Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

“Do you know,” he said slowly, absently tracing the pattern of the markings, “there has been debate here among the college of astronomers about Ptolomaia’s use of the equant point. Of course many claim that if planets move with varying speeds, then the heavens do not move in a uniform motion, as we know they must. But without the equant point, then truly we cannot account for all the movements of the planets in the heavens.”

“Unless Ptolomaia is wrong, and the Earth isn’t stationary.”

Stunned, he stared at her while the lamp flame hissed and a breeze off the parapet rustled through the papers scattered over the table.

She went on, made rash by the dreamlike quality of their meeting, by his surprise, by a fierce recklessness overtaking her, here where she could speak freely the forbidden words known to the mathematici. “What if the heavens are at rest and it is Earth which revolves from west to east?”

He leaned down, both hands on the table, shutting his eyes as he considered. “West to east,” he murmured. “That would create the same effect. Or if both the heavens and the Earth moved, one from east to west and the other from west to east.” He trailed off, too caught up in the puzzle to finish, gripped by the same passion for knowledge that had always held her in thrall.

Had she misjudged him? Had his humiliation at Anne’s hands caused him to look into his heart, deep waters indeed, and transform what he found there? How could she have felt that silken touch winding through her body as a chain and fetter, when it was what had brought her here in time to see, and to aid, the change that would make Hugh over into a new person, her heart’s desire?

A door thumped gently against the wall as the breeze caught it. The lamp flame flared up boldly, illuminating him. Wind kissed her face. He was so inadvertently close to her, eyes closed, expression almost innocent, if the desire for knowledge can ever be innocent. He smelled faintly of the scent of vineflower and cypress. This close, she felt the heat of his body, no less potent than the yearning in her heart. Was that her heart pounding? Was this what she had been looking for all along? Someone with the same passion, the same questioning, unquiet mind?

Was it her hand lifting to touch his chest, where his heart beat most strongly? Was it she who leaned closer, into him, and brushed his cheek with her lips?

He opened his lips in a soundless sigh. Turning to her, seeking, he kissed her even as she kissed him. In a moment they stood together, so close that like the aetherical daimones who mingle sometimes in ecstasy they seemed to melt one into the other, as if their bodies could actually interpenetrate and become one in truth, a union so complete that no earthly intimacy could rival the depth of their sharing.

“Ai, Liath.” He murmured her name as a caress as the lamp blazed behind him, making him shine.

A small voice shunted away into the deepest, dustiest corner of her mind, almost too faint to hear, spoke in her heart.

I’m going to wake up and find myself in Hugh’s bed.

At that instant, choking, she felt the writhing worm, an actual presence inside her. The silk ribbon, but a living one, that had insinuated itself into her body and now sank its aetherical touch deep into her flesh, mingling and melting until her arm raised of its own accord, not hers, to caress Hugh, until her body pressed itself against him, seeking his touch, until she would give herself to him of her own free will—

But it was not her.

Lies and deceit. In the sphere of Somorhas dwelt dreams and delusion.

“No, Liath,” he said, as if he’d heard her thoughts, as if she’d cried out loud. “This is the truth of your heart’s desire. I am with you. I am not a dream. Hate me if you must, but see that we are alike, you and I.”

Wasn’t it true, after all? No matter what he was now or