My resolve strengthened on the ride. Mavros was right, I should make an end of it. There was no future in it for Sidonie or me. Like as not she was right, and it was little more than the lure of the forbidden that goaded us. I was bound for Alba, and if it wasn't the choice I might have made with my life, it was one that would atone for all the choices my mother had made. In the meantime, I had no business sowing the seeds of chaos.

"I'll end it," I said aloud to the Bastard's flicking ears. "I will."

The Bastard snorted, as well he should.

For all my bold words, my resolve began to falter the following day, the instant I saw Amarante of Namarre waiting for me outside the ollamh's study. In her bedchamber, Sidonie was gazing out the window, standing in a shaft of light. She turned as we entered, smiling at me with unreserved happiness. My heart leapt in my breast, and my resolve crumbled into a thousand meaningless pieces.

"Imriel." She did linger over my name this time.

I bowed to her. "Sun Princess."

It made her laugh, that unexpected, full-throated laugh that had turned my world upside down and made me realize that the private Sidonie de la Courcel was very different from the public one. Amarante shook her head and left us. I sat down on the bed uninvited, fearing we might not make it that far if I didn't start there.

"Do you think we might take this at a slower pace today?" I asked.

"We can try." Sidonie stood between my legs and cupped my upturned face. I rested my hands on her hips and we gazed at one another. Her hair was pinned in a complicated chignon with looping tendrils, and the sunlight made an aureole of it. She kissed my face, my eyelids, the corners of my lips. " 'The lover showers kisses on the face of the beloved,' " she recited softly from the Trois Milles Joies, " 'like petals falling in a summer rain.'" Her lips brushed mine, once, then again. The tip of her tongue darted, fleeting. "'The lover seeks to open the beloved's lips like a tight-furled bud.'"

" 'The beloved's lips open like a blossom to admit the lover,'" I whispered, and then her mouth was on mine and her tongue in my mouth, my arms hard around her waist. We fell over onto the bed, kissing.

Elua, it was sweet, so sweet! When I could tear myself away from her mouth, I undressed her in between kisses, and kissed every part I uncovered, while Sidonie did the same. She found the scars; the battle-scars and the others. I felt her touch linger over the faint traces of old weals on my back, the brand on my left flank.

She lifted her head, eyes grave. "Will you tell me about these?"

I nodded. "But not now."

"No, not now." One finger brushed along the underside of the rigid arch of my phallus, which quivered in response. "Can we do it like before? Only properly."

I smiled. "You liked that?"

"Mmm." Sidonie kissed me. "Yes. Now, please. I don't want to wait."

She didn't say why and I didn't ask. I knew. It was a threshold. Until we crossed it, we could still go back. We could still tell ourselves it was nothing more than a few feverish moments of kissing and groping. Afterward, it would be different.

"You're sure?" I whispered when she was straddling me, her bare thighs nestled on the outside of mine. My phallus was throbbing in my fist, the swollen head nudging her nether-lips. They were parted and slick with desire, and I thought I might die if she said no.

"I'm sure." Sidonie shifted deliberately, and we both drew in our breath as the head of my phallus slipped inside her. "Oh, yes! I'm sure."

Inch by inch, she took me in, until I was sheathed to the hilt. I felt like laughing and I felt like crying. I wrapped my arms around her as she rocked atop me. And ah, Elua! It was hot and tight and slick, and terrifyingly intimate in a way I'd never felt before. We held each other and leaned our brows together and I watched her eyelids flutter, echoing the steady surge of ripples below that made her pant and gasp, until I couldn't stand it. With her hands wrapped around my head, I clung to her and groaned against her breast, my seed spurting deep inside her.

Everything was different now.

"Imriel?" Sidonie murmured. "Why do we fit so well together?"

I lay on my back, exhausted. "I wish I knew."

She wriggled atop me, clamping her thighs together and preventing my softening phallus from slipping out. I rolled her onto her side, rolling with her. We stayed conjoined, her upper thigh flung over mine. Our entwined limbs slid against each other and I felt the surge of desire returning, sooner than I would have thought possible. Sidonie laughed deep in her throat, legs squeezing mine. "I could climb you like a tree."

