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No. I try to wrench myself out of his grip, but his long fingers are like a vise around my wrist. I panic and stop pulling, instead using my weight against him, throwing myself into him, trying to knock him down.

But it doesn’t work. Instead he grabs at my other arm and pulls it behind my back, catching both of my wrists in one of his hands. He moves behind me and pulls my back against his chest, so there’s no room to move, to lash out.

“Help me!” I scream, twisting in his arms and stamping my feet, bending backward and forward, throwing my head back into his chest, anything to get him off me. “Someone help!”

“Errin, shut up.”

The sound of my name on his lips feels like a punch to the stomach; my blood boils so violently I’m surprised he can touch me without burning.

“How could you?” My lungs fill with air and I scream again, scraping my throat raw. “How could you?”

He claps a gloved hand over my mouth. “Stop it,” he hisses insistently into my ear, but I continue to struggle, screaming into the glove, trying to bite him. I understand then that I’m done for, he’s overpowered me. But I can’t stop thrashing, can’t stop trying to fight, my body moving without my command as I writhe in his arms. It can’t end like this. Please, please, if I can—

I look to my mother and it’s as though a bucket of cold water has been thrown over me. I stop struggling immediately, staring at her.

Her eyes are fixed on the flaking whitewash of the wall opposite the bed, and I see that he could kill me in front of her and she wouldn’t blink. He will kill me in front of her and she won’t raise a hand to stop him. And just like that, all of the fight goes out of me and I become limp in his arms.

He spins me around to face him, still holding my wrists in his long gloved fingers, his head tilted as his terrible golden eyes sear into mine. I start to tremble, my blood running cold. I don’t want to die like this. Gods, please, I don’t want to die here, now. I don’t want this to be it. And Mama … I don’t want her to die like this.

I force myself to speak. To beg.

“Please let us go,” I say, my voice cracking. “I beg you. Please. I won’t tell anyone I saw you. I won’t say anything. Please let us go—” Then my control breaks and the words come out as a sob. “Please, please. Have mercy on us …” I’m shaking so hard now that I can’t speak; all my courage has left me. I’m afraid I’m going to wet myself, I’m afraid it’s going to hurt. I’m ashamed that I begged; Lief never would have. I can’t remember what you call a prince. “My Lord.” I try to bow as best I can. “Please, Your Grace …”

“What?” he says sharply, his words sounding as though they’re coming from far away. “What the hell, Errin?” Confusion colors his cheeks, suddenly making him look vulnerable, human. Then his face falls, and he blinks at me, once, twice, before letting go of me so fast that I stumble. Before I’ve had time to right myself and pick up my knife, he’s grabbed his cloak, flinging it angrily around his shoulders and pulling the hood up, covering his hair. I can still see his face, though. His eyes.

He glares at me fiercely, his golden eyes narrowed to tiny slits. “I’m not the Sleeping Prince, Errin.”

My chest heaves as I watch him, poised to move if he does, his words ringing in my ears until all the meaning is lost from them. My heart still beats triple time. I watch him warily.

“Gods …” His eyes are bright inside the rings of black, feverish. He looks … he looks distraught. “Really? You truly thought—?” He runs his hands through his hair, knocking the hood back, before his forefinger starts to tap his thumb, the motion so fast it blurs.

And that small, familiar movement takes the edge from my fear, making me feel ashamed, because it’s a gesture I know so well. It’s anxious, fretful, nervous, Silas. I’ve seen him do it dozens of times. I’ve calmed him when I’ve noticed it. I’ve calmed my friend.

I know then that I want to believe him. I want this to be a simple misunderstanding. But I can’t believe him. Not yet. Not completely. Because there’s too much that doesn’t add up, and I’m still shaking, and my lungs are still pumping as though I’ve been running for miles.

My gut is still telling me to run.

