Owain untwined his fingers and folded them together again. “That’s what you came to tell me?”
It was as good as an admission. He had been talking to Clarisse, plotting with her. “Yes.”
Owain shrugged. He knew the Shifter well enough, then, not to expect her to tell him more than he needed to know. “I don’t exactly trust her. But I understand her, and that makes her somewhat predictable.”
Understand Clarisse? But maybe it was easy, if you were human with a full grasp of human emotions.
In her mind, she heard Rokan’s dismissive voice: He thinks in straight lines.
But maybe, Isabel thought, he thought in straight lines because he preferred to. Not because it was the only way he could think.
It took her a moment to match her new emotion to a name: regret. This was a man worth admiring, if they had met under difference circumstances. If they had been on the same side.
“Just be careful,” she said, and as she turned she considered killing him. There were dozens of reasons to do it. He had as much as admitted he was harboring…harboring…her mind veered away from whom Owain was harboring, and went to whom he was plotting with.
Finally. Finally, something she could use to pluck that burr out of her hair. And she might need Owain, to repeat to Rokan what he had said. So she left him alive, with his wine and his books, and went to find her prince.
Rokan was, conveniently enough, also in his room. His brother was with him, and they had drawn two chairs and a small table to the foot of the bed, where they were playing some sort of game. There was a decanter of wine on the floor next to them and two half-filled goblets on the table.
She addressed herself to Will. “I have to talk to your brother.”
Rokan nodded, and Will got up and left, scowling at her resentfully as he passed. Isabel took his seat and ran her finger along the flat board on the wooden table, with the assortment of colored tokens arranged on it. She didn’t know how to play this game; well, why would she? “You have a problem.”
“Only one?” Rokan moved one of the tokens across the board, then lifted his goblet to his lips. He was still wearing the elaborate doublet he had put on for the banquet, and he sat in a relaxed slouch; he could have been just a carefree nobleman. At any other time Isabel might have regretted cutting off one of his rare moments of enjoyment. “Want to see if you can win? He hasn’t completely trapped himself yet.”
She ignored that—as if it was beneath her, not as if she couldn’t do it. “Your problem is Clarisse.”
Rokan’s face hardened. He lowered the goblet, staring at it as he turned it around in his hands. “She’s staying away from the men who could be really dangerous to me. At least, she says she is.”
“Anyone could be dangerous to you. There’s no point—” Isabel took a deep breath. “That’s not what I meant. She’s doing more than flirting. She’s plotting with Duke Owain.”
A dash of wine sloshed suddenly over the rim of the goblet. Rokan swore and put it down, carefully but not gently, ignoring the circle of red liquid spreading across the table. “There are limits to what even you can get away with, Isabel.”
She put both hands on the table and stared hard at Rokan’s set face. “She’s been speaking to him.”
“She’s probably trying to figure out what he’s plotting.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“She doesn’t tell me everything. She should, but she doesn’t. But she’s not plotting with anyone behind my back, and if you say she is, you’re a liar.”
Isabel opened her mouth, then closed it.
“You just need someone to be suspicious of,” Rokan said.
Isabel slid her hands off the table. “I have dozens of people to be suspicious of. Your sister has managed to get herself on the top of the list. I know you’re used to relying on her completely, but—”
“But that’s not all right with you, is it? Because how dare I rely on someone who isn’t you.”
“You’re a fool,” Isabel spat. If not for the ancient compulsion that bound her, she might have slapped him. “You relied on Daria, too, didn’t you?”
His entire face went white. Isabel stood. “They’re human, Rokan. You might love them, you might think they love you, but they have other loves and hates and fears that you know nothing about. They’re weak, and you shouldn’t trust them!”
Rokan shoved his chair backward so hard it fell, then stalked to the window. He spoke without facing her, his voice taut. “And you have no weaknesses? No loves and hates and fears?”
“No,” Isabel said flatly.
“Really? No hatred of Clarisse to cloud your judgment?”
“No.”
“No desire to run away to your woods and leave me alone? No love for a sorcerer’s apprentice, that his death changes you like this?”
The conversation was getting dangerous, but Isabel was too angry to care. He would probably bring that up next. No anger that makes you want to hurt me when you shouldn’t be able to?
“What do you mean, changes me?”
He turned around to face her, his lips white. “Do you think I’m blind? Since Ven died, it’s been frightening to be around you. You’ve been different. More…intense. Single-minded. Driven.”
“More like the Shifter, you mean?”
“I suppose that’s one way of putting it.”
“Well, you should be happy. Don’t you want me to be the Shifter?”
He was suddenly silent, staring at her, his face bleak. “I am happy,” he said miserably. “I need you to be the Shifter, even if I don’t like you as much when you are. I know I’m in danger. It’s just…” He drew his shoulders in tight. “I don’t even feel that you like me anymore.”
His eyes held something more than loneliness, something deeper, and she pulled herself upright with a sudden sharp sense of danger. “It doesn’t matter whether I like you or not. I’ll protect you either way.”
