Page 65 of Hemlock & Silver

I woke up with something warm and alive against my back, and said muzzily, “Grayling? Izzat you…?”

“No,” Javier said, “but I could try to get him if you like.”

Shock fired my muscles, and I sat up, suddenly wide awake. “Oh my god. Javier? You’re here?”

He was stretched out full length next to me. I’d been on my side, and he’d had one arm flung over my waist and the other stretched out under the pillow. The lazy smile on his face was slowly being replaced by a worried frown.

“Um,” he said. “I can leave if you’d like.”

“No!” I practically yelled it.

He blinked at me a few times, but then the smile came back and grew wider.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was just startled. I didn’t expect… uh…” I looked down at myself. I was wearing a perfectly respectable nightgown. Javier was wearing breeches. Just breeches.

“There hasn’t been any uh, ” he said.

I swallowed a few times and reminded myself that I was done with trying to be tactful. Then I met his eyes squarely and said, “Would you like there to be?”

For the record, it is not easy to make love to a man with badly bruised ribs.

Afterward, we lay around with the hazy smiles of people who had just uhhh -ed. “I would like to try that again,” I said, “when I’m not afraid that you’ll puncture a lung if you get too enthusiastic.”

“This seems like an excellent plan.” He idly stroked his fingertips over my wrist, right where the skin was more sensitive, and I shivered. He made a noise, a furry sort of chuckle deep in his chest, and I decided that I wanted to hear that noise again, preferably as soon as possible.

We lounged for a bit, while the sun streamed in through the glass doors. “I should close the curtains before it gets hot,” I said.

“Good idea.”

Neither of us moved. I gazed at the fabric hanging over the bed. “I’d like to say something, but I’m afraid I’ll ruin this.”

He rolled to face me, that familiar line forming between his eyes. “That sounds serious.”

“I don’t want to ruin this.”

“Neither do I.”

“If what I say is stupid, will you just forget I said anything?”

He considered. “I suppose it depends on what it is. If it’s ‘I wish you were Aaron,’ I’m afraid I’m not going to get over—”

The pillow took him in the face, and he fell back, laughing. I found an undamaged length of rib cage and poked him in it. “Obviously it’s not that.”

He grunted. “I think you’re just going to have to say it.”

I stared at the ceiling and summoned my courage. I didn’t look at him. I didn’t think I could get through this if I looked at him. “When I thought we were going to die, in the mirror, I wanted to tell you that I was in love with you, but then I thought that it would make everything awkward.”

Javier grunted again. The silence drew out until I thought I was going to keel over, and then he said, “It wouldn’t have.”

“What?”

“It wouldn’t have made things awkward.” He joined me in contemplating the ceiling.

I felt my brow furrowing as I tried to parse that. “What do you mean?”

“Oh,” he said, as if it were nothing of import, “I’ve been completely mad for you since you dragged me into the mirror.”

“What?”

He reached over and took my hand, interlacing our fingers.

“You were so excited. You tried to show me everything at once, and your eyes lit up, and you were just so fascinated by everything. Gets a man thinking what it would be like to have you look at him that way.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I thought you knew.”

“No! I thought I repulsed you.”

“Dead and merciless gods,” Javier said, and dragged me down into a kiss that proved that whatever else he was, he was definitely not repulsed.

When we finally broke apart, I slumped back against the sheets, feeling positively wrung out. “Well. Glad that’s cleared up. But why didn’t you say something?”

“Didn’t want you to think I was a fortune hunter.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again.

Oh. In the last few days, my family’s wealth hadn’t seemed terribly important, given the mirrors and the poison and a lot of other things that money couldn’t fix.

But if you were a guardsman, living in the palace barracks…

Yes, all right, I understood. “I doubt a fortune hunter would run toward a mirror-geld.”

“Not a smart one, anyway.”

I propped myself up on one elbow. “I should probably go back and thank them. Bring them mirrors or something… Do you think Grayling got out okay?”

“I’m sure he did. And I still don’t think he’s a cat,” Javier said.

“Why not? Because he can talk?”

“Yes. No.” Javier frowned. “Would a cat really follow someone across the desert like that? A dog, sure. But a cat?”

“Cats can be loyal,” I argued.

“Yes, but they’re fundamentally lazy.”

