Page 109 of The Prince's Captive

“What do you do when you are not with me?” Marcella followed behind him as he turned down another row. “Are you here?”

He shook his head. “I am…” He looked back at her. “That rock with vitae we found with you. It is my responsibility to… solve.”

“Solve?” Her eyes widened and she grabbed at his arm, her voice pitching up sharply. “What’s wrong with it?”

Where had the panic come from? And why?

He shook his head. “No. Sorry. Poor choice of words. We do not understand it. So I am supposed to understand it.” Her reaction… “Is there… something that could be wrong with it?”

She stepped back. “I don’t know.”

But from the way her fingers were twitching and her weight was shifting, it was clear she knew more than she’d been saying.

Which meant she’d managed to keep what she did know about the rock from Nikias even as he interrogated her with a healer monitoring her heart rate for lies.

His admiration of her doubled.

As did his hate for himself for knowing he would have to get it out of her in order to keep her safe.

But he let it be for now. He picked a book off the shelf and started to flip through it. “I know you don’t know much about it. It was Hypatia’s, wasn’t it?”

Marcella turned her head and pretended to read the titles of books even though they both knew she couldn’t. She made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. Then her eyes landed on her left wrist as she ran her hand over the shelf. She turned to face him and lifted it. “On the ride here, I saw others with these. I didn’t notice when you first brought me here, but this time I did. A couple of the guards I’ve seen with them as well. This is common for your people?”

Well, this was a terrible direction.

Gavril hummed. “Yes, common enough.”

Marcella lowered it. “Your people commonly bind themselves to others?”

So did hers. She just… didn’t know it.

The weight of the gold lily set in his pocket doubled.

He hoped to be able to hold them out to her one day and she finally take them back.

“In a way,” Gavril said.

“As a matter of protection?”

“That is part of it. That is why we did it,” Gavril said, keeping his eyes on the page he wasn’t reading.

Marcella nodded. “So it is not… it’s not a big deal?”

Well, it was. It most certainly was.

He looked up from his book and said, “Hypatia. You said she is what you call… a seer? She sees the future? Is that what the rock is for?”

Marcella frowned and jerked back. “Hypatia sees many ways. I do not know the intricacies.”

So… no? But there still seemed to be something she was hiding even if that was the truth.

“But she is revered by your people?”

“As much as she is reviled by yours. You call her demon when she is the most blessed of all Asentai’s children.”

“She is to us like the… we call themsanguisugae,but you call them void hearts. It is not a natural manifestation. A corruption. An abomination from Dhelnir and the Abyss,” Gavril said. “Not human.”

The second he got out the word ‘corruption,’ Marcella’s brow pinched. Was that not the right word?

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