She pushed on my shoulders to make me lie back, and I pulled her with me, my caution crumbling. I wanted her more than life itself. She looked down at me and traced her finger along my jaw. “Prince Rafferty,” she said curiously, as if still trying to grasp who I really was.

“Jaxon is what they call me back in Dalbreck.”

“But I’ll always call you Rafe.”

“Are you disappointed that I’m not a farmer?”

She smiled. “You may learn to grow melons yet.”

“Or maybe we’ll grow other things,” I said, pulling her close, and we kissed again—and again. “Lia,” I finally whispered, trying to bring us both back to our senses, “we have to be careful.”

She pressed her forehead to mine, silent, then settled back against my shoulder, and we talked, almost as we had on our last night together in Terravin, but this time I told her the truth. My parents weren’t dead. I told her what they were like and a little bit about Dalbreck.

“Were they angry when I ran from the wedding?”

“My father was furious. My mother was heartbroken both for me and herself. She was eager to have a daughter.”

She shook her head. “Rafe, I am so—”

“Shh, don’t say it. You don’t owe anyone an apology.” And then I told her the rest, that it was never proposed to me as a real marriage and that my father had even suggested I take a mistress after the wedding if the bride didn’t suit my tastes.

“A mistress? Well, isn’t that romantic?” She leaned up on one arm to look at me. “What about you, Rafe?” she said more softly. “What did you think when I didn’t show up?”

I thought back to that morning, waiting in the cloister of the abbey along with the entire Dalbreck cabinet, pulling at my coat. We’d had to ride all night, delayed because of the weather, and I just wanted to get it over with. “When the news came that you had left, I was surprised,” I said. “That was my first reaction. I couldn’t quite figure out how it could happen. Two kingdoms’ cabinets had worked out every detail. In my mind, it may as well have already been chiseled in stone. I couldn’t understand how one girl could undo the plans of the most powerful men on the continent. Then, when I finally got past my shock, I was curious. About you.”

“And you weren’t angry?”

I grinned. “Yes, I was,” I conceded. “I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but I was furious too.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ha! As if I didn’t know.”

“I suppose it was apparent when I got to Terravin.”

“The minute you walked into that tavern, I knew you were trouble, Prince Rafferty.”

I wove my fingers through her hair and pulled her closer. “As I did you, Princess Arabella.” Her lips pressed to mine, and I wondered if there would ever be a day we didn’t have to cut our time together short, but I was getting worried about Ulrix. He’d been gone almost an hour, I guessed, and I didn’t want to take a chance in case he returned early. When I pushed her away, she promised to leave in five more minutes. Five minutes is hardly enough time to drink an ale, but we filled it with memories from our time in Terravin. I finally told her she had to go.

I looked out the door first to make sure the hall was clear. She touched my cheek before she left and said, “Someday we’ll go back to Terravin, won’t we, Rafe?”

“We will,” I whispered, because that was what she needed to hear, but as the door shut behind her, I knew if we ever got out of here, I would never take her back to anywhere in Morrighan, including Terravin.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I tried to stop counting the days as Rafe had told me to, but each day that the Komizar took me out to a different quarter, I knew we had one less. Our outings were brief, just long enough to show me off to this elder or that quarterlord and those who gathered around, planting his version of hope among the superstitious. For a man who had little patience for lying, he sowed the myth of my arrival freely, like seed thrown by handfuls in the wind. The gods were blessing Venda.

Strangely, an equilibrium settled in between us. It was like dancing with a hostile stranger. With each of our steps, he got what he wanted, the added devotion of the clans and hillfolk, and I got something I wanted too, though I couldn’t quite put a name to it.

It was a strange pull in unexpected ways and times—the glint of the sun, a shadow, the cook chasing a loose chicken down the hallway, the smoke in the air, a sweetened cup of thannis, the brisk chill of morning, a toothless smile, the resonance of paviamma chanted back to me, the dark stripes of sky as I chanted eventide remembrances. They were all disconnected moments that added up to nothing, and yet they caught hold of me like fingers lacing into mine and drawing me forward.

The advantage of having Kaden gone was that I was left to my own devices at night. In his rush to make arrangements before he left, Kaden had only told Aster to come and escort me to the bath chamber if I requested it and help me with personal needs, but he hadn’t defined what those needs might be. I assured her my nighttime request was one of those needs. It turned out she was happy to conspire with me. The Sanctum was far warmer than the hovel she shared with her bapa and cousins. I had asked her if she knew of a way to get to the catacombs without passing through the main hallway. Her eyes grew wide. “You want to go to the Ghoul Caves?” Apparently Eben and Finch weren’t the only ones who called it that.