The Treasure Keeper

'Think on it, Hayden. The sanf I encountered was a coachman. The man who worked for him was a coachman. I was fortunate enough to escape them both—' Rhys cleared his throat.

'—and certainly they won't be coming after me again, but if there was one thing they both made clear to me before they killed each other, it was that the sanf inimicus have infiltrated the coach yards of this city, purely in search of us. They discovered me once. There is no reason to believe they will not do it again. I might get all the way to Calais before they strike. But they will strike, dearest. They've proven that, again and again. And when they do, I shall be all alone.' She lowered her lashes, tried to look vulnerable. 'Practically defenseless.'

'Oh, well done,' praised the shadow in an exaggerated drawl. 'I knew all that sly wit and duplicity would prove handy sooner or later.'

Both the prince and Hayden were glowering by the light or their smallish lamps and fire; she'd taken the wind from their sails, she could see it, and could not help the slight curving of her mouth.

'I'm truly safer remaining here,' she said, 'with you. You must see that.'

'Yes,' said Hayden after a moment. 'I'm afraid ... I'm afraid I do see. You're quite right. You could not possibly leave now. Not by any standard means, and I can't escort you yet.'

'Bonehead,' pronounced the shadow, throwing up his hands. 'For pity's sake! I should have fleeced him at cards more often. Perhaps then he might have learned to recognize a sharp.'

Zoe only smiled at her fiance, and lifted his hand to brush her lips tenderly across his knuckles.

* _{* *}

They left her alone after that. They'd gone as a group to Tuileries and fetched her things in the deep black hub of night; she was settled in the third bedchamber of the maison now, the smallest of the three still adequately furnished. It had walls papered in pink and the palest yellow stripes, and brown-centered daisies painted along the trim. It was the room of a child, but she didn't mind. It lacked both a crib and even a single looking glass. The indigo cloak—all those spirits— was forced back to the windowpanes, and Zoe kept the curtains pulled tight, so that she would not have to see.

She lay in the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The prince had retired to his chamber with hardly a glance at her, but Hayden had lingered at her door, his gaze combing the girlish bedroom beyond her as if he searched for something that was not there.

'Will you kiss me?' she'd whispered, as softly as she could. She didn't see Rhys but that didn't mean he wasn't nearby.

Hayden lowered his chin and smiled at her, a soft and shy smile. Then he'd lifted his hands and cupped her face, and rested his lips against hers in what was surely the most tame, most brotherly kiss a female drakon had ever received from her affianced mate.

'No,' she whispered. 'Like this.' And had wrapped her arms about his shoulders and pulled him close, pressing her mouth hard to his.

For a moment it seemed to work. For a moment his hands pushed deeper into her hair, and his chest expanded against hers, and she tasted tea this time, tea over the brandy and him.

Then he broke it off. He drew a jagged breath, lifting his head with his smile now strained, and dropped his hands to her shoulders.

Zoe reached up to grab his fingers, fierce. 'Can we not pretend? Just pretend we're wed already? Do we need to wait?'

'If we do not have our honor,' Hayden murmured, his eyes roaming her face, 'then we have nothing.'

We would have each other,she wanted to say. We would have tonight.

'Good night, dearest girl. You do hold my heart, you know. And it will be soon. As soon as we're home safe again, I promise. The very first open date in the chapel will be ours.'

'Good night,' she'd managed, and watched him cross the hall to his room. Shut the door.

She rolled over now in the narrow bed. She pulled the quilt up high, inhaled the scent of goose down from the pillow, and tried to fall asleep.

In the darkest corner of her very dark room, the shadow stood and watched her, unmoving. Unspeaking. Until the first blush of dawn lit the carpet of flowers at his feet.

Chapter Fifteen

 Once there was a prince. Have you heard this story before?

A prince in spirit if not in title, and he was handsome and brave and bold, and more than a little charming. Like many such princes, he tumbled in and out of love with ease, and happened to leave quite a pretty trail of broken hearts scattered behind him. He was not especially kind, but he was not especially cruel, either. He had been blessed by life and forged perhaps a wee bit selfish by all that good fortune. There had never come an occasion truly to plumb his depths, and so he sparkled like a raindrop, bright and cheerful and happy to splash where he would.

Don't judge him too harshly. Born in his magical place, do you imagine you would have turned out so very different?

So this prince might well have lived the whole of his life in such a way, and then his name and story would have faded from memory; he would have been just one more dashing prince for us to amass with all the dashing others, fine-looking fellows all with the same grin.

But one day this particular prince lost his looks and his fortune with a single devious blow. He lost his light, and his hope. And he realized, only then—of course!—what a waste his life had been. How foolish he was to have squandered it, when he might have been a good man all along.

He had but one chance to touch something bright again. He had but one chance to prove he was more than splash and easy charm.

This chance came to him in the shape of a female, a special female: a treasure, one might say. She possessed a heart so strong and true he could scarcely fathom the size of it.

It's a shame, isn't it, that the sole thing the prince was good at was shattering hearts?

Chapter Sixteen

She had to cook.

She'd promised Hayden and the Zaharen she'd not leave the maison, not until they returned from their scouting mission down to wherever it was the sanf inimicus were crouching. By the time she'd awoken this morning, one of them—she didn't even know which—had already gone to market, and so there was now slightly more food than that one egg and the stale bread.

But they'd been out for hours already. Hours. There was a standing clock in the main hallway by the front door, and it had long since chimed two o'clock. Three. Even the shadow of Rhys was gone; perhaps he'd taken her at her word yesterday.

More likely she'd just pushed him into a sulk.

A group of children in the yard next door were running around, squealing and laughing over the calls of their nanny. A tethered dog in the yard on the other side was keeping up a stream of steady, unhappy yips.

She was hungry. She'd already dumped their stew from the fireplace into the compost—Rhys had been correct; it reeked of glue—but she'd not found enough sand or water to scrub out the pot.

She would compose a salad; there were plenty of vegetables for that. There was little chance of spoiling a salad.

Zoe whacked the carving knife into a head of cabbage. It split in two, the pieces rolling, one of them wobbling off the chopping board; she nearly caught it with one hand, but it was fat and wet, and slipped off her fingers. A caterpillar bounced out of it onto the floor.

'Damn it.'