I look at him—really look at him—at his strange eyes and his hair and his face. For three moons I’ve watched his lips, but now I can see the small bump in the bridge of his nose, his forehead, his white eyelashes and eyebrows. His hairline is a deep widow’s peak. His skin is an opaque white, not like flesh. I can’t see the veins beneath it; there are no impurities, no freckles, or spots. No shadow on his jawline. His eyes are the color of honey, liquid and amber, and I find myself caught in them.

“I’m not the Sleeping Prince,” he says again, jolting me from my thoughts.

“All right,” I say, after a long moment.

“Do you believe me?”

I can’t nod.

“Do you?” he demands.

“Be fair,” I say quietly. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen you without the cloak. And you look … You must know what you look like. What would you think, in my place?”

He looks away from me and bites his lip before his eyes meet mine again. “I can explain, a little, at least. If you’ll hear me?”

I nod, and some of the tension leaves his eyes.

Until he looks me up and down.

“Why is there blood on you?” he asks in a strange voice.

I lift my hand to my ear, but the blood has dried. “Oh.” I try to keep my voice level. “I ran into some trouble, in the woods.” I look at him, watching for any sign that he knows something about it, that the men who attacked me might have even been there for him.

“When were you in the woods?”

“Now. I … I saw you there. A moment before I was attacked.”

He frowns and a line forms between his eyebrows. I watch as the shape of his eyes changes with it and I realize I have no idea how to judge what he thinks from his face. I don’t know him at all.

He looks at my mother, who gives no indication she knows we’re there, and then grasps my elbow gently to lead me from the room. I flinch at the contact, and he lets go immediately, the corners of his mouth tightening. I follow him as he stalks out of the room, bending to pick up my knife first. He locks the door and nods at the bench, as though I’m the guest. My heart still thumps too hard as I turn my back on him, but I sit down and fold my hands in my lap, trying to look calm. By turn he looks anything but calm; his eyes rake over me, his fists clenching and unclenching by his sides.

“What happened? Were you attacked?”

“No,” I tell him, raising a still-shaking hand and starting to pluck twigs and dead leaves from my hair. “You said you were going to explain. So explain. Let’s start with you telling me how you got in here. And why.”

He looks down. “The front door was open.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“It was once I’d opened it.” He attempts a smile but I keep my own expression stony, waiting.

When he says nothing, I rise, collecting a cloth from the washing line and the pipkin, the water inside cold. Carefully I begin to clean my bloodied ear. “You have about thirty seconds before I start screaming for the guards again.”

“I wanted to make sure she was all right,” he says quietly. “After yesterday.”

“Why?”

He ignores the question. “I wasn’t trying to intrude.”

“Entering a house that isn’t yours and then opening a locked door is the definition of intrusion,” I say. “So if you weren’t trying to intrude you should have left the door closed and not come in.”

He looks at me and nods. “I’m sorry.” His head lowers like a boy caught with his hand in the jam jar. In the wintry light his hair and skin glow, making him look like a ghost.

“What are you?” I ask without thinking.

“I’m not a ‘what.’ ” His head snaps up to look at me, his golden eyes flashing with outrage. “I’m a person, same as you. Not a thing. And not the Sleeping Prince.”

“Sorry,” I say, looking at the floor. “I’ve just … The only time I’ve ever seen anyone like you was in the stories about … him.” Sitting opposite the Sleeping Prince’s double makes it hard to say his name. “It’s different.”

“Not to me.”

“Well, it is to me,” I say. “Just … Silas, think about it. For three moons I had no idea what you looked like, no idea about you at all. You won’t tell me anything, I have no idea where you come from, or what you’re doing here. You both showed up at the exact same time, and until recently no one else knew you were here. You have unlimited money, you have secret tasks. And I saw you in the woods before I was attacked, Silas. You were there, minutes before. With someone. I saw you meet them and then I lost sight of you, then I come back here and see your hair and your eyes. Can you blame me for what I thought?”

Silas looks at me and shrugs, before shaking his head.

