Thief With No Shadow (51 page)
“Y
OU COULD HAVE
kept it,” Bastian said mildly, and watched as Melke jerked around, almost losing her balance. Her eyes were wide. The hem of her skirt dipped into the water.
He saw her swallow, saw her chin lift. “No, I couldn’t.” A strand of black hair blew across her pale cheek.
Are you certain?
he asked, as Endal came out of the water. He saw no desire on her face. On the doorstep he’d thought perhaps...but not now.
Yes.
The dog shook himself.
Her face was carved of marble, cold and expressionless, but he trusted Endal.
“There is something I wish to discuss with you.”
He thought that Melke stiffened slightly, standing in the sea with her skirt held above her ankles. “Very well.”
Bastian relaxed as she stepped from the water. The sea was no longer Vere’s enemy, but seeing her with waves washing over her feet had brought sharp fear to his chest.
He caught a glimpse of slender ankles before she lowered the skirt. The hem was dark with water.
“Shall we sit?” He inclined his head at the dunes.
“Very well,” she said again. She began to walk up the beach. Her back was straight and her head held high. He thought she limped slightly.
Bastian took her elbow. “You shouldn’t have walked so far.”
Melke tried to pull away from him. “I am not an invalid.” Haughty words, spoken in a haughty tone.
Bastian tightened his grip on her elbow. “Yesterday you were one.”
Her lips compressed. She made no further protest. Which told him she was tired and in pain, but wasn’t going to admit it.
He’d never walked with a woman like this, side by side, holding her arm. He was conscious of her warmth and the soft fall of long hair, the way the blouse and skirt concealed her body yet showed her curves.
He didn’t look at Endal. He didn’t want to know if the dog smelled his awareness of Melke.
They sat above the high tide mark, where his mother’s leather slippers lay neatly on the white sand. Endal stretched out with a contented sigh. Melke smoothed the skirt over her knees. Her feet peeked from beneath the damp hem.
The sight of her toes, shapely and lightly dusted with grains of sand, made faint heat curl beneath Bastian’s skin.
He looked away and cleared his throat. “Your brother will be staying at Vere. I hope you will do the same.”
“Thank you, but I prefer to live in Thierry.” Melke’s voice was cool and without inflection.
Her lack of surprise made Bastian blink. He looked sharply at her.
Melke’s face matched her voice, expressionless. Her eyes gave nothing away. Only the tight grip of her hands around her knees hinted at emotion.
Bastian cleared his throat again. He loosened the button at his collar. “I would like to apologize to you.”
Her brow creased faintly. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said things to you that I shouldn’t have. I spat at you, and I shook you, and I pushed you to the ground.” He swallowed, tasting shame. “I apologize.”
Melke’s eyebrows drew together. She shook her head, a sharp movement. “I stole from you.”
“What you did, I would have done too.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” Her voice was flat. She made as if to stand.
Bastian halted her, gripping her arm. “Yes. I would have. For Liana, I would have done everything you did. I would have made the same choices.”
She stared at him. Her eyes were wide and dark. He was aware of how brittle she was, as if tiny cracks ran through her.
“I was wrong,” Bastian said, holding her gaze. “You have honor. I know you do. I’ve seen it.”
Her answer was silence. Bastian saw how alone she was, how lost and afraid, how vulnerable. She was older than Liana, taller and stronger, yet she was also more fragile, more easily hurt.
“Don’t you think you have honor?” he asked quietly.
Sudden tears filled Melke’s eyes. She averted her face and twisted her arm to break his grip.
Bastian tightened his fingers. “Melke,” he said. “Look at me.”
She shook her head. “Let go of me.” Her voice was low and fierce.
“Melke...” There were so many things he wanted to tell her, but he didn’t have the words, didn’t have the eloquence to explain. He took her hand, prised open the clenched fingers, and pressed a kiss into her palm. He felt the warmth of her skin beneath his lips, smelled sea salt and dog.
Melke became very still.
Bastian raised his mouth. “Look at me,” he said softly.
She did. Tears shone in her eyes. “You don’t like me.” It was a whisper.
The tears, the words, stabbed at his chest. “I have changed my mind.” He kissed her palm again, holding her eyes while his mouth touched her skin. “I would like...” Strange, how hard it was to shape the words with his lips, to move his tongue, to
say
them. Harder than undressing for the salamander. “I would like you to consider staying at Vere. I would like you to consider becoming my wife.”
And it was strange how afraid he was of her response, even though he knew that she desired him. Desire and love were two different things.
Sweat was damp on his skin, fear tight in his chest.
Love me.
She was a statue sitting beside him, stiff and still. Her face was bloodless. “Why?”
