Page 25 of The Prince's Captive

She didn’t like that. She really didn’t like that.

On the fourth night, she was, as usual, ignoring him after he proved the food and water weren’t drugged, but this time he was staring at her hair specifically. She hadn’t had the chance to look at her reflection, but she could feel the toll the mud and time on the road had taken on it, especially since she didn’t have anything to pull it back with. She didn’t need his judgement.

But then he cleared his throat, and she cursed herself for instinctively looking up at him. He was eyeing her with that calculating look, and her heart leapt into her throat. Had he been saying Hypatia’s name and she hadn’t heard it?

Was he starting to get suspicious again?

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the set of lily pins and clasps, and she also failed to stop the sharp breath she took at seeing them. She’d started to think he’d lost them and hadn’t wanted to admit it.

He held them flat in the palm of his hand for a moment and just stared at her face as she looked at them with wide eyes. He most certainly had no idea what this gesture meant to her people. When he’d taken them from her, he’d had no idea what they were even for. Still… it was a sight Marcella hadn’t been prepared for even if it meant nothing.

He closed his hand around them and then held them up, showing the lily between his fingers, and asked, “Upset greatly when taken. Why? Meaning?”

Marcella picked up the waterskin again and drank.

Commander Gavril made a short, frustrated grunt in the back of his throat. “Gift? From promised?”

The words fell out of her mouth with a snort before she could stop them, “Of a sort.”

Gavril lit up like an Inimicus light rune. He immediately shifted closer and said, “Event?”

She blinked at him. What?

He frowned. “Reason?”

Oh. He was asking for the occasion.

“Why does it matter?” Marcella snapped, dropping the waterskin to the ground and wrapping her arms around herself. The last thing she was going to do was tell him what they meant. The only comfort she had about the whole ordeal was the fact that he had no idea how humiliating and inappropriate it was that he took them.

“Matters to you.”

He held them out again, right in front of her face. “Promised, if behave. Keeping promise. Here.”

It was too late. He’d already taken them, and even though he didn’t know the meaning of his action, Marcella did. No one would ever have to know, but Marcella would know. Offering them in any capacity was a proposal. Accepting them in any capacity was becoming engaged.

Marcella turned her nose up the way she’d seen Hypatia do when she had the opportunity to correct her tutors on the subjecttheywere supposed to be teachingher. “Keep them. They’re worth nothing to me now that you’ve sullied them with your touch.”

Gavril pulled his hand back, looked down at the lilies, then back at her—well, his eyes narrowed in on her side. His eyes traced the scar hidden beneath her peplos; somehow he remembered the precise placement of beneath the fabric. The way he studied her now made her feel more exposed than when her peplos had been half undone and he’d been running his thumb over the skin.

He couldn’t know. He had no way of knowing she wasn’t Hypatia.

If he thought she wasn’t Hypatia, she was dead.

She held her breath and waited. She waited for him to stand up and reveal it. For them to gather around her and decide the fate of someone who wouldn’t be missed.

But he just slid the lilies back into his pocket. Then he gestured to the clasps of his own chiton and grinned. “See if you say the same tomorrow when they adorn me.”

Marcella wasn’t able to stop her snort—more relief thana anything else—even as she clasped her hand over her mouth and killed her laugh. Gavril still preened at the noise.

“So you do laugh. Not just mock.”

She scowled at him the rest of the night.

Still, she thanked Asentai he believed she was Hypatia.

The next morning, he did not in fact wear the lily clasps. The fifth night, he revisited the topic of the Heart.

“The—” he made a gesture about the size of the Heart. “Rock. Clan valuable?”

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