She was almost ashamed when he flinched. Almost. Then his face tightened, and he said flatly, “Fine. That’s all I ever wanted anyhow.”
She couldn’t tell whether he was lying. Suddenly twice as furious, Isabel stepped around to the back of the chair. “What did you expect? You came to my woods. You put this bracelet on my wrist. You knew it wouldn’t matter whether I liked you, as long as you were king. You knew I wouldn’t have a choice.”
“I knew. I didn’t realize I would care.”
“You shouldn’t care.”
Rokan pivoted and strode halfway across the room; when he faced her again, his body was framed by the tapestry of the sea. He spoke in a barely recognizable voice. “And if you had a choice?”
“I beg your pardon?”
He swallowed hard. “If you had a choice. Would you protect me anyhow? Or would you go back to your woods and vanish into the mist?”
Did he know those weren’t her only two choices? “What difference does it make?”
“Do you know? Haven’t you thought about it?”
“I don’t think about things that don’t matter.”
His expression made Isabel so uncomfortable she had to fight not to look away. She was about to give in and glance at the floor when Rokan said, “I have to tell you something.”
His tone, dead serious but laced with fear, warned her what it was. Swiftly she said, “You don’t—”
“Listen to me. You want to know this.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Spirits, I’m about to be stupid.”
“As the Shifter,” Isabel said, “I advise you against being stupid.”
He let out a short, shaky laugh. “I wish you luck with that one….” He opened his eyes. “My father killed the king.”
Damn.
Isabel stood like stone. Rokan watched her, his face drained of color, his feet braced against the floor, poised to leap out of the way. Not that he could have, if she attacked.
“You were there,” he drove on. “You tried to save him, but you failed. My father killed the king and his children and took the throne. And you fled.”
Still Isabel said nothing. She didn’t know what to say.
“I’m not the real prince,” Rokan said almost desperately. “What does this mean to you?”
Isabel thought of something to say. “Nothing. I already knew.”
The expression on Rokan’s face would have made her laugh, if she had been in a laughing mood. “You knew?”
“Ven told me.”
Rokan swore, combining several words Isabel had never heard him use before. “And he knew who you were, and what might happen. That’s treason—” He stopped short, suddenly realizing what he was saying. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“You thought you were keeping a secret from the Shifter,” she pointed out. “Not very smart.”
“Well, we’ve already gone over my stupidity.” Rokan slumped against the tapestry on the wall. “You knew. And all this time I’ve been afraid….”
Isabel felt dizzy with relief. She leaned both hands on the back of the chair and said, “Afraid of what? That I would kill you, for vengeance?”
The bracelet slid down her arm, and Rokan’s eyes followed the motion before lifting to her face. “No. Maybe I should have been, but…I was just afraid that you would stop protecting me. That you would leave, or…or protect someone else.”
That was too close to complete honesty for Isabel’s comfort. She tilted the chair back and said gravely, “I have to tell you that in the beginning, I did feel a strong urge to ignore you completely and protect Clarisse.”
Rokan threw his head back and laughed, and as he did Isabel felt the air tremble against her skin—the faintest tremor of movement. She whirled just in time to see the assassin swing onto the windowsill and throw the knife.
But it wasn’t the knife she focused on. It was the assassin’s face.
She had seen it before, in the woods, when she had let him go—but then it had been a stranger’s face. Even when he had demanded that she recognize him, she hadn’t. Now she did. Maybe because she was in the castle, or had been human for nearly two weeks—or maybe her mind was playing tricks on her—but suddenly she knew that he was hers. Connected to her. And for a frozen moment, as the knife hurtled toward Rokan’s back, she felt no urge to stop it.
If she had been human, it would have ended right there. But she was the Shifter, and when the moment ended she was still fast enough to snatch a goblet off the table and throw it with deadly accuracy. It hit the knife and shattered, and Rokan turned just in time to take the blade in his shoulder.
He let out a short, sharp scream, then drew his own dagger with his uninjured arm. But the assassin was gone, the window framing only a cloudless swath of blue. Isabel stepped toward the window, then whirled and headed for the door.
Her first instinct was to shift into a cat, but she crushed it before she could try. She couldn’t afford a failed shift now. She was confused enough as it was. She ran down the hall, up the spiral stairs, and around through an empty corridor to the bedroom right above Rokan’s.
Her knowledge of the castle served her well. She knew exactly where he would come in. He would go up, because up was faster, but he wouldn’t be able to go as fast as she could. He would have to be careful. He wouldn’t even be climbing over the windowsill by the time she was there, waiting for him.
She was wrong. He was either brave or stupid, because by the time she ran into the room he was already there, sitting on a chair, his hands on his knees. Waiting for her.
Isabel shifted her arm to stone, hard enough to crush a man’s head, and stalked toward him. There were wooden chests stacked against the wall and clothes lying haphazardly on the neatly made bed, but the room was empty except for the two of them. He sat there, watching her come. It was so insanely brave she felt proud. She stopped a few feet away.