“Why?” A laugh came from his throat, rough. There were so many reasons why. Her courage and her honor. Her intelligence. Her lustrous black hair. Her pride. “Because I like you.”
She shook her head.
Bastian wished for persuasive words, but he had none. He was a farmer, not a poet. “Do you know that Endal can smell when people want each other?”
A flicker of emotion crossed Melke’s face. She glanced at the dog.
“He can smell that I want you. And he can smell that you want me.”
Color flared in her cheeks. She turned her head away abruptly and tried to tug her hand from his grip.
Bastian didn’t let go. “Marry me,” he said. There was an odd sensation in his chest, as if a fist was clenched around his heart. “I promise I won’t spit at you or shake you or—”
She stopped pulling away from him. “I know you won’t.”
The words were almost whispered. They rendered him speechless. Something choked in his throat. She trusted him. Despite everything he’d done, she trusted him.
“You’re not afraid of me?”
Melke turned her head. She met his eyes. “No.”
“Endal said you were.”
She flushed again. Her gaze dropped. “In the beginning. Not now.”
Bastian swallowed past the constriction in his throat.
She doesn’t fear me.
“So you’ll stay? You’ll marry me?”
Her head lifted. She looked at him. “My bloodline is tainted.”
Once he would have seen haughtiness in the angle of her chin, now he saw the shame she tried to hide. “No more or less than mine,” he told her. “There’s magic in both our families.”
Melke shook her head, a frown pinching between her eyebrows. “I’m a
wraith.
My magic is
bad
.”
“The ability to become unseen doesn’t make a person evil. How they use it does.” He held her gaze.
Listen to me. Believe me.
“You’re a wraith. You’re also the mother I’d like for my children.”
The frown was gone. Fresh tears shone in her eyes. He saw the pulse beat in her throat, saw the rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed, saw her fear and her hope. “You truly want that?”
He’d made mistakes during the past month, too many mistakes, but this wasn’t one of them. He nodded. “Yes.”
Her fingers flexed slightly in his hand. “You want...me?”
“Yes.”
Her smile was hesitant and shy.
Bastian smiled back at her. He was aware of a curious sensation in his chest, an odd lightness, a quicksilver shiver of anticipation, a strange sense of...
Joy?
Ivory-white is her skin, and ebony-black her hair,
And her lips, oh, her lips,
As red as rubies, as sweet as honey.
And when she kisses me, oh, when she kisses me...
He didn’t kiss her. She was too fragile, too close to breaking.
The tentative clasp of her fingers was a beginning. Time would come when he’d kiss her, just as time would come when grass grew green on Vere. But not yet, not quite yet. She needed more color in her cheeks. She needed to learn how to laugh again.
Bastian held Melke’s hand, while waves hissed on the beach and the wind whispered in the tussock and Endal slept stretched out at their feet. A month ago he’d spat at her, now he asked her to marry him. He imagined lying with her, her body warm, her mouth eager, her eyes laughing.
It was a dream now. But in a few weeks, a few months, it would be reality. Just as rain on Vere was now reality.
Their children would play on this beach.
Bastian tightened his grip on Melke’s hand. “Shall we go home?”
A smile was luminous in her eyes. “Yes,” said his wraith.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
T
HE WORDS MAY
be mine, but
Thief
wouldn’t have made it this far without the help of many people: family and friends, my writing buddies, workmates and bosses, my agent and editors, and first and foremost my father, who showed me how it’s done.
Between them they encouraged and supported, pushed and nagged, had confidence in me when I didn’t, gave writing advice and feedback, provided motivation and inspiration and wine and chocolate and margaritas, and told me how to kill sheep.
My thanks!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Writing runs in Emily’s family; her father is a novelist. She loves to travel and has spent time in China, the Middle East, and Scandinavia.
Visit her website at
www.emilygee.com
The Corhonase citadel is a place of virtue and debauchery – and deadly secrets. For the Laurentine spies embedded there, every day brings danger. Nothing is as it seems, whether in the ballrooms and salons of the nobles’ court or the catacombs beneath the citadel.
Saliel has many secrets; her spying is one, her past as a pickpocket in Laurent’s slums is another, but her most deeply guarded secret is the magic she possesses. She walks a narrow path between discovery as a spy and being burned as a witch.
With a sadistic Spycatcher closing in, Saliel and her fellow spies are tested to the limits of their endurance. In the fight to stay alive they must trust each other – or die. Magic may be their only hope of survival...
“Pleasingly standalone, gorgeously indulgent and hopelessly romantic.”
–
SFX
on
Thief With No Shadow
“Intelligent plotting delivers the goods for fantasy fans.”
–
Kirkus Reviews
on
Thief With No Shadow
Available to buy from the Kindle Store
