Xara Zynthar's Arc

Chapter 9 of 16

Xara did not sleep. She sat by the window with the eel's jar on the sill and watched the sky turn from black to grey. The prince's face kept coming back to her. Not his title. His face when he crossed out the small number of ships and wrote a larger one. She pressed her forehead to the cold glass and told herself the truth she had been avoiding. She wanted him. Not the ships. Him. And wanting him could kill every child in the orb on her table. A soft knock. Verity stepped in without waiting, robe brushing the floor, white hair loose down her back. She looked at Xara the way a healer looks at a wound. "You are shaking," Verity said. "I will not shake in the room." "You might." Verity sat on the edge of the bed. Her feet did not touch the floor. "You have decided something. Say it." Xara turned. "If he asks me to stay, I do not know what I will answer." "Then do not let him ask." Verity's voice did not rise. "The council will smell it on both of you. They already mistrust him. A prince in love with an offworld woman does not get his grain ships." Xara's hands closed on the sill. "What do I do." "Go to him now. Before the table. Settle it." She found the prince in the small room where he kept his sister's things. A comb. A folded shawl. The orb on a stand, showing a child asleep in a house Xara had never seen. He did not look up when she entered. "I was going to send for you," he said. "Don't." She stayed by the door. "At the council. Do not look at me the way you looked at me last night. If they see it, they will refuse you." He set the comb down. "I know." "I cannot stay. Even if you ask." "I know that too." He faced her. His eyes were red. "I am going to speak to her first. My sister. One last time, through the orb. I need to let her go before I stand at that table. If I carry her in with me, I will carry you in too, and we will lose the room." Xara's throat closed. "Then let her go." "Wait outside." She waited. She heard him speak low behind the door. She did not listen to the words. When he came out his face was empty in a new way. Clean. He nodded to her once, the way a soldier nods before a march. Verity was already in the corridor, hands folded in her sleeves. She looked at the prince, then at Xara, and something in her face eased. "Now," Verity said, "you can walk in." They walked. Xara did not look at him again. The council doors opened ahead of them.