Theportal.
I feel Syla’s talisman sitting cold against my chest. What if she hid it there, concealed from everyone apart from the one person she intended to discover it, who was lured there by the water whispering her name …
Blaze.
‘Are you quite well, child?’ Queen Hydra is leaning over me, concern cutting horizontal lines across her forehead.
I clear my throat. ‘I’m fine, Your Majesty.’
She smiles gently. ‘Good. Now, why don’t you retrieve that cup.’
Mind still reeling, I plunge my hand into the portal in front of me, my fingers closing round cool metal.
42
‘What do you want?’
Hal turns from where he stands by the window in my chambers. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands – clasping them behind his back, interlocking his fingers. Eventually he just lets them hang loosely by his sides, which makes him appear younger, more vulnerable, as he says, ‘Can we talk?’
‘What about?’ I ask innocently. ‘The fact that you’ve been pretending to have feelings for me?’
He takes a step towards me. ‘Blaze, I –’
‘Or how about the fact that you’ve been playing me for a complete and utter fool forweeksand presumably weren’t ever planning on telling me the truth?’
‘Blaze.’
‘Because you weren’t, were you?’
Hal swallows hard, his throat bobbing. ‘Blaze, please, just listen, I –’
‘I was nothing but a convenience to you. A perfect ploy to distract from what you were really doing andwhoyou were really doing it with.’
My voice remains calm, even pleasant, but every wordseems to strike a match against his skin. Hal exhales in a slow, defeated way, squeezing his raven-black eyes shut and sitting down, dropping his head in his hands.
I count a full minute before either of us speaks again.
Eventually he straightens up to look at me. ‘I got the roses.’
‘Did you?’ I nod. ‘Good. I thought they’d send a clear message.’
‘That message being?’
‘Piss off, Your Imperial Highness.’
Hal looks as though I’d reached across and slapped him. He blinks several times, then, to my surprise, starts to laugh. ‘I always knew I liked you, Blaze.’
Rolling my eyes, I sit down opposite him and hug a cushion to my chest. ‘This had better be good.’
Hal leans forward in his chair, looking me right in the eye. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for using you like that and I’m sorry you had to find out the way you did. It was never my intention to hurt you. In fact, believe it or not, I actually thought I was doing you a favour.’
I stare at him. ‘You thought you were doing me afavour?’
He shrugs. It’s strange seeing him shrug. It makes him more of a boy and less of a prince.
‘I figured you’d have an easier time of it here if the courts thought I was paying you special attention,’ he says. ‘I got the idea from your Name Day, seeing the difference in the way people acted around you after you and I danced together.’
I remember it, the way the guests’ barely disguised hatred had morphed into intrigue. I had been sought out, introduced to this person and that, treated with, if notkindness, exactly,then something like civility. And here at the Golden Palace, Hal’s company became a shield of sorts. When I was on his arm, I was untouchable.
