Chapter 2

Liana's POV

The first thing I learned underwater was that I had no idea which way was up.

The cold hit me all at once and knocked the scream out of my chest before I could use it. My skirt wrapped around my legs like a wet sheet. I kicked, and nothing happened. I reached for the dock, and my fingers closed on water. A pale green glow hung everywhere around me, and below me there was only dark, and I couldn't tell the two apart.

Not again, I thought. It was a stupid thing to think, but it was the only thing I had.

My lungs began to burn. I opened my mouth without meaning to, and the lake poured in, tasting of mud and cold stone. My arms stopped listening to me. Somewhere above, the light started to shrink.

Then something closed around my wrist.

It wasn't gentle. It yanked me upward so hard that my shoulder burned, and an arm locked around my ribs and held on. I was pulled against someone solid and warm who kicked with long, steady strokes. My head broke the surface, and the air hit me like a slap. I tried to breathe and choked instead. Whoever held me dragged us to the dock, heaved me up onto the boards, and rolled me onto my back.

I couldn't see him. My eyes were full of water, and my hair was plastered across my face. I only knew that a shape knelt above me, breathing hard, and that a hand was pushing the wet curls off my forehead.

"Breathe," a voice said. It was low and rough, and it didn't sound kind. It sounded like someone giving an order. "Come on. Breathe."

I tried. Nothing came.

"Damn it."

A hand tilted my chin back. Something warm pressed over my mouth, and air pushed into me, and in a dim, faraway part of my mind I understood that a stranger was kissing me back to life. I had just enough time to be mortified before my whole body jerked. The lake came up out of me in a rush, and I lurched upward with a noise like a drowning cat, and my teeth snapped shut on whatever was in the way.

"Ah—"

He jerked back. I rolled onto my side and coughed until I thought my ribs would crack, and spat out water, and more water, and something that tasted strongly of copper.

"You bit me," he said.

I couldn't answer. I was busy being sick on a dock.

"You bit me," he said again, more slowly, as if the idea was too strange to take in.

"I'm sorry," I croaked between coughs. "It was an accident. You were on my face."

He made a short sound through his nose. It wasn't quite a laugh. "Fair enough."

I pushed my hair back and finally looked at him.

He was kneeling a few feet away, soaked from head to boot, with one hand pressed to his mouth and blood running between his fingers onto the wood. He was tall even on his knees, and broad through the shoulders, with black hair cropped short and plastered to his forehead. His eyes were grey, the color of the sky before rain. A thin white scar cut through his left eyebrow, which made him look as if he were about to frown.

His shirt was white linen, and it was wet, and it clung to him.

I looked at it for longer than I should have. I knew I should look away. I had nearly died, I was a princess of Marenne with a treaty to save, and still I sat there like a fish on a market table, staring at a stranger's chest while my teeth chattered. Heat rushed into my face so fast that I thought I might faint a second time.

He wiped his lip with his thumb. "Can you stand?"

"I think so. Give me a moment." I tried to pull my shawl around me, but it was soaked through and no help at all. "I can't believe it, I ruined my good dress."

"You nearly drowned. And all you care about is your dress?."

"It was my best one."

"Then you should have worn a worse one to a rotten dock."

That stung, mostly because it was true. "I didn't know it was rotten," I said. "It looked fine. Boards aren't supposed to break just because someone walks on them."

"It's been rotten for two years. Nobody is supposed to use it."

"Then someone should put up a sign!"

He pointed with his chin. Back by the first post, in the tall grass, lay a small wooden board with writing on it, face down, looking as if it had been there for months.

I opened my mouth to argue and found I had nothing. He let out a breath, stood up, and pulled the dry overshirt from where it had been tossed on the dock when he went in. He threw it at me without ceremony.

"Put that on."

It was warm from the sun and smelled of cedar and soap. I wrapped it around my shoulders and hated how grateful I was. "Thank you. I'm Liana. Princess Liana of Marenne, and I'm so sorry about your lip. I am forever indebted to you for saving my life. What's your name?"

He looked at me for a moment, and his face gave away nothing at all.

"No one is important."

"That isn't a name."

"It's the one I'm giving."

"You saved my life. I'd like to know who to thank."

"You've thanked me." He didn't ask where I was staying or why I was wandering alone. He only turned his head toward the shore, and I followed his eyes. An old man was coming down the lawn as fast as his bent back would allow, a blanket flapping over one arm and a hat sliding off the side of his head. His white eyebrows were so thick that they looked like two small clouds.

The old man reached the dock, wheezing, and pushed the blanket into my arms. He had a face like a walnut and the kindest eyes I'd seen since leaving home. "Lord above, miss, I heard the crack from the roses. Are you hurt? Is anything broken? Here, wrap it round, that's it, you're blue as a plum." Then he looked up at the stranger who saved me, and his mouth stopped moving.

He didn't speak. He only stared, and it was a long stare, longer than politeness allowed.

"Tomas," the stranger said, with a warning in it.

The old man shut his mouth. "Aye," he said quietly. "I know."

"Know what?" I asked through my chattering teeth.

"That you ought to be indoors, miss, that's what." He tucked the blanket tighter around me. "Come, let's get you up."

I tried to stand and found my legs had no interest in the plan. The stranger caught my elbow before I fell and let go the moment I was steady.

"Someone's coming," he said.

I turned. At the top of the lawn a woman was walking toward us. She was too far away to see clearly, but she moved with elegance, grace and without hurry, like she was used to the world waiting for her. Two servants trailed behind her at a careful distance.

His face changed. It was a small change, just a tightening around the mouth, but it was the first real expression I had seen on him.

"I have to go." He started across the grass, away from the woman, and then he looked back over his shoulder. For a second I thought he would say something more. His grey eyes held mine, and then he shook his head slightly, as if to clear it, and kept walking until the hedges swallowed him.

I stood there in a blanket with water running down my back. I felt strange, and it wasn't only the cold. It was a kind of lightness, as if I had been standing on the edge of something and had only just noticed how high it was.

"Don't mind him, miss," Tomas muttered. "He's a hard one when he's tired."

"Who is he?"

Tomas looked at his boots and said nothing.

The woman reached us a minute later. Up close she was older than I'd thought, perhaps seventy, with silver hair pinned in a tight coil and dark, sharp eyes that took in the broken board, the blood on the dock, my ruined dress, and Tomas's blanket in a single sweep. She wore grey silk and a single ring, and she did not look surprised.

"Princess Liana," she said. Her voice was calm and dry, as cool as a stone floor. "I am Helena, Queen Dowager of Aurelan. I had hoped to welcome you more properly, but it seems you found your grand way."

I tried to curtsy, which in a wet blanket was less curtsy than a lurch. "Your Majesty, forgive me. I only wanted to see the lake, and the dock was..."

"I know about the dock." Her eyes moved past me to the far lawn, where a tall figure was just disappearing around a hedge. Something in her face softened, so slightly that I might have imagined it. "I watched from my window. Tomas, have it closed off properly this time."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"I am glad you have finally met." She turned back to me, and there was something that shone in her dark eyes like a great deal of satisfaction. "I had meant to introduce you formally, but perhaps this is better. These things go best when no one has time to prepare."

I blinked at her. "Met who?"

"My grandson. The man who pulled you from the water."

"He said his name was no one important."

"I am sure he did." One corner of her mouth lifted. "Princess, you have just bitten the King of Aurelan."