“My family is originally Tallithi, generations back,” he says quietly, his voice oddly bitter. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I’d hurt him. “I inherited my astonishing good looks from them. Moon hair, the Godseye. That’s what they call it, in Lormere. Tallithi features, you can look them up in any of the history books. It’s less common to see someone with one, or both, now, I’ll grant you that. But because we stay out of the way. We’re conspicuous enough as it is.” He crosses his long legs like a schoolboy and rests his elbows on his knees. “Obviously, since the Sleeping Prince’s return, it’s essential for me to keep my appearance hidden. People might overreact.”

I swallow, my skin heating, and the two of us fall silent. I lower my head and look at him subtly through my lashes, trying to reconcile the man I’ve known for the last three moons with the one before me now. He’s absolutely not what I expected him to be, and it makes me feel embarrassed. I look up to see him watching me closely in return, as though I’ve caused the new dynamic in the room, not him.

“What are you thinking?” His words startle me.

“I just … You’re not how I imagined you.”

He reddens and says, “Oh,” in a way that makes me blush, too.

“What’s the black stuff for, around your eyes?” I ask hurriedly, trying to brush past the odd moment.

“It helps keep them shadowed. In case anyone came close enough to peer up there.”

I feel my skin heating again. “Of course.” We lapse back into an awkward silence, him toying with the fingers of his gloves, me looking anywhere but at him.

“What about your family?” I ask him. “Are they … Do they look like you? I just … It’d be good to know, in case I bump into anyone else like—I mean—with your coloring.”

He looks down into his lap, his hands fidgeting before he speaks, his voice measured. “Well, my father’s dead. He had an accident while working.” There’s the briefest of pauses between his words, and I feel my eyes widen with the realization that we share this common sadness. “My mother lives with a group of women near the East Mountains. I lived with her, until recently. Then I came here.”

“From Lormere?”

“Yes.” He looks away, and then back at me. “I left before the Sleeping Prince arrived.” I hear an edge to his voice.

“You don’t have a Lormerian accent.”

“If I had, it might have saved you thinking I was that … thing.” He looks at me sharply and then looks away.

“You don’t get to be cross with me, Silas. It’s not fair. You know it isn’t.”

He nods.

“Is your mother safe, in Lormere?” I ask after a moment.

“Yes, she’s fine. They all are. Thankfully the temple they live in is remote and well hidden.”

“She lives in a temple? Is she … Has she taken orders?” He blinks and then nods hesitantly, and Kirin’s terrible words about what the Sleeping Prince is doing to the holy people come back to me. “Oh gods, Silas. You have to get her out of there.”

“She … can’t leave yet.” He looks down at his hands. “She’s fine, though. The person I met earlier was a messenger from her.”

“Silas, this is serious. If he—if the Sleeping Prince finds them, he’ll … He shows no mercy.”

“She’s bound to the temple, Errin. She can’t leave.” I open my mouth to speak but he interrupts. “I know, Errin. Believe me, I know what he’s doing there. But … she has a job to do. There are things that need to be moved from the temple, before he has a chance to destroy it. It’s important.”

“Things? Things that are more important than her life?”

“She would say so, yes.”

I shake my head. I know it’s common in Lormere for widows to join convents, but he has to understand the danger of it now. This is his mother, for the love of the Oak. Nothing in the temple can be worth what the Sleeping Prince will do to them if he finds them.

“Silas—”

“It’s why I’m here. This is my link in the chain. I’m helping her get the artifacts and documents over the border while we still can.”

“Are you out of your mind?” I say. “Are all of you insane? What if you were caught skulking around? What if someone saw you without the cloak? They would think exactly what I did. No artifacts are worth this—the risk is too great—can’t you see that?”

“It’s less risky for me to be here than it would have been to stay there. Trust me.” He bites his lip as soon as the words have left his mouth, and looks away again.

And I realize that all of my doubt in him has gone. That he has my trust again. Even if he and his mother are lunatics.

“What will you do once the evacuation happens?” I ask.

“Nothing. I have to stay.” I get the strangest feeling that there’s more to come, so I keep still, and quiet, silently urging him to speak. “I’m here to wait for something else that is likely to end up here, sooner or later. Something not from the temple.”

“Like what?”

Silas shrugs elaborately. “Nothing that would mean anything to you. It’s a religious thing. There’s no point trying to explain.”

There’s a pinch in my stomach, alien and unwelcome, and I don’t understand it. “But surely it’s unlikely this thing will get here now; the borders are closed, and the woods are full of soldiers and Lormerian raiders.”

He nods again. “I know. But that doesn’t change the fact I have to stay here, for now. Until we’re sure.”

We’re both quiet, thinking. “When you came here, to wait for this something, did you know the Sleeping Prince was coming?”

He looks at me. “Yes,” he says.

I open my mouth to ask another question, but he holds up a hand to hush me.

“My turn. When you thought I was him, you stopped fighting. You were going hell for leather and then you stopped. I thought you’d fainted. Did you want me—him—to?”

My skin colors. “I was trying to trick you.”

His golden eyes flash. “I haven’t lied to you, Errin. Don’t lie to me.”

I can’t look at him as I speak. “She sat there, Silas. I ran into the room to defend her. I would have died trying to save her, but she didn’t do anything. She stared at the wall while her own daughter was struggling before her. I didn’t want to die. But I couldn’t fight. Not after that.”

Silas’s face is deadpan; he blinks at me and then gives a short nod. Suddenly he gets to his feet, unfolding his tall frame and standing over me.

“Here,” he says as he rummages in his pocket and holds out a small brown glass bottle with a dropper in the cap. The kind of bottle an apothecary would prescribe medicine in.

I stand up and take it, opening the top and squeezing to draw a tiny amount of liquid into the dropper. It’s milky looking, delicate, and I take a cautious sniff. It smells of roses. There are maybe seven drops in the bottle, and I replace the lid.

“What is it?”

“It’s for your mother.” He looks into my eyes, holding my gaze. “It’ll help her with her problem, I think.”

My blood runs ice-cold. “What do you mean?” I whisper. Does he know what she is? Does he recognize it?

His face, still so new to me, is carefully blank. “Put it in her tea tonight, instead of the poppy. One drop only. Do you understand? One dose, of one drop, per day. No more.”

“What is it? What does it do? What is it for?” I want to grip him by the front of his cloak and shake him, my fists tightening with the desire to do it.

“I have to go. I’ll come back when I can. And I’ll knock.” He smiles.

“Silas—”

“Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies.” Then he’s gone, the door clicking neatly closed behind him.

I look down at the vial in my hand.

*  *  *

The rest of the day is mercifully uneventful, though that doesn’t stop the low-level panic that rises in me when I think of everything Kirin told me. But when I manage to push images of arrows and blood and hearts from my mind, it turns to Silas. White-haired, golden-eyed. More mysterious now than when he was hooded.

When dusk falls I make my mother some tea, and add one drop of Silas’s potion to it. I half expect it to smoke as it lands in the tea, or to make it change color, but nothing happens. When I sniff it, I can’t detect it, and my mother doesn’t seem to notice the taste as I feed it to her, her red eyes on me the whole time. Once she’s locked in for the night, I pull the chest in front of the door, and with the shadows on my side, I sneak to the well and bring back as much water as I can carry, using half of it to make a vat of soup large enough to last us through the next day.

When it’s done, I return to my blankets, pulling Mama’s book with me.

I flick straight to the story of the Sleeping Prince, my eyes seeking out a drawing of him. Though I know it’s a book, and the illustration might not be accurate, I can’t help comparing it to Silas’s face. They’re so similar. I look back at the pictures, staring into the golden eyes on the page. They stare right back at me as I fall asleep.

*  *  *

The man is holding my hands in his, turning them over, entwining our fingers so we’re linked, pressed palm to palm. He takes my right hand and opens it out, rubbing his thumb over the base of mine, then traces the lines, my lifeline, my heart line. He draws along the length of my fingers with his, his touch delicate as he makes circles on my fingertips. My chest feels tight, my skin tingling under his attention, and I feel dizzy. Despite that, I can’t help notice his hands are smoother than mine. Mine are covered in nicks and scratches, webbed with scars like fine lacework where I’ve slipped cutting up plants or sliced myself on barbs and thorns. My nails are short and jagged, and when I see the contrast with his I pull my hand away.

“Are you ashamed?” he asks, and I keep my head bent as I shake it. “You shouldn’t be,” he adds, gently taking my hand again. “You hold life and death here in these hands. Kill or cure, that’s your gift. These are your weapons.”

I look down at my hands, and as I do he takes both of them, raising them to his face. The tip of his hood brushes the back of my wrists, and I’m about to ask him why he wears it, when his lips press against my skin and my stomach lurches inside me. It feels as though I’m falling. Then it’s over, and he’s letting go, and my hands feel cold without his touch.

“What are you working on?” he says finally, standing up, and as he walks away the room comes into focus around me. Not my old apothecary chambers, but the hut in Almwyk. In the dream it looks even worse: There are cobwebs covering the ceiling, and I can hear scurrying along the edges of the room. The rushes are rotting, stinking sweet and slimy under my feet, and I stand, horrified.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, as though he can read my thoughts. He picks up the vial from the table and looks at it briefly. “You’ll have a proper apothecary again soon.”

“Home?” I say without thinking, and his lips curve into a familiar smile.

“Home.”

“But …” I turn to the door to my mother’s room. It’s dark, black in the dream; everything about it screams danger and forbiddance.

“She’s quiet tonight,” he says. “Why? Your work?”

I smile in reply. Something stops me from telling him I gave her a potion I hadn’t made.

The man shrugs lightly and walks to me. He folds me gently into his arms, pulling me into his lean body, and my heart swells. I think of what Kirin said and I smile. Home.

*  *  *

The dream ends abruptly, though the feelings linger, and I lie still, listening for whatever pulled me from it. With the windows covered I have no idea how close it is to dawn, but a glance at the fireplace shows me long enough has passed for the fire to go out. I strain for sound from my mother’s room; surely that’s what’s woken me? When I hear nothing, I move, silent as the grave, to the window and pull the cloth back. Grayish lavender light seeps in around the edges of the slats and my mouth falls open. Dawn. It’s dawn.

I’m astonished that I slept through the night—that my mother slept through the night—but astonishment turns rapidly to fear and then I’m flying across the few steps to her door and grabbing the key, fumbling it in my haste to unlock it. What if she’s—what if … I don’t know what was in Silas’s potion. How could I be so stupid? I didn’t even ask if it was safe, if it had anything dangerous in it. Oh gods, the dream, it was a warning, it was a warning to me that she …

I fling open the door, forgetting to be careful, not thinking it might be a trick, or a trap. She’s in the bed with her mouth open, head tipped slightly back, and I run to her, my stomach roiling.

“Mama!” I choke out the word and grasp her bird-thin shoulders, shaking her. “Mama!”

There is a sickening, sickening moment when she doesn’t respond, and I forget how to breathe. Then her eyes open and she looks up at me, and the relief is so great that I crumple onto the bed, still clutching her shoulders as I slump beside her. She blinks slowly and I look at her eyes. They’re clearer than they’ve been for moons, barely pink at all, and her pupils aren’t dilated or contracted. Moreover there’s no malice in her gaze, and I gently lower her back to the pillow.

“I’ll get you some breakfast,” I say shakily, and for the first time in three moons, she nods. It’s faint, and it might not have been deliberate, but I see it. I back out of the room, unable to take my eyes off her. What is in the mixture Silas gave me?