The Heart of Betrayal (The Remnant Chronicles #2) - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,44

back at the wood panel behind me, questioning my brief descent down the hidden stairway, and wondered what I had really seen. Was it real and true or only terror at being trapped? But the name she had mouthed, Jezelia, still juddered through me. Guards walked by, and I slunk back, hiding in the shadows. I had escaped one trap and fallen into another.

This was the busy hallway that led to the tower where the Komizar said he had a secure room for Rafe. I was about to step out when three governors approached and I had to duck back down. All I needed was a free moment to dart out and run up the stairs, and I was certain I could find Rafe’s room, but the hall seemed to be a main thoroughfare. The governors passed, then several servants carrying baskets, and finally the quiet held. I pulled my hood over my head and stepped out—just as two guards rounded the corner.

They stopped short in surprise when they saw me.

“There you are!” I snapped. “Are you the ones who were ordered to leave firewood outside the Assassin’s room?” I shot them both an accusatory eye.

The tallest of the two glared back. “Do we look like barrow runners?”

“We aren’t filthy patty clappers,” the other one snarled.

“Really?” I said. “Not even for the Assassin?” I put my hand to my chin as if I were memorizing their faces.

One looked at the other, then back at me. “We’ll send a boy.”

“See that you do! The weather’s turned cold, and the Assassin wanted a roaring fire by the time he returned.” I turned and walked away in a huff, climbing the stairs. My temples pounded as I expected them to come to their senses, but all I heard behind me was their grousing and shouting at a poor hapless servant down the hall.

After one dead end, two close calls with the wrong rooms, and a quick exit through a hall window, I walked along a ledge that was sufficiently hidden from the view of those below. Peeking through windows rather than opening doors proved to be a safer way to explore, and only a few windows later, I found him.

His stillness struck me first. His profile. He slouched in a chair, looking out an opposite window. The smoldering, calculated stare that had made me uneasy the first time I saw him made me apprehensive again. It breathed menace and frightening reserve, a bow stretched, loaded, aimed, waiting. It was the stare that had made platters in my hand tremble as I set them down before him in the tavern. Even with my slight side view, the ice of his blue eyes cut like a sword. Neither farmer nor prince. They were the eyes of a warrior. Eyes bred with power. And yet last night he’d made them warm for Calantha when she sat close and whispered to him, made them spark with intrigue when the Komizar asked questions … made them hooded with disinterest when I kissed Kaden.

I thought of the first time I’d made him laugh as we picked blackberries in Devil’s Canyon, how fearful I had been, but then how his laugh had transformed his face. How it had transformed me. I wanted to make him laugh now, but here I had nothing to give him that was the least bit amusing or joyful.

I should have revealed myself immediately, but once I knew he was alive and that he had food and water, I was struck with the need for something else—a few seconds to watch him unseen, to view him with the new eyes I had only just gained. What other sides did this very clever prince have?

His fingers tapped a strained beat on the arm of the chair, slow and steady, like he was counting something out—hours, days, or maybe the people who would pay. Maybe he was even thinking about me. Yes! You were a challenge and an embarrassment. I thought about all the times we had kissed back in Terravin. Every single time, he had known I was the one who had broken a contract between two kingdoms. And before we had kissed, there were all the times I had looked at him with moon eyes, hoping he would kiss me. Had he felt smug justice watching me leaning on brooms hanging on his every word? Melons. He told me he grew melons. The stories he fabricated—just like the ones he’d created last night for the Komizar—flowed