady of the City and pronounced her healthy (and did not burn or cut or hit her, Judah could not help but notice); Elban came, too, his first visit to their rooms since Theron’s birth and the last he would ever make. As he sat on the late Lady Clorin’s pale rose-colored sofa, he’d taken the unprecedented step of bringing the new little girl onto his knee for a few minutes, asking questions in his cool, cultured voice. How had her trip been? (Very lovely, thank you, Lord Elban, and the carriage you sent was extremely fine.) Did she miss her mother and father, and all of her brothers? (Only a very little bit, Lord Elban, because who could ever be sad in a place as grand as this?) Would she behave herself, and work hard, and do everything she was told, so that one day she might be worthy of the honor of being Gavin’s Lady? (I could never be worthy, Lord Elban, but I will work very hard.)
As they spoke, his icy eyes had moved from his oldest son, sitting impassive and stiff—there were bandages under Gavin’s clothes, too—to Judah, skulking across the room. Judah felt the hate in those eyes, the contempt. Her life until the nights in the study had been relatively pleasant, but now she knew it didn’t have to be. He wouldn’t kill her, not until they were able to dissolve whatever it was that bound Gavin’s health to hers, but he could hurt her, and he would. The lovely little country doll on his knee was acceptable; Judah herself, with her savage-colored hair and her awkward bandages and her offensive black irises, was not. The doll would be lauded—in fact, as Judah watched, Elban slid a ring with a pale pink stone onto Eleanor’s finger—and Judah would be tolerated. Barely.
Judah didn’t care about rings and she didn’t want to sit on Elban’s lap. She would rather have been touched by the burning brand Arkady had used on her than by those thin white fingers. But she clearly read Gavin’s relief and greed as he watched his future bride, and it made her feel sick and unsteady. She realized later that this had all been deliberate. The men in the study hadn’t broken the unnatural bond, but they’d torn Judah and Gavin apart just the same. They had made it hard for him to meet her eye and then given him someone else to look at: someone uncomplicated and beautiful; someone entirely his, who he was allowed to love, and who nobody would ever try to take away from him.
They’d given Judah nothing.
It would have made all the sense in the world for Judah to hate Eleanor. For a few minutes, she did. But then the adults left, and the four of them were alone: Gavin and Judah, injured and traumatized; Theron, perpetually a bit baffled but especially then (left alone for all those nights with only the silent nurse for company, and then Gavin and Judah came back sick and odd and none of them slept in the same room anymore, and now apparently this complete stranger lived with them); and the new girl herself, Eleanor of Tiernan. Elly, although she wasn’t quite Elly to them yet. Who looked from one of them to the other. Smiled tentatively. Then dropped down