grief that clouded his eyes and scarred his sensitive mouth. Her hands reached involuntarily and she cried out as Fire seared her fingers and her mind.
“Sioned!”
She was scarcely aware of the cold water Camigwen poured over her burned fingers or of the worried voices around her. The pain had raced up her hands and arms to her heart, and deep into that portion of her brain that knew how to ride the woven threads of sunlight. She rocked back and forth, gasping around the agony until it gradually began to fade and she could see clearly once more.
Her friends had gathered in a circle of concern. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, ashamed, and bent her head, cradling her burned fingers in her lap.
“The fire blew sparks, that’s all,” Camigwen told the others.
“Be more careful, Sioned,” Meath cautioned, patting her shoulder with rough affection. She nodded wordlessly, unable to look at any of her friends.
“Yes,” Ostvel drawled. “We owe the prince a bride who doesn’t wince with pain when he kisses her hands. Everybody get some sleep. We’ve got a long way to ride tomorrow.” When they had gone, he crouched down beside Sioned, tilting her face up to his with an insistent finger beneath her chin.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated.
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” Camigwen said. “I only wanted you to look at him again and realize you don’t have to be afraid.”
“You lost control of a Fire-conjure?” Ostvel asked, and when Sioned nodded miserably, he whistled. “I can hardly wait to meet this prince of yours. Any man who causes a Sunrunner of your rank to make a mistake like that—”
“It wasn’t him, it was me,” Sioned told him, then burst out, “and Cami tells me I have nothing to fear!”
“If you do,” Ostvel murmured, “it’s fear of too much brightness. Too much Fire. Not the shadows, Sioned—never those.”
“I could get as easily lost in the one as in the other,” she whispered, staring down at her hands.
Rohan managed to elude his aunt successfully until the evening after the dragon hunt. Andrade, after sending Tobin to rest and recover from the drain on her energies, had sought the young prince but had not found him. Her dignity forbade asking anyone for his whereabouts. She had a reputation to maintain, after all, and refused to admit that she was unable to find one man in a finite area. Irked at his ability to vanish when he wished—and entirely familiar with it from his childhood—she decided to stubborn him out, knowing full well that he would choose the time and place of their meeting.
She spent part of the day with Tobin, giving her niece a deserved explanation. Chay was sleeping off physical and emotional exhaustion—and all the wine he’d drunk on an empty stomach, trying to forget the sight of Zehava being gored by the dragon—when Andrade appeared at the door of Tobin’s chambers late in the morning. The two women went down into the gardens for a private talk.
“It was very strange,” Tobin admitted when Andrade asked her reaction to what they had done the previous evening. “I always wondered how faradh’im worked with the sunlight.”
“Don’t think that because you helped me once you’ll be able to do it on your own,” Andrade warned. “The balance is a delicate one, and control of it takes a good deal of training.” She paused as a groundskeeper bowed his way out of their presence near the roses. “But I think I’ll have Sioned teach you something about it when she arrives.”
“Is that her name? Sioned?”
“Yes, but accent the second syllable more. ‘Sh-ned,’ ” she repeated.
“It’s a lovely name,” Tobin mused. “Does Rohan know yet that he’s expected to add ‘princess’ to it?”
“I thought you’d figure that out. Yes, she’s going to be his wife. He doesn’t know it yet, but he soon will.”
“I liked her. It’s as if I touched her somehow. There were—colors, almost as if I could hold them in my hands. Beautiful colors.”
“I don’t think this kind of touching is completely new to you.” She cocked an eyebrow at the princess.
“Sometimes with Chay I feel something of the same thing,” Tobin said slowly. “Almost as if I’m looking into him and he’s all sorts of colors. Does that mean I can learn to be faradhi?”
“Sioned can teach you a little—but no more than that. It’s dangerous.”
“I remember when Kessel got shadow-lost,” she replied quietly. “Mother and I took care of him until he died.”
Andrade glanced away, remembering the handsome young