"I didn't think you liked climbing trees," I said.

She kissed me. "I don't."

"Do you know what I love?" I whispered. "I love your eyes. I love the way they don't match the rest of you."

"Cruithne eyes." Sidonie smiled. "You don't mind?"

"No." I kissed the outer corners of her eyelids, moving slowly inside her. "I like them. I always did." I dug my fingers into her thigh, moving it higher. I settled deeper into her, and she caught her breath in a long, satisfied sigh. "Why did you tell the Sultan's ambassador you'd entertain his suit?"

"Politics." Sidonie tasted my throat. "You want to talk politics?"

"I'm curious."

"Jealous?" She bit my earlobe. "You don't have the right to be."

"I know." I gathered her closer, sliding my arms up her back and sinking my hands into her hair. It was true, we fit together as though our bodies were made for one another. I'd never felt that with anyone else. This was slow and languorous and wonderful, and I didn't want it to end. I wanted to stay inside her, holding her. "I'm curious, that's all."

"Because," Sidonie murmured, punctuating her words with kisses, "it shows good faith on our part. And because Parliament will be sufficiently relieved when I refuse the Sultan's suit, they'll be more inclined to agree to the reduction in import fees despite my uncle's opposition, which is what Mother wants." She lifted her head, black eyes languid and amused. "Does that answer your question?"

"Mm-hmm." I thrust into her, watching her eyelids flutter again. For some reason, it was perversely arousing to hear her discuss matters of state while I made love to her. "You know, I could envision spending the rest of my life-"

"Don't say it." She touched my lips. "Please, don't."

Until that moment, I hadn't been sure that what Sidonie was feeling cast the same fearsome shadow in her heart that I felt in mine. But I saw the pain surface and I knew. We gazed at one another, face-to-face, and saw the vast, impending hurt that awaited us reflected in one another's eyes.

"Too late," I said quietly.

Something else surfaced in her expression; the cool determination with which she faced down whispers in the Court and charted her course to the throne. Sidonie rolled onto her back, pulling me atop her with agile strength. I propped myself on my arms above her. The pins had fallen out of her hair, spilling it over the pillows. "Then let's make it worthwhile," she said, locking her heels behind my buttocks.

I did my best to oblige.

Chapter Ten.

That winter passed too quickly.For days on end, I forgot all the things that should have absorbed me. I managed to tend to my Alban studies and I endeavored to learn more about issues of statecraft I'd neglected throughout my tenure as a Prince of the Blood. I consulted with the Queen regarding my upcoming nuptials, which filled me with vague dread. Everything else-the Unseen Guild, the mysterious Maghuin Dhonn, my vanished mother-I forgot.

Sidonie.

We didn't speak of the future, but every stolen moment we could snatch, we spent together. It was never enough. I always wanted more. I wanted to make love to her, and I wanted to talk with her. I wanted to talk about politics and philosophy and what it meant to be good. I wanted to talk about everything under the sun, the way Eamonn and I used to do. I wanted to talk about the endless ways she surprised me.

Sometimes we did. I kept my promise and told her about being abducted, about Daranga and the Mahrkagir's zenana, and what I had endured there. I told her more than I'd ever told anyone except Eamonn and Phedre.

"The worst part was that he made us complicit in it," I said without looking at her. "It happened a lot. There was a girl from Ch'in who displeased him. I never knew her name, but she had beautiful hair, hair to her waist. She used to hide her nakedness behind it in the festal hall." I gazed into the distance. "The Mahrkagir grew impatient at it. He gave me a blunt knife and bade me shear her. He said if I didn't do it, he'd do it himself and take her scalp with it."

Sidonie made a sound deep in her throat.

