keep the grin from his face at the same time. It makes him look grotesque. “Congratulations! I’m so happy for you both.” I can’t stop smiling. I’d forgotten what it was to smile like this. My cheeks ache with it and it feels wonderful.
He holds me at arm’s length, his whole face glowing. “I know it’s stupid, with all this. But…” He shrugs. “We’re to wed in spring. Lirys will want you there.”
“It’s the best thing I’ve heard in ages,” I say, and I mean it. More than once I saw them together from the window of the apothecary. The idea of them as a couple and happy fills me with hope.
“Go to her,” he says. “Go home. Your real home.”
A rush of longing twists my insides. To go home … to Tremayne … to my apothecary. All my life, it’s all I wanted… Could I? I could confide in Master Pendie, look into a proper cure, or some way of controlling Mama… Of all people, he would understand. I could take up my apprenticeship again. My dream flashes through my mind: me back in the apothecary, the man standing beside me… Then I remember the mob at the door, only this time I imagine they’re not there for me, but for Mama. Torches burning as they demand I give them the beast to put down.
We can’t go home. We can’t be around normal people ever again. It’s too late.
I look up at him, smiling sadly. “Go, be a soldier. And see to that wound. We’ll talk soon,” I tell him.
“Stay out of the woods,” he warns. “Come to the barracks if you won’t tell me where to find you. Stick to the camp follower line.”
“Yes, Second Lieutenant,” I say smartly.
He gives me an unsoldierly salute and then turns, and Kel walks to his side at once, taking my place and helping him move stiffly away. The moment he’s gone from my sight my joy for him and Lirys starts to wane, and my thoughts turn back to my brother. What was he thinking? What was he planning? More than ever I want to see him, to ask him what the Holly he was playing at, dragging us here, leaving us here?
“Lief, where are you?” I say aloud as I approach the hut. “Come home. If for no other reason than so I can punch you for doing this to us. Just … come home.”
But all of my thoughts are pushed away the second that I enter the hut and see the door to my mother’s room, unlocked and wide open. I fly into the room, my heart in my mouth, relieved that my mother is still safely tucked in bed, until I hear the sound of a throat being cleared behind me. And when I turn, every single hair on my body stands on end.
His hair is silvery-white, and short, framing a face that could be cut from marble, it’s so pale and smooth. He looks carved, made, not natural. But the worst thing is his eyes, golden-amber and unblinking as they take me in. The skin around them is smeared with something black, coal dust or tar, and the gold burns out from it. Those eyes don’t belong in a human face. They belong in the pages of a book. In the face of the Sleeping Prince.
I freeze, terror rooting me to the spot, vivid, icy fear paralysing me even as my mind screams at me to run.
His eyes are wide, his hands reaching for the cloak thrown over the end of the bed, and suddenly I can move again. I don’t stop to think. I pull my knife out and lunge, thrusting the blade towards him to drive him from my mother.
He catches my wrist easily, squeezing until I drop the knife and cry out.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?” he asks, outraged, his voice husky and deep.
I realize to my absolute horror that I know his voice. That the man in front of me is my friend. The man I’ve been calling Silas Kolby.
No. I try to wrench myself out of his grip but his long fingers are like a vice around my wrist. I panic and stop pulling, instead using my weight against him, throwing myself into him, trying to knock him down.
But it doesn’t work. Instead he grabs at my other arm and pulls it behind my back, catching both of my wrists in one of his hands. He moves behind me and