Page 41 of Healer to the Ash King
“I’m sure your own hand will serve you quite well.” Pushing myself off the pillar, I start to move away, but he blocks my path. His presence is heat and magnetism, compelling me to look at him—at his broad chest, swathed in shining bronze fabric—up a little further, to the cords of his throat, then to his savage jawline, his compressed mouth—all the way up to his eyes, black-fringed, shimmering with amber light.
“I frightened you earlier,” he says, low. “I’m sorry for it.”
My breath hitches. “My Lord, you need not apologize to one so far beneath you.” With a half-curtsy, I’m moving away again when he seizes my wrist. His fingertips press the thin skin over my fluttering pulse, and I know he feels it—the betrayal of my own body, the frantic beat of my foolish heart.
“Dance with me.” The words tear from him, as if he’s been struggling to hold them back.
“I cannot. The Favored already hate me. They think I’m your mistress, that I’m trying to steal attention for myself.” I back away. “If I want to survive this, I can’t play your game anymore, Majesty.”
“And what game is that? You’re my subject—I’m requiring certain services of you, like healing my women and reporting your thoughts about them to me. That is all.” His features are icing over; his chin lifts, and he gives me a supremely haughty look.
“Of course that’s all.” I pull free and move into the circling dancers. Not a moment too soon, because two of the Favored are making their way toward the King, hastening to beat each other to his side and secure the next dance.
Meanwhile, I thread through the crowd, gently declining more offers of a dance, and I wander alone through the palace until I find my own room. The defiant energy that carried me through the first part of the evening is gone now… it has ebbed away, and I feel the aching need to sleep like a ponderous weight dragging at my eyelids, like a heaviness deep in the pit of my stomach. My healing magic needs to recharge.
I disrobe and lie on the bed in my underthings, sketching the corridors and rooms I saw tonight, placing tiny X marks where the guards stood. In a handful of days, I’ll need to decide what to do with this information, and with the King’s secret—that he tried to Mute himself, and it did not work.
He is truly the most powerful wielder in the kingdom.
I must have fallen asleep, because when I surface to consciousness, my candles are puddles of wax in their silver tray, barely clinging to life. I can feel the edge of the notebook pressing into my face.
Groaning, I close it and push it under my pillow, muzzily trying to figure out what woke me. It’s very late, probably after midnight. The ball must be over now.
A sound from the next room. A muffled clunk, like a drawer closing.
And then… a click, and the scrape of the curtained door—the door between my room and the Ash King’s.
I don’t even lift my head when he enters. I’m wearing a satin chemise and some very skimpy lace-trimmed panties that leave half my ass cheeks bare—I found them in my bureau. Lying on my stomach like this, in the dim candlelight, in these scanty clothes—I know the sight of me will tempt him, and I want it to. Maybe my mind is too blurry to think clearly, or maybe in this soft, drowsy space between sleep and waking, I can finally acknowledge what I really want.
He comes to my bedside, dressed in the same silky robe he wore the night we arrived at the palace. His hair is pulled back in a knot, leaving the planes of his handsome face bare. With my cheek pressed to the sheets, I look up at him, fill my eyes with the beauty of him—a beauty not mine. A beauty someone else will own and enjoy.
Perhaps I could enjoy it once first.
“Did you have fun,” I murmur, “dancing with all the girls, pretending they weren’t nearly torn apart by gears and eaten by monsters today?”
He flashes a quick smile. Someday I will make that smile stay.
The Ash King sinks onto the edge of my bed. “My advisors spoke to me tonight. Some of them want you to remain in your role. Others want me to send you home. They say you’re causing too much of a stir.”
“And what do you want?”
He reaches out, tentative, and brushes curls away from my temple. “What I want is rarely of consequence.”
“I don’t think that’s true. You do what you want all the time.”
“In small ways, yes. In larger matters, I must consider everyone but myself.”
“You’re sending me away, then.”
His fingertips are tracing my nape now, trailing along the bare skin between my shoulder blades until they reach the satin of the chemise. “Do you want to leave?”
Yes.The answer rises automatically to my tongue, but I don’t speak it, because it’s no longer quite true. I’ve made a promise to Brayda and Rince—though I’m increasingly unsure about keeping it—and they expect me to stay in this role. Beyond that, in spite of how the Favored treated me tonight, I feel responsible for them. Judging by what I saw today, the women might not make it through the competition without me.
Perhaps they need someone more skilled than I am. Someone quicker, wiser. Maybe two healers, not just one.
“I’m easily replaced,” I murmur, smoothing the sheet with my fingers.
“Not so. I’ve been looking for someone like you for weeks.”
