Page 70 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
Kasta winced. Said aloud, every truth was far more damning, and she agreed, these were things that Bristol could never know. “How long can this go on? You’re already juggling the impossible, having to decide between the Choosing Ceremony and your brother’s life. Can you really juggle one more impossible thing? It’s dangerous to be involved with someone you might use as a hostage.”
“We’re not involved. We talk. That’s it. We’ve never—” He shook his head, leaving Kasta to fill in the blank.
“Talking can be far more intimate than screwing. Call it whatever you want, you’resomething—and it’s not fair to Elphame or Danu.”
“I would never break my oath. I’m not like Kierus.”
“I know, but you also know what the council will think if they find out you’re entangled with Maire’s daughter. They’re already on edge, and they’ll fear history is about to repeat itself. I mean, Tygh,her, of all people? There are a hundred women in court who would have you. Take one of them to bed. You have to keep your position secure. And then there’s Sloan.” She rolled her eyes. “Ho! He’d be a horse in a pasture of clover at dinnertime. He’d gorge on the rumors and spread them like manure until you—”
“I know what they’d all think. Let me handle it, Kasta. And don’t say anything to anyone about us dancing.”
CHAPTER 47
Walk away, Tyghan. Walk away like you never found me.
The words haunted him. They were the last ones Kierus ever spoke to him.
Walk away.
But now he was thinking of Bristol. It was one thing to manipulate someone you hated. It was another to manipulate someone who had pledged to help you. Someone you liked—more than liked. It was a hard thought for him to consider, much less admit, even to himself.
It was only supposed to be one dance.One.
He had pushed the thought away again and again, trying to find ways to discount it, but he couldn’t anymore. It wasn’t the season. It had crept up on him, maybe from the moment he first saw her in the inn, the way she stood her ground even when she was terrified, meeting his stare like she was planning how she would take him down. Then the nerve she conjured when she came back to the inn to bargain with him, afraid but still not cowering. His whole ride back to the palace he kept seeing every color that had swept through her eyes, the storm she navigated but refused to surrender to. At the time it had infuriated him—but captivated him too. Then, once back in Elphame, it was a word here, a glance there, lingering instead of leaving, conversations that went from angry to easy—conversations he had hungered for.Stillhungered for. He wanted to know the things she contemplated, questioned, believed. The things she said made him wonder in a way he hadn’t in a long time. She made something dead in him come alive again.
Now his thoughts drifted to her as easily as opening his eyes. As he ate his breakfast, he wondered what pizza tasted like. As he lay in his bed, resisting sleep, he’d see the pale freckle in the hollow of her throat. He’d relive every word between them. Even her name haunted him.Bri.A name he now longed to say out loud. Feel the sound of it on his tongue. See her reaction. She invited him to call her that from the first day they met, but now it seemed too late, too intimate. At night, as he drifted to sleep, he’d see her lips, her lashes, and remember the touch of her hand in his as he helped her up from the ground, or her arm brushing his—however briefly—and the burn it left behind, not just on his skin but deeper inside him.
The season, he told himself repeatedly. But the season had never done this to him before.
There are a hundred women in court who would have you.
But he didn’t want them.
He wanted Bristol. Only her. In every way, he wanted her.
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
It made the charade of searching for her father more unbearable. Tyghan already knew Kierus would go nowhere near any city. Most likely he was headed for the Wilds and, eventually, Balor Pass that led into Fomoria. That’s where a company of knights were watching and waiting to trap the man she desperately hoped to rescue.
Her of all people.
Kasta may have been the most direct, but she wasn’t the first to warn him. He was courting disaster, and he already had enough of that to deal with. He didn’t need more.
Walk away.
But he hadn’t walked away then.
He wasn’t sure he could now.
CHAPTER 48
The ancient barn creaked, not with age but wonder. Who was this new visitor? The barn was probably the oldest structure in all of Elphame, its mortar made of magic, its beams woven with enchantment, every stone hand hewn by the gods themselves. The gods revered and depended upon their horses, and great care was given to the quarters that housed them.
Bristol listened to the barn’s sighs, the curioushmmmthat circled around her ankles like an invisible tide, the whispers that might have been mistaken for wind whistling across a floor. She sensed as soon as she walked through the door that this was no ordinary barn, if, indeed, it could be called a barn at all. Each stall was constructed with beautiful carved stones depicting a weave of leaves and berries, drawn bows, beetles, antlers, and hands holding fruit—a stone forest that was both alluring and foreboding. Enormous iron chandeliers shaped like tree branches hung from high beams above the main walkway. Rear doors in the stalls led to a meadow, and the smell of sweet green hay permeated the air.
She had arrived early, and Master Woodhouse, the stable lord, emerged from an oak tree near the entrance to greet her. He was a spriggan, she guessed, like Avery, though considerably older, judging by the mottled lichen on his cheeks and the thick mossy vines that trailed down his hunched back. Since she was early, he offered to give her a tour. He was noticeably proud of his position and his charges, and he told her the long history of the Tuatha de horses, the famous processions they led, the battles they helped win, the heroes and gods who had ridden upon their backs, the important roles they played in shaping Elphame.
“And here,” he said, once they circled around and came back to the first stall, “is August, King Tyghan’s horse. Only His Majesty rides this one. Finest steed in all the land. No one will argue that.”
