“Do what?”
“No one else in the world has ever seen me the way you have, not even Kala. You saw what I was. Before.” I knew she was remembering those rooftops too. “And yet you still look at me as if I matter, as if I’m somehow precious.”
“Youareprecious,” I insisted. “Stubborn and secretive and independent to a fault, but precious.”
“Oh.”
I thought she might be blushing. “I love you, Isabeau.”
She was definitely blushing now. She blinked at me. I just stared back patiently. “Come on, the bones said we’re meant for each other,” I reminded her.
“Who told you that?”
“Magda. She doesn’t hate me quite as much as she used to.”
“Oh.”
I smiled. “Don’t be scared, Isabeau.”
“I’m not scared,” she insisted indignantly.
“Oh, please. One little ‘I love you’ has you all freaked out. No sword or stake or slavering dog-beast can get you that pale and stiff.”
She seemed to fight a short battle inside herself, one I could only watch. I didn’t have the weapons to help her. Only she had them.
“You have a point, I suppose.” She unfisted her hands. “And what is a warrior but someone who faces her fears and defeats them?” She swallowed. “Je. . .” She swallowed again. “Je t’aime.”
I’d never known the kind of bone-deep satisfaction I knew right then and there. I lifted our joined hands to my mouth, kissing her knuckles.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I asked hoarsely.
She smiled. “I suppose not.”
She lay back down next to me, our sides touching, her hair fluttering over my arm, smelling like leaves and berries. We lay under the stars for a long time.
“Will you visit me in the caves?” she whispered finally. “After the ceremonies and the council meetings are through?”
“Of course.”
“Even though everyone will disapprove?”
I pushed up on my elbow. Her eyes were so green they nearly glowed. “I couldn’t care less what everyone else thinks.” I lowered my head, my mouth hovering over hers. “Besides . . . ,” I grinned slowly. “Think of it as intertribal negotiations.”
She touched my jaw, smiling back, softly, lightly. “As handmaiden, itismy duty to foster a good relationship between the Cwn Mamau and the royal family.”
“Exactly.” I closed the last inch between us and kissed her.
And when she kissed me back we weren’t a prince and a handmaiden, weren’t Drake and Hound, weren’t anything or anyone but Logan and Isabeau. Together.
ALYXANDRA HARVEYstudied creative writing and literature at York University and has had her poetry published in magazines. She likes lattes, chocolate, and tattoos and lives in an old Victorian farmhouse in Ontario, Canada, with her husband and three dogs.
www.alyxandraharvey.com
www.thedrakechronicles.com
ALSO BY ALYXANDRA HARVEY
My Love Lies Bleeding
First published in Great Britain in July 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY
First published in the USA in July 2010 by Walker Publishing, Inc
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Copyright © Alyxandra Harvey 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-40881-190-0
Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc, Bungay, Suffolk
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Alyxandra Harvey, Blood Feud
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