“Loyalty had nothing to do with it,” said a thin voice from under the bed. “She was my person. Mine. No one else had the right to interfere. And I wasn’t done with her yet.”

In a human, that sentiment would have been horrifying. In a cat… yeah, I couldn’t say I was surprised. “I’m glad you made it out,” I said, trying not to think about the fact that he might have been there during the… uh.

Grayling emerged from under the bed. There was a dust bunny stuck to his tail. “Please. As if that was ever in doubt.”

“So did you get what you wanted?” I asked.

“Vengeance, yes. I could do with more cream.” He finally noticed the dust bunny and, with immense dignity, removed it from his tail. Between licks, he added, “I cannot believe you involved mirror-gelds . Revolting creatures.”

“They saved our lives,” I protested. “And they were very helpful.”

“Which does not alter the fact that they’re revolting.”

“Are there a lot of them?” I asked.

“Thousands, I imagine. You get them wherever there are two mirrors together. They dig tunnels under the world and click to one another in the dark.” Grayling gave a delicate shudder.

“I thought I might bring them some paper and see if we could communicate.”

“Of course you did.” The cat rolled his good eye. “It’s just the sort of thing you’d do.” He got to his feet and stalked toward the washroom. Over his shoulder, he said, “The Queen’s guards took the horses and fled, incidentally. So, if you decide to go back, you ought to be safe enough.”

He vanished through the curtain. I heard a soft thump, as of paws landing on the edge of the basin, and then the non-sound of a cat sliding through the silver.

“There’s no way that’s a cat,” Javier said.

“Don’t start.”

He glanced over at me, and a wicked grin lit up his face. “So… now what do we do?”

I glared at him, which only made his grin wider. “You’re lucky I don’t—”

Now, I want you to assume that was about to be a truly excellent threat, a threat laden with both menace and literary allusion, cleverly worded but so hyperbolic as to be obviously joking.

I’m sure I would have come up with something along those lines, anyway.

Unfortunately, before this masterpiece could pass my lips, the door banged open, and Aaron yelled, “Snow’s awake! ”

Aaron saw rather more of me in the next few seconds than he’d probably expected, but that was his own fault. Certainly by the time I had yanked on my clothes, he had turned around and was staring fixedly at the (now-closed) door. I shoved past him and barreled down the hall to the sickroom.

Rinald beamed at me as I came in. I dropped to my knees next to the bed. Snow still looked wan, but she turned her head to look at me. “Did it work?” she asked hoarsely, glancing past me at Rinald.

“You did it,” I told her, knowing she’d understand.

She closed her eyes, an expression of unutterable relief crossing her face. “Then it’s over.”

I took her hand. It was cold, but the pulse in her wrist was strong again. “You just have to focus on getting better. I suspect it’ll be easier now.”

She gave a soft huff of a laugh. After a moment, she said, “I think I’m hungry? I haven’t been hungry in a long time.”

“I suspect the cook will be thrilled to hear that.” I got to my feet. “I’ll have her send you up a tray.”

The king’s daughter smiled, and I slipped out of the room, then slumped against the wall. It felt as if I’d been holding my breath ever since the king had walked into my stillroom.

“ Is it over?” Javier asked.

“Mostly. She’s Rinald’s patient now. He’ll do a much better job than I would.

” I had never been one to stand around and oversee a recovery.

That takes patience and caring and a certain sort of temperament that I absolutely do not possess.

Should you happen to be dying and have a choice between me and a cactus to nurse you, the cactus will likely be less prickly and do a better job.

“I suppose we should write a letter to the king.” I wondered what on earth to tell him.

Probably not that killing his wife had been a tragic misunderstanding.

I winced at the thought. No, not that. It would be enough to tell him that Snow would get better now.

Maybe that would ease some of the lines in the king’s… in Randolph’s face.

Probably there would be rewards and signs of royal favor. The thought was exhausting, but I’d probably be able to deal with it in a few days, or off-load it onto my father, who would know how to handle royal favor gracefully.

But there was still one thing I had to do first.

“Where are we going?” asked Javier, as we climbed the steps to the third floor.

“To confront the Mirror Queen’s accomplice.”

“I thought that was Snow.”

“So did I, at first.”

I stopped before a particular door and knocked. The door opened immediately, as if the occupant had been expecting me.

“Ah,” said Nurse. “I knew you’d get here eventually.”