Page 108 of The Moorwitch

“Morgaine’s had it lying around for centuries. It was an easy matter to slip it in my pocket. She won’t even remember she ever had it.” He looks down at his mother’s shawl, his thumb tracing the hidden language in its hem.

I suppress a shiver, imagining Lachlan’s laughter. If Conrad would steal sea silk for me, would he steal a branch from the Dwirra tree?

No. I won’t find out. It won’t come to that.

“What on earth am I to do with it?” I ask.

“Save it. For something special.”

My voice sticks in my throat. I can only shake my head, letting the thread fall back into its box with liquid fluidity, where it coils like spun gold. I cannot take my eyes off it. I cannot quell the butterflies panicking in my stomach.

This is not the sort of thing you give a guest. This isn’t the sort of thing you give your sister or mother or best friend.

This is the sort of gift you give a queen ... or a lover.

I cross the room and sit heavily on the armchair, putting down the box because my hands are shaking, and I fear I’ll drop it. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, I run my hands through my hair.

“Oh, Fates,” I whisper.

“You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” He rises to his feet and looks at me directly, his eyes fevered. The shawl drapes over his arm. “You’ve made mewantthings; don’t you realize that? Things I should never have wanted. How much easier my life would be if I had never met you!”

I stare at him.

He growls, rubbing his face. “That’s not what I ... I didn’t mean that. It’s only that—damn it, Rose, why is it so difficult to speak around you? You’ve ruined everything: my plans, my expectations, my veryideaof the world.” He raises the shawl, giving it a small shake. “You made me want to go beyond the borders that have measured out my existence, to experience things I never dared dream ...Rose.”

I am a curse on his lips, and a prayer.

“This place is too small for me now,” he says helplessly. “Do you understand that? I can never go back to the way things were. I was content, and you rattled me out of my contentedness. I was safe, and you made me want to fling myself off cliffs to see if I might fly. Never did I ask anything for myself, until you came along, with sunlight in your hair, and inspired in me a great and terrible selfishness.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that just for once, I’d like to do what makesmehappy.” He turns away, pacing restlessly, eyes boring into the carpet, as if searching for words among the curling shapes there.

“What are you asking of me?”

“I’m asking ... What about you? Might we both want the same thing? Is that why you stayed here, even after learning the truth aboutme, when anyone else would have fled to the other side of the world?” He stops and gazes at me from across the room, like a starved pauper begging me to save him. “Might I be half so constant in your thoughts as you are in mine?”

I rise with a rustle of skirts; my own shawl slips, and I let it pool on the chair. The box of thread I set on the table.

Conrad walks to me slowly, his eyes gauging my expression, searching for my answer. But what do I tell him? That yes, heisconstant in my thoughts, that I’ve begun to expect his footstep outside my door for nights now, hoping to hear his soft “Good night” through my door? That I’ve come to anticipate our nightly trysts, eager not just to teach him, but to watch him work, his brow furrowed in concentration as he tries to make sense of the thread in his fingers? That I’ve come to dread his going away, and when he leaves, that I long for his return? That I relive our kiss every night until I’m soaked in sweat and half mad with need?

How do I tell him that I am his enemy’s tool? That my heart is in the clutches of the monster who killed his father?

My kiss would be poison to him.

“We lied to Morgaine about what we were to each other,” he says. “But what if ... what if our lie became our truth?”

He stops a step away from me. If I moved a little closer, our toes would touch and our breaths would meet. Even here, I can feel his heat, see the expanding of his pupils. His eyes are soft as dark, sweet honey.

He is still waiting for my answer, dangling at the end of my string, his entire world holding its breath for me.

If I just took one step forward, if I only tilted my face, he would kiss me. I feel the certainty of it in my marrow. The smallest movement, the slightest invitation, and he would open to me like a leaf unfurling to the sun.

“Conrad ... there is something I must confess.”

“Confess that you hate me, and I will go now and never ask again.” The shawl slides from his grasp and drapes over the footboard of thebed. Then his hands take my waist, drawing me closer, forcing me to tip my head back to hold his gaze. “Confess you do not feel as I feel.”

I cannot, and he knows it.