Excerpt: The Blind King

For a moment, the longest moment in the history of the world, she stared at him, and forgot how to breathe. He was older, of course; there were lines in his face that hadn’t been there before, and his hair was clipped shorter than she’d ever seen it, back behind his ears. But his eyes were the same, a keen, fathomless blue, and they were fixed upon her own with all the strength of the ocean, pounding wild and restless on the shore.

She swallowed, hard, and tore her gaze away from his, dropping to her knees to clear up the broken pieces of crockery. Her heart beat quick in her ears, and there were so many thoughts wheeling wild in her head she couldn’t make sense of any of them. She grabbed the shards of plates and cups and bowls, piling them on the tray with her scrabbling fingers, trying to force her mind into some semblance of reality. He wasn’t really standing there. He couldn’t be. She’d imagined it, that was all.

She hadn’t. She glanced up and found him kneeling across from her, wordlessly adding another jagged bit of porcelain to her collection. She stared at him again, and found that his presence made her ache; her throat hurt, and her skin felt dull and cold.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” he said, softly.

She wrapped her fingers tight around the piece of broken plate she was holding. He hadn’t startled her. He’d scared the hell out of her, and out of the confusing tangle of conflicting emotions that roiled in her breast she recognized one of them, and seized onto it: anger.

She looked at him, and thought that this newly discovered rage might burn a hole right through her. “How dare you come here,” she said, “Unannounced. Unwelcome.” The words hung brittle on her lips, and it took a considerable effort on her part to keep her voice from shaking.

“Unwelcome?” he repeated, the questioning look in his eyes portraying deeper meaning than the word itself.

“Unwelcome,” she whispered, and letting that last piece of pottery fall with the others, she stood, hoisting the tray up with her.

He rose to his feet also, and gave a quiet shrug of his shoulders. There was pain in his face.

She suddenly remembered Rose, who had stood quietly by the door throughout this entire exchange with her mouth hanging open. Myra flicked her gaze in the direction of her foster daughter, then returned it to Connor again.

“Rose,” she said, “Take this mess into the kitchen, if you would, and see if you can find enough other dishes to get us by for the evening.”

Rose shut her mouth, and crossing the room to where Myra was standing, accepted the tray from her hands.

“Can I—” Rose began, but Myra shook her head.

“Later, Rosie.”

The girl nodded, and with a glance of mingled curiosity and awe in Connor’s direction, she slipped away into the kitchen.

“Can we talk?” said Connor.

The anger twisted in her gut and she thought about denying him, thought about throwing him out into the gathering night, but there were too many questions yet unanswered, too many things that had weighed for six years upon her heart, and Matthew Cox or no Matthew Cox, she would hear him.

So she gave him a brief nod, and beckoned him into the same private dining room where, twelve hours earlier, she had agreed to marry someone else.

She shut the door behind her.