Oh gods, had Faina known this was here…?
‘Are you all right?’
Meilyr snapped the book closed and sprang up. Osian stood in the doorway to the bedchamber. ‘Yes,’ he said too quickly. ‘Sorry. Forgive me, Your Majesty.’
Osian, more concerned, stepped inside and glanced at the book on the floor.
Meilyr snatched it and put it on the one he still held closed. ‘I must have fallen asleep. Did I wake you?’
‘No,’ the prince said distantly. ‘Are you sure you are all right?’
‘Of course. It was merely a long day. Apologies again.’
There was something pained in Osian. Meilyr watched it retreat behind walls that had not been between them in weeks. ‘You have nothing to apologise for,’ the prince said. Too much like their old talk, pulling Meilyr’s mind from the book clamped in his hands. ‘If you would like to prepare for sleep, your clothes are in the bedchamber.’
The prince went to the steps that led to the tower-top and ascended into the dark.
Meilyr had been so wound up in himself that he had not spotted something was wrong. He set the books on the low table beside the divan and followed the prince.
Osian stood at the crenellated wall, damp hair catching the light. The wind was brisk, biting through Meilyr’s under-tunic as he joined him. In the plant boxes at their feet, dock leaves and dandelions, coltsfoot and golden henbane hunkered against the chill.
He wanted to tell Osian to go inside, wanted to blurt out what had happened with Haydn. Wanted to tell him of the horrors he had found in that book and hide against him from them.
But there was something in the way the prince stood that made him hold his breath.
They watched the lights of the town flicker in the returning rain, the swathes of gradient hills and the sea and mountains beyond.
‘Perhaps if all this were to end, it would be better.’
It took a moment for the words to make sense, with a clap of shock. ‘My Prince…?’
‘I do not wish to die,’ Osian said. ‘I have no intention of doing so, but Khaim…’
Meilyr let him find the words: dark stones from dark depths.
‘Power begets power,’ Osian said, ‘but there is no room for change, no room for good. Who are we to dictate the lives of thousands of people, purely through birthright? I do not know if any of us deserve to die, but all of Cyngalon has the right to hate us. Just as the families of those killed have the right to hate this sorcerer. There is no end to it. Blood begets blood.’
Blood begets blood.An old saying Meilyr knew in Cyngaleg as much as in Khaimlic.
Osian looked at him. ‘Tell me, if I were to die, and my sister and my brother were to die, and our father, and every other Khaimlic noble or Marcher Lord who raised their sword to strike at Cyngalon, or attempted to usurp the throne – would that be the end of it? Would there be peace, then?’
‘I do not know,’ Meilyr admitted. ‘But… I think you are right. There is no end, only pain, repeating.’
Osian’s eyes held a sadness he had not allowed to slip before. ‘Those people down there do not deserve what is happening to them. What has happened to them.’
‘Youdo not deserve to die, either,’ Meilyr told him.
Osian’s gaze searched him, surprised. ‘You cannot know that.’
But Meilyr did. It had been ruining him for some time. ‘I can. I do. You are… not at all what you could be. Not what your blood could have made you.’
He was standing so close, their hands could have brushed. Meilyrwantedit, as guilt clawed his throat.
‘I am every part a product of my blood,’ Osian said. ‘Even as you—’ He caught himself, hands tensing. ‘Even as you make me wish I could be more. Make me wish I could be anything else, anyone else…’ He looked away, severing the moment. ‘It is cold. We should return inside.’
Meilyr did not want to move. ‘Yes, My Prince.’ He stepped away first, as Osian made no motion to.
‘I saw you today. With Haydn Sayer.’