The Faceless Mage - Kenley Davidson Page 0,43

guards and drew his sword, letting his stance say very clearly what his silence couldn’t.

His place was to protect the princess.

The shock of that silenced the entire room. The guards looked at each other as if trying to decide whether it was worth their lives to continue carrying out their orders, while the Raven felt the pressure of the princess’s eyes as she stared at his back.

Hopefully, she was as confused as he was.

Because this was not the work of King Melger’s compulsion. After so many years, the Raven knew too well the feeling of his decisions coming under another’s control. Knew what it felt like when his very muscles rebelled against his own commands.

This action he had chosen for himself. And he had no idea why.

“Your Highness, it is simply a precaution…” Whatever the guardsman had been about to say died on his lips as the Raven took a single step towards him. If nothing else, he had always enjoyed terrorizing the king’s flunkies.

“I’m sure we can entrust the security of this suite to His Majesty’s bodyguard,” one of the other guards said hastily. “My apologies for disrupting your rest.”

They bowed and backed away carefully. Once the door had finally shut behind them, Lady Piperell collapsed into one of the chairs, her head shaking slowly.

“I can’t imagine what that could have been about. But to see him standing up to them…” Her eyes widened abruptly as she glanced up at the Raven, obviously embarrassed to be caught talking about him while he was still there to hear her. Like everyone else in the palace, she never seemed quite sure whether to treat him like a person. Most of the time, he scarcely noticed anymore, but today, for some reason, it bothered him.

“Your Highness,” Lady Piperell said, turning to the princess, “may I assist you in returning to your rest?”

“No, thank you.” Evaraine offered her a tremulous smile. “My nerves are quite overwrought, and I am so weary, I’m sure I will simply fall into bed and be asleep in moments.”

Overwrought nerves? The Raven found himself struggling with an unaccountable desire to laugh. The woman who had only recently leaped over a balcony railing into the middle of a royal ball could hardly be feeling intimidated by a brief confrontation with a few inept royal guards.

But Lady Piperell seemed to take the princess’s statement as fact. She rose silently, curtsied, and disappeared into the small room where she’d presumably been sleeping until a short time earlier.

That left Evaraine and the Raven regarding one another with what seemed to be equal degrees of curiosity.

Until the princess opened her mouth.

“Thank you,” she said. Her words were soft and tentative, as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was thanking him for.

But it hardly mattered. Yet again, she’d confounded him, and because she wore Vaniell’s gem, it was impossible to doubt her sincerity. Her simple words pierced his defenses—she was genuinely grateful, and yet still unsure…

Then he saw her lifting one hesitant finger towards the jewel still resting on the lapel of her dressing gown. When she touched it gently, it still burned her. He could feel her discomfort, but she pressed past it, back to the point where his magic and hers seemed able to regard one another.

And then she pressed still further, until she found… him.

She saw him—not his magic this time, but his very self. And she felt him, in the same way he could feel her, and it startled him so profoundly that he lashed out.

He confronted her so swiftly that she barely had time to leap away, could only scramble backward until her back collided with the wall.

Holding her pinned with his invisible gaze, he stalked nearer, knowing only that he needed to frighten the princess into retreating and never coming that close again. No one could ever be allowed to see, to know, what he was. What he’d become. The darkness he’d been compelled to embrace.

The truth of his slavery was too ugly, and it made him furious to think that she might have sensed it.

But even once she stopped, unable to back away any farther, he kept moving forward. Kept moving nearer. He could see the tremor in her chin. Hear the panicked breaths she tried to contain.

Until suddenly, her panic seemed to drain away.

Even with him looming over her, she’d somehow relinquished her terror.

Or was she only pretending?

The Raven drew in a deep breath through his nose, bracing himself against the stench of her fear,