"So I did." My palms were sweating at the memory. I rubbed them on my thighs. "I hacked away her beautiful hair and laid it in his hands. Then he put the knife to my throat and bade her plait her own hair or watch me die slow. When she was done ..." I took a deep breath. "He throttled her with it and made me watch. Took her by force and throttled her, so he could feel her die under him. He liked that."

I told her how I'd gotten the scar seared onto my left flank. How after Phedre had come, the Mahrkagir had given me as a plaything to the Tatar warlord Jagun. How Jagun had fondled me and beaten me and branded me as his own property. How for long years I'd had nightmares in which I'd awakened screaming, the stench of my own burning flesh in my nostrils.

There were other stories; worse stories.

I didn't tell them all, but I told enough.

Sidonie listened without saying a word, her face stark with horror, streaked with silent tears. It was the only time I didn't touch her, and I couldn't look at her when I'd finished. "I'm sorry," she whispered. She knelt behind me, wrapping her arms around me, her head on my shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

I nodded, unable to speak. Neither of us did, not for a very long time. Sidonie held me, so still she might have been keeping a vigil; and mayhap she was. The sun crept across the floor of Amarante's bedchamber and another knot of shame inside me slowly uncoiled.

At length her warm breath stirred my hair. "Does this mean I shouldn't expect you to do wonderful, horrible things to my helpless body?"

A bolt of mortified desire went through me and my mouth went dry. I turned in her arms to look at her in shock. "Are you jesting?"

Her black eyes were bright with a mix of mirth and sorrow. "No."

"Elua!" I laughed shortly and rubbed my face. "Oh, Sidonie."

She kissed me, soft and tender; a shower of petals falling. It washed away the last traces of shame, at least for a moment. She cupped my face and regarded me with a deep gaze worthy of Phedre, then kissed me lightly on the lips. "We'll see."

No one else had ever reacted that way, with anything less than unalleviated horror and sympathy; not even knowing a tenth of what had befallen me. Until Sidonie did, I hadn't known I'd wanted someone to. Even a year ago, I don't think I would have. But I wasn't the same Imriel who had shorn his own hair in a fit of self-loathing after Mavros took me to Valerian House. In Tiberium, Asclepius' priest had told me to bear my scars with pride. I was learning.

And wrong and doomed though this affair might be, it helped.

I asked Sidonie about it the next time we were together, lying in the afterglow of lovemaking. "All right, then. Tell me. What sort of wonderful, horrible things did you have in mind?"

She smiled, her cheek pillowed on one arm. "Oh, nothing too horrible."

I traced the neat, sleek curve of her back, imagining the kiss of a flogger, welts arising on her tender skin. "Why?"

"I'm curious," she said simply. "I want to."

"You're too young." I smacked her nearest buttock lightly.

Sidonie wrinkled her nose in an expression so like her sister's that it did nothing to belie my observation. "You sound like Amarante when she's being instructive." Her voice took on a tone of unearthly calm. "'Sidonie, if you rush too swiftly through all the pleasures Naamah's arts offer, they will lose their savor.'"

I laughed. "Oh, instructive, is it?"

"Well, not as much, now." She smiled again. "It was."

I ran a lock of her hair through my fingers. It glinted in the light, subtle differences in the hues of gold. "Tell me more about these instructive parts."

"Give me your hand." Sidonie rolled onto her back. I propped myself on my left arm and she took my right hand, guiding my forefinger to her warm, moist cleft and placing the tip of it on her still-swollen bud. " 'First and foremost, it is important to understand your own pleasure,'" she said in the same imperturbable tone. She rubbed my fingertip against her bud, and moisture gathered and glistened there. " 'Though the pinnacle of pleasure may be gained by many methods, for a woman, its seeds lie always in Naamah's Pearl. This is the ultimate source of your pleasure. That, you must never forget. You see, though I touch you with but the merest tip of one finger, I bring you to-'" Her voice broke and her hand tightened on mine, pressing hard. " 'Ah! There, yes, there.'"

"No!" I was laughing almost too hard to let her finish. "So didactic? Surely not!"

"Not exactly," Sidonie admitted breathlessly. "Nearly, though."

