eyelashes and eyebrows. His hairline is a deep widow’s peak. His skin is an opaque white, not like flesh. I can’t see the veins beneath it; there are no impurities, no freckles or spots. No shadow on his jawline. His eyes are the colour of honey, liquid and amber, and I find myself caught in them.
“I’m not the Sleeping Prince,” he says again, jolting me from my thoughts.
“All right,” I say, after a long moment.
“Do you believe me?”
I can’t nod.
“Do you?” he demands.
“Be fair,” I say quietly. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen you without the cloak. And you look… You must know what you look like. What would you think, in my place?”
He looks away from me and bites his lip before his eyes meet mine again. “I can explain, a little, at least. If you’ll hear me?”
I nod, and some of the tension leaves his eyes.
Until he looks me up and down.
“Why is there blood on you?” he asks in a strange voice.
I lift my hand to my ear, but the blood has dried. “Oh.” I try to keep my voice level. “I ran into some trouble, in the woods.” I look at him, watching for any sign that he knows something about it, that the men who attacked me might have even been there for him.
“When were you in the woods?”
“Now. I … I saw you there. A moment before I was attacked.”
He frowns and a line forms between his eyebrows. I watch as the shape of his eyes changes with it, and I realize I have no idea how to judge what he thinks from his face. I don’t know him at all.
He looks at my mother, who gives no indication she knows we’re there, and then grasps my elbow gently to lead me from the room. I flinch at the contact, and he lets go immediately, the corners of his mouth tightening. I follow him as he stalks out of the room, bending to pick my knife up first. He locks the door and nods at the bench, as though I’m the guest. My heart still thumps too hard as I turn my back on him, but I sit down and fold my hands in my lap, trying to look calm. By turn he looks anything but calm. His eyes rake over me, his fists clenching and unclenching by his side.
“What happened? Were you attacked?”
“No,” I tell him, raising a still-shaking hand and starting to pluck twigs and dead leaves from my hair. “You said you were going to explain. So explain. Let’s start with you telling me how you got in here. And why.”
He looks down. “The front door was open.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“It was once I’d opened it.” He attempts a smile but I keep my own expression stony, waiting.
When he says nothing, I rise, collecting a cloth from the washing line and the pipkin, the water inside cold. Carefully I begin to clean my bloodied ear. “You have about thirty seconds before I start screaming for the guards again.”
“I wanted to make sure she was all right,” he says quietly. “After yesterday.”
“Why?”
He ignores the question. “I wasn’t trying to intrude.”
“Entering a house that isn’t yours and then opening a locked door is the definition of intrusion,” I say. “So if you weren’t trying to intrude you should have left the door closed and not come in.”
He looks at me and nods. “I’m sorry.” His head lowers like a boy caught with his hand in the jam jar. In the wintry light his hair and skin glow, making him look like a ghost.
“What are you?” I ask without thinking.
“I’m not a ‘what’.” His head snaps up to look at me, his golden eyes flashing with outrage. “I’m a person, same as you. Not a thing. And not the Sleeping Prince.”
“Sorry,” I say, looking at the floor. “I’ve just … the only time I’ve ever seen anyone like you was in the stories about … him.” Sitting opposite the Sleeping Prince’s double makes it hard to say his name. “It’s different.”
“Not to me.”
“Well, it is to me,” I say. “Just … Silas, think about it. For three moons I had no idea what you looked like, no idea about you at all. You won’t tell me anything; I have no idea where you come from, or what you’re doing here. You both showed up at the exact same time, and until recently no one else knew you were here. You have unlimited money;