“I don’t know that it has one.”
“That’s not what I watched happen.”
He was quiet again for the span of a few heartbeats. When he spoke, his voice was lower than it had been.
“Death and water,” he said finally. “I’ve never heard of them being sympathetic. I’m not claiming they are.” He paused. “I’m only saying that when I walked in, she was somewhere else entirely. And then she wasn’t.” He looked up at me. “I don’t know what I did. I’m not sure I did anything.”
I didn’t know what to make of that, so I didn’t make anything of it. Instead, I thought of the arrangement I had with Tristan. I still believed it was necessary. On the front of it, it was sensible. Wise.
What was standing across from me now wasn’t sensible. A man who had walked into a room full of ice and uncontrolled magic and hadn’t been afraid, and couldn’t explain why, and wasn’t pretending otherwise… was something I couldn’t work with.
Everything else I’d managed by understanding it first. The dragon, I understood. Feared it, yes, and hated it, but I understood its logic. Merlin I understood. Guinevere I was beginning to understand, which was its own particular problem. But this: whatever existed between her power and his, whateverinstinct had moved him through that door without hesitation, this had no explanation I could reach.
And if I couldn’t reach it, I couldn’t control it.
Tristan was watching me. Not nervously. That was also worth noting.
“The arrangement stands,” I said. He nodded as I continued. “Last night. In the corridor. You told me some things recognize their own.”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean?”
Another silence. This time he was choosing something: not whether to lie, I didn’t think he was built for lying, but how much of the truth was actually his to give.
“It means that what she carries is very old,” he said. “And some of what I carry is older still. That’s all I can tell you because that’s all I know.”
“Your childhood,” I said. “Tell me about it.”
There was a shift behind his eyes, something close to surprise that I’d asked directly, which told me he’d been expecting to be dismissed.
“What would you like to know?”
“Whatever you’d tell a king who was asking.”
The corner of his mouth moved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “If you’re asking about my magic—”
“—tell me about your bloodline, whether death magic runs through it.”
His chin lifted slightly. Just slightly. “In some families, magic runs through bloodlines. Though not all. Mine runs back to a line of — “ He paused and considered his next words. “—bone-speakers, you might call them. Men who could speak to death. It didn’t always skip generations. Sometimes it did.”
“And yours didn’t skip.”
“No.” I paused. “I can’t tell you much more than that.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t. I don’t know much about my lineage other than what I told you. I wasn’t born to a noble family who can document their lineage through generations.”
There was silence between us for a few seconds, before I broke it.
“She’s my prisoner,” I said, wanting to get to the gist of what mattered. “She sleeps beside my chamber, she trains at my direction, she eats at my table when I allow it. She is not yours to carry or comfort or make decisions for. Am I understood?”
“Yes,” he said. “My lord.”
The title was entirely correct. The tone of it was also entirely correct. And yet I stood there after he’d said the words with the unsettled feeling that the conversation had resolved absolutely nothing.
He left the way he’d come in. Unhurried.
