She was being stupid, of course. But she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to see the girl he used to kiss before she came along. And did he stop at kissing? Or did he do a great deal more to that pretty, grateful, pliant girl?
The stairs led to a gilded landing—the gold barely visible under the dust—which opened into a ballroom with moth-eaten velvet curtains. A row of maids, polishing cloths still in hand, dreamed peacefully.
This was where the fancy dress ball to celebrate Sleeping Beauty’s coming-of-age would have taken place.
Past a room in which a wig master snored gently on a great pile of hair, and another room that contained dozens of dressmaker’s dummies, each sporting a different costume, she sprinted up the stairs.
The castle was endlessly vertical. Cobwebbed corridors, windows falling off their hinges, paintings grimy with age. She ran past them all, headed ever higher.
A door burst open. Before she could recoil in alarm, the prince barreled out and tackled her. They fell onto a thick rug, sending up a cloud of dust. She shoved at him.
“No,” he said, his eyes adamant.
She meant to heave him out of her way. For having another girl—however fictional—before her. For not living forever. And for taking away her freedom in making her fall in love after all.
Except, somehow, her fingers spread over his face. Her thumb traced the rise of his dirt-smeared cheekbone, smudged a drop of sweat trickling past his temple, then down to press into the corner of his lips, chapped from the heat of dragon flame.
So little time. They had so little time left.
Pulling him toward her, she kissed him. He turned stone still with shock. She pushed her hands into his hair and kissed him more fervently.
Suddenly he was kissing her back, with a hunger that both thrilled and frightened her.
And just as suddenly they were back in his room, sitting on two sides of his desk, touching nowhere.
“We cannot,” he said quietly. “I had thought love would bind us together in one purpose. I was wrong. The situation is more complicated than that. You must leave me behind at some point, when I am of no more use. And that is not a decision to be made or unmade under the influence of unnecessary emotions.”
Unnecessary emotions.
Heat prickled her cheeks and the shells of her ears. Her windpipe burned, as if someone had shoved a torch down her throat.
The utter humiliation of it, to be rejected like this, all in the name of the Mission . . .
But even worse was the absolute certainty in his voice. He lived his life counting down toward its end. She might as well have fallen in love with someone on his deathbed.
“Please,” she heard herself speak past the lump in her throat, “don’t be so melodramatic. Don’t confuse a simple kiss with eternal adoration. I am surrounded by handsome boys—have you not noticed how gorgeous Kashkari is?—but you are the only one I can kiss without getting into trouble.
“Besides, have you forgotten that you are my captor? I can never love you when I’m not free. That you think I could only shows how little understanding you have of love.” She rose. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to be in my room before lights-out.”
The colossus cockatrices roared uselessly outside. The wyverns had been contained in a corner of the great hall. Titus made the long, long climb to the garret of the castle, his footsteps heavy with fatigue and dejection.
Sleeping Beauty was deep in her slumber. He sank onto one knee and cupped her cheeks with his hands.
Very gently, he bent his head and kissed her.
She opened her eyes; they were the color of midnight. Her hair, too, was pure shadow.
He knew the texture of her hair, because he had once cut it himself. He knew the taste of her lips because he had kissed her—and as of today, been kissed by her.
“Iolanthe,” he murmured.
She smiled. “You know my name.”
“Yes, I know your name.” And here, inside the Crucible, was the only place where he dared to call her—even to think of her—by that name.
“I have missed you,” she whispered, her arms rising to entwine around his shoulders. “Kiss me again.”
He had changed her dialogue just before he entered the Crucible. These were the precise words he wanted to hear. But they echoed hollowly against the walls of the garret, meaningless sounds that neither soothed nor reassured.
“Ignore what I said earlier, when I was annoyed,” she went on, her fingers combing through his hair.
But he couldn’t. He knew how much time she spent with Kashkari—they were always walking to or from cricket practice together. And how stupid of him to suppose that she could forget, even for a moment, that she was here against her will.
“And they lived happily ever after,” he said.
Now he was back in his empty room. He rose from his chair and laid a hand upon the wall between his room and hers, as if that could propel his thoughts across everything that separated them and make her understand that it was not her kiss that frightened him, but his own reaction to it.
Because if he loved her, he would never be able to push her into mortal danger.
Yet he must, or he would have lived his entire life in vain.
CHAPTER 21