Page 89 of The Cinders

‘We can find another easily enough.’Xian’s anxious excitement was breathtaking.‘We shall find a way.I know we will.’

‘Find a way to England?’Lim twisted his lips.‘From what I’ve seen of their footwear, they need a shoemaker of my ilk desperately.Though I should warn you, I’ll not be much company on a boat.Doesn’t agree with my belly at all.’

‘But you would still travel with me,’ Xian hesitated.‘Despite everything, you’d undertake such a journey?’

‘Despite what?You being the most intriguing man I’ve ever met and only likely to become more so?Yes, of course.’Lim smiled at Xian’s breathlessness, at the nervous flutter of his lashes.He considered kissing him upon the lips.‘That, and the high likelihood I shall become terribly rich and well-known in the endeavour.’

Xian laughed, rocking back.‘If I am intriguing, you are truly confounding, Song Lim.All that I’ve told you, and you think only of your shoes?’

Lim shrugged, picking up Mercy’s slipper.‘Well, if you cannot agree that I am talented beyond compare, then best I take these back.’

‘You’d not dare.’Xian tilted his head, looking far more of a prince than he’d done in a long time.‘It would be futile to hide them from me now, Master Song.’

‘Really, you think so, do you?’

‘I know so.I could sniff them out, a mile away.They smell like,’ he waved his hand, considering the scent, ‘wet sandstone, and morning dew, with a hint of apricot from the osmanthus flower.’

‘Remarkable!’Lim, struck by an unpleasant thought, looked to Xian.‘Don’t lie to me.Am I pungent?’He sniffed his armpit for good measure.‘Let me die now and never hear your answer.’

‘You are not dying, and you are not pungent,’ Xian laughed.But Lim did not share his amusement.

‘I’ve not bathed in days.’He pressed the slipper over his eyes.‘I rode a horse almost nonstop for ten days, and I sweated for every one of them, not to mention I fell in the dirt.Add to that a bloody wound, and I’m realising what a wretched egg I am.’

‘But a wretched egg made easier to find by his need for a bath.’Xian replied with a keen sparkle in his eye.

‘Don’t torment me!And can I just say, your feet do not smell like magnolia either.’

Laughter burst from Xian, but Lim heard the strained lilt beneath the happiness; the tension that could leave neither of them before the night was done.

Xian’s laughter stopped short, and he glanced over his shoulder.Lim’s heart dropped.

‘He’s close?’

‘Closer than he was.’He turned back to Lim.‘We have a little time, though.Would you fit the slippers again for me?I know it sounds foolish…but when you last did so…’ He tucked his cheek against his shoulder, charming in his shyness.‘It’s just that, I don’t mind when you…I mean, I quite like…when you touch my feet.It is very calming.’He covered his face with his hands, exhaling.‘Argh.How much stranger you must think me now.’

Strange was far from the word; Lim’s tightening trousers knew it.

‘The only thing strange is thinking you need to apologise to your shoemaker for wanting him to touch your feet.The most perfect pair I’ve ever seen.I’d write poetry about these feet if I had the talent, paint them too, if I knew how to handle a brush.’

He drew laughter from the prince again.If Lim had dropped dead right then, he’d have died the happiest man who ever lived.

Grinning, Lim took up the prince’s left foot, and slid the slipper over Xian’s toes, and then his heel; the shoes fitting so easily it was as though they were slicked with melted butter.

He lifted the other, where Mercy’s scales lay, and sobered with a thought.‘Xian, are you certain Sir William does not deceive you?’

‘No,’ Xian said, leaning down to watch Lim work.‘I’m not certain, but I am sure that I cannot go on as I have.The change in me is too great.We will leave tonight regardless.’

Xian shivered as Lim cupped his hand beneath the arch of his foot.‘Then let them speak of the Dancing Prince in his glass slippers for centuries to come.’

‘And his shoemaker, who gave him the strength to find his way.’

Lim, a man not prone to quietness, had nothing worthy to say.He slid Xian’s foot into the second slipper.

The sudden violent glare of light, a flash of pure gold, was blinding.Xian uttered a soft cry.

Lim squeezed the bridge of his nose, blinked madly.‘What happened?Are you hurt?’

‘No…no…I am not hurt.’He set his feet to the ground, rolling them from side to side, setting off a gentler glint; one that still held a gold hue, rather than the usual moonlight gleam.‘Lim, do you see?The scales…’