I felt a twinge of guilt. "You shouldn't make mock of it. At least not in her own bed."

"I'm not mocking." She sat up, shaking out her hair. "Well, only a little. Only in love. After all, it was very instructive. At least in the beginning. I learn quickly." She smiled at me. "And anyway, Amarante doesn't sleep here very often."

"Oh, I see." I caught another lock of her hair, winding it around fingers damp with her pleasure. "The pupil has become an ardent scholar."

"Yes." Sidonie leaned down to kiss me, the tips of her breasts brushing my chest.

No apology; no shame. She was half-Cruithne, but wholly D'Angeline in matters of desire. And strangely, there was no jealousy in me, only fondness. I gazed up at her and understood for the first time, truly understood, the gifts of Blessed Elua and his Companions. Even the heir to the throne, long schooled in the arts of discipline and self-control, was free to lay those concerns aside in the bedchamber. Even damaged goods like me could be healed here. It was a sacred place in which we were free to be whoever, whatever we wished. Such was the grace of the gods we worshipped.

The dark mirror and the bright alike; both reflected our true selves.

"What are you thinking, Imriel?" she asked.

"A great many things," I said slowly. "Not the least of which is that I love you."

It was a violation of our unspoken pact, but Sidonie said nothing, only made another soft sound deep in her throat. She shook her head in impatient despair and kissed me again, over and over. I kissed her back, drowning in gold, her sun-shot hair falling around my face, hearing the echo of the Asclepian priest's words in my memory.

Even a stunted tree reaches toward the sunlight.

Another priest, a priest of Elua, had spoken a different prophecy for me, long ago, when I was still a boy When I had first undertaken Blessed Elua's vigil on the Longest Night. The priest had spoken to me of love.

You will find it and lose it, again and again.

That, I tried to forget.

I never dreamed there was such a vast difference between loving and being in love. When we were together, it was glorious. I was happier than I'd been since I was a child, since before I was taken. When we were apart, which was far too much of the time, my emotions ran rampant. Betimes I was filled with misery and self-pity, aching with longing. Betimes I brooded and conceived countless schemes wherein I confronted Queen Ysandre and the entire Court and proclaimed our love, challenging Barquiel L'Envers at the point of a sword when he rose to defame me.

And betimes I was angry and struggled against it. I didn't want this feeling, and it seemed absurd I couldn't shake loose of it. I couldn't, though. Absurd or no, love had set its hooks in my heart, and they were barbed and deep.

I loved her.

I hated it.

Elua, it was hard, so hard, seeing her at Court! After hours of blissful lovemaking, we'd lost the trick of being cordial with one another in public. Even before, there had been an invisible cord between us. Now it seemed like a living thing, pulsing with intimacy.

Still, we hid it; or at least I thought we did. We were careful and overly cool in the public eye. It spawned talk of ill will between us- over the absent Maslin de Lombelon who had never made any secret of disliking me, over my rumored dalliance with Sidonie's favorite lady-in-waiting, over my aspirations in Alba, over my long-standing favoritism toward Alais.

Betimes I would see Ysandre's gaze linger on us with regret, and all I could think was how much more distraught the Queen would be if she knew I was calculating how many hours or days it might be before I could lose myself in the arms of her naked, nubile heir, whose name ran like a constant refrain through my thoughts. And then I would have to look away for fear it was written on my face.

It was, of course, to those who knew how to read it.

I wasn't so great a fool that I thought I could keep my state from Phedre; only its cause. As the days wore on and I was mooning and restless, sleeping poorly and picking at my food, I half expected her to confront me. Instead, she merely regarded me with a speculative look and kept her thoughts to herself.

Joscelin was another matter.

"There's somewhat I'd like to see today," he announced one morning as we broke our fasts. "I've been thinking we might try a crop of sunflowers in Montreve, and Tibault de Toluard has invented a means of using a hypocaust system to germinate seeds months early. I thought you might be interested, Imri."

I shook my head. "I've a session with the ollamh."