You don't want to, she corrected him silently. You don't want to give up the feeling of me, and that is your problem.
"You're a very strange monster," he said, almost whispering. "Monsters are supposed to want to overwhelm men."
And what could she respond to that? She made a bad monster and a worse human. "You said it was two things, Lord King."
He took a breath, as if to clear his head, and spoke more steadily. "The other is to ask you, Lady, to reconsider the issue of the prisoner. This is a desperate time. No doubt you've a low opinion of my ability to reason, but I swear to you, Lady, that on my throne – when you're not in my thoughts – I see clearly what's right. The kingdom is on the verge of something important. It might be victory, it might be collapse. Your mental power could help us enormously, and not just with one prisoner."
Fire turned her back to the door and crouched low against it. She held her head up by her hair. "I'm not that kind of monster," she said miserably.
"Reconsider, Lady. We could make rules, set limits. There are reasonable men among my advisers. They wouldn't ask too much of you."
"Leave me to think about it."
"Will you? Will you really think about it?"
"Leave me," she said, more forcefully now. She felt his focus shift from business back to his feelings. There was a lengthy silence.
"I don't want to leave," he said.
Fire bit down on her mounting frustration. "Go."
"Marry me, Lady," he whispered, "I beg you."
His mind was his own as he asked it, and he knew how foolish he was. She sensed plain and clear that he simply couldn't help himself.
She pretended hardness, though hardness was not what she felt. Go, before you ruin the peace between us.
Once he'd gone she sat on the floor, face in hands, wishing herself alone, until Musa brought her a drink, and Mila, shyly, a hot compress for her back. She thanked them, and drank; and because she had no choice, eased into their quiet company.
Chapter Fifteen
Fire's ability to rule her father had depended upon his trust.
As an experiment, in the winter after his accident, Fire got Cansrel to stick his hand into his bedroom fire. She did it by making his mind believe that it was flowers in the grate, and not flame. He reached in to pick them and recoiled; Fire took stronger hold and made him more determined. He reached in again, obstinately resolved to pick flowers, and this time believed he was picking them, until pain brought his mind and his reality crashing back to him. He screamed and ran to the window, threw it open, thrust his hand into the snow piled against the windowpane. He turned to her, cursing, almost crying, to demand what in the Dells she thought she was doing.
It was not an easy thing to explain, and she burst into quite authentic tears that came from the confusion of conflicting emotions. Distress at the sight of his blistered skin, his blackened fingernails, and a terrible smell she hadn't anticipated. Terror of losing his love now that she'd compelled him to hurt himself. Terror of losing his trust, and with it her power to compel him ever to do it again. She threw herself sobbing onto the pillows of his bed. "I wanted to see what it was like to hurt someone," she spat at him, "like you always tell me to. And now I know, and I'm horrified with both of us, and I'll never do it again, not to anyone."
He came to her then, the anger gone from his face. It was clear that her tears grieved him, so she let the tears come. He sat beside her, his burned hand clutched to his side but his focus clearly on her and her sadness. He stroked her hair with his unhurt hand, trying to soothe her. She took the hand, pressed it to her wet face, and kissed it.
After a moment of this he shifted, extricating his hand from hers. "You're too old for that," he said.
She didn't understand him. He cleared his throat. His voice was rough from his own pain.
"You must remember that you're a woman now, Fire, and an unnatural beauty. Men will find your touch overwhelming. Even your father."
She knew that he meant it plainly, that it contained no threat, no suggestion. He was only being frank, as he was with all matters relating to her monster power, and teaching her something important, for her own safety. But her instincts saw an opportunity. One way to secure Cansrel's trust was to turn this around: make Cansrel feel the need to prove his own trustworthiness to her.
She pushed herself away from him, pretending horror. She ran from the room.
That evening Cansrel stood outside Fire's closed door, pleading with her to understand. "Darling child," he said. "You need never fear me; you know I'd never act on such base instincts with you. It's only that I worry about the men who would. You must understand the dangers of your power to yourself. If you were a son I would not be so worried."
She let him make his explanations for a while, and was stunned, inside her room, with how easy it was to manipulate the master manipulator. Astonished and dismayed. Understanding that she'd learned how to do this from him.
Finally she came out and stood before him. "I understand," she said. "I'm sorry, Father." Tears slid down her face and she pretended they were on account of his bandaged hand, which, in part, they were.
"I wish you would be more cruel with your power," he said, touching her hair and kissing her. "Cruelty is strong self-defence."
And so, at the end of her experiment, Cansrel still trusted her. And he had reason to, for Fire didn't think she could go through with anything like that again.
Then, in the spring, Cansrel began to talk of his need for a new plan, an infallible plan this time, to do away with Brigan.
When Fire's bleeding began she felt compelled to explain to her guard why bird monsters had begun to gather outside her screen windows, and why raptor monsters swooped down occasionally, ripped apart the smaller birds, and then perched on the sills to stare inside, screeching. She thought the guards took it rather well. Musa sent the two with the best aim to the grounds below the rooms to do some raptor hunting rather perilously close to the palace walls.
The Dells was not known for hot summers, but a palace made of black stone with glass ceilings will get warm; on clear days the ceiling windows were levered open. When Fire passed through a courtyard or corridor during her bleeding the birds chirped and the raptors screeched through those screens as well. Sometimes flying monster bugs trailed in her wake. Fire didn't imagine it did much for her reputation around the court, but then again, very little did. The square mark on her cheek was recognised and much talked of. She could sense the spinning gossip that stopped whenever she entered a room and started up again as she left.
She had told the king that she would think about the issue of the prisoner, but she didn't, not really; she didn't need to. She knew her mind. She spent a certain amount of energy monitoring his whereabouts so she could avoid him. A good bit more deflecting the attention of people of the court. She sensed curiosity from them foremost, and admiration; some hostility, especially from servants. She wondered if the court's servants had clearer recollections of the particulars of Cansrel's cruelty. She wondered if he had been crueller to them.
People followed her sometimes, at a distance, both men and women, servants and nobles, usually without any definite antagonism. Some of them tried to talk to her, called out to her. A grey-haired woman walked right up to her once, said, "Lady Fire, you are like a delicate blossom," and would have embraced her if Mila hadn't held out a restraining hand. Fire, her abdomen heavy and aching with cramps and her skin tender and burning, felt the furthest thing from a delicate blossom. She couldn't decide whether to slap the woman or fall into her embrace, weeping. And then a raptor monster scratched on a window screen above and the woman looked up and raised her arms to it, just as entranced with the predator as she had been with Fire.