Page 6

“You think I’m insincere?” His question was careful, and she focused on his face, suddenly aware there was an undertone to his voice.

“No. I know you think that, but I meant, before, on the plains, you could sense me, but not see me. Now you seem to be able to see through the workings in the cloak. You looked straight at me.”

He had always been able to sense her presence when she was wearing the cloak. It had come between them before, reminding him as it did of the terrible mind games that had been played on him in the Chosen camps where he’d grown up.

They had overcome that. Luc had been able to set the horror of those experiences aside.

And now he seemed able to overcome the magic, to a degree.

“You look like a shadow.” He glanced over at her again.

She wondered if that was because she wanted him to see her. How responsive was the magic she had worked into her cloak?

She dismissed that train of thought, because they were passing a narrow, dark alley, and it was empty.

She reached out, grabbed Luc’s sleeve, and tugged him into it with her.

They stopped just a few steps from the alley entrance, but in deep shadow.

Ava lifted her cloak on either side, and stepped in to embrace him, covering all but his head with the magic-worked cloth.

He leaned back against the wall, and she leaned into him and lifted her face to his.

“I can see you properly now,” he said. “Perhaps because I’m surrounded by the cloak, too.”

She nodded at that, interested but ignoring it for the moment to address more important issues.

“You are always sincere,” she said, then couldn’t help the smallest twitch of her lips. “Unless you’re talking to one of the nobles and then—”

He bent down and kissed her, cutting off her words.

When he lifted his head, his eyes locked with hers. “Why are you sneaking out, Ava?”

It hurt him.

She could see it in his face.

She didn’t want that. Felt a twisting in her gut at the thought.

“The walls close in sometimes. And I don’t want to be a whiney baby and interrupt your discussions with General Ru when they do. So I go walking, but keep myself safe with the cloak.”

He sighed. “I don’t want you to feel that way.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “I have been out of a dungeon cell far less time than I was in one. I’m sure it’ll get better.”

“And you want to go back to Grimwalt.” He didn’t make it a question.

She looked down, her gaze fixing on the brooch that held his cloak at his throat, and pressed her forehead against his chin. “The kidnapper sent by the Speaker of the Grimwalt court said my friends were imprisoned.”

“He was trying to hurt you.” Luc ran a hand down her back.

“I . . . yes. But I don’t think that means he was lying.” She had thought about it ever since the Speaker’s emissary had taunted her with it, before Luc had killed him.

“Even if he was telling the truth, you don’t know which friends, and you don’t know where they’re being held.”

“It’s Tomas and Velda.” She had other acquaintances in Grimwalt, friends from her teenage years when her parents had spent time at court, but she had travelled with her mother and father on their trade missions, or stayed home on the border with Venyatu for schooling, far more often that she’d been at court.

She did not have many Grimwaldian friends her own age, and then she’d been imprisoned by her cousin.