young man for one nearing his dotage. “I shouldn’t keep you standing here in the hot sun. I look forward to talking with you very soon, cousin—and, may I hope, your charming daughters?”
The High Prince and his entourage returned to their barge until their tents could be raised and furnished. The other princes and highborns left for their own camps, the welcoming farce over, all points going to Rohan in a game few were yet aware was being played. As Andrade descended the steps of the pier, she caught sight of a pale, intense face crowned by untidy red-gold hair, and lost all amusement at Rohan’s performance. Sioned had eyes only for him, and in those eyes was her heart.
Chapter Eleven
A violet sky loomed close and dark, dripped a stinging crystal rain that needled into his flesh. He moaned, covering his face with hands frozen into brittle carved ice, and sucked a deep breath of water-thick air. It hurt going into his lungs, hurt even more when it choked out of him in a sob. So it had finally happened, one part of his mind observed; he had taken too much dranath and was dead. There was a certain peace in the idea, although death was even more painful than life. Perhaps that served him right.
He peered through his parted fingers at the sky to see that it formed distinct segments, rising on either side of him, angling up to a point over his head. Not sky at all, only one of Roelstra’s violet tents. No freezing needles of rain, either, merely the lack of dranath turning his nerves to pinpoints of agony.
Crigo sat up, throbbing head gripped between his hands. Near his bed was a table with a silver wine pitcher. He gulped half the drugged wine directly from the chill container, then fell back with a long shudder of anticipated relief.
He had no memory of a journey, but there was only one place he could be: Waes. The tent around him, the voices outside, the scents of crushed grass and the river all confirmed the location. But he ought to have remembered sailing down the Faolain from Castle Crag—unless the drug-hunger meant he had been deliberately deprived of dranath so that the trip over water would incapacitate him. Either that, or he had indeed come close to killing himself on that night he had woven a moonlit path to Stronghold.
The last thing he truly remembered was that night, and he wished he did not. Especially did he recall the colors of the faradhi’s mind, lucent and distinctly feminine—fire-gold to burn him, river-blue to drown him, summer-green to seduce his arid mind into the richness of her, and the black anger of fierce protectiveness, implacable condemnation. Forcing himself to reconstruct the scene, he saw again through the wine steward’s eyes the assembly of vassals at Stronghold. He had done it before, using the man’s eyes and ears to observe for Roelstra. But she had caught him at it. He gasped as he looked on her face in memory—proud features too strong for conventional beauty, raging green eyes, red-gold hair. But more than the sight of her, the memory of her mind’s grasp terrified him. How skillfully she had woven the moonlight into a trap, until he had cried out to Lady Andrade and lost control.
He paused to calm his racing heartbeats, sank deeper into the drug. He knew the girl’s colors now; she might be able to identify his. But who was she? The wine steward had been about his kitchen duties earlier, so Crigo had not seen why she had been placed at the high table. Other faradh’im had been seated elsewhere in the Great Hall. Why had she been singled out?
“Awake at last, I see.”
The sound of Roelstra’s voice spasmed Crigo to a sitting position. The High Prince stood in the center of the carpet, magnificent in a violet silk tunic, dominating and angry. Crigo stammered out, “My l-lord—”
“You were unconscious for two days, and even when you woke you made no sense before falling back into your stupor. Tell me what happened that night.”
“I don’t know.” He drew bony knees to his chin and wrapped his arm around his legs. “I watched as you bid me. There was a girl—”
“What girl? What did she look like?”
“Green eyes, red hair. A faradhi.” He frowned, bringing the picture into focus again. “Seven rings—no, six, and an emerald not given by Andrade. We—they—don’t use jewels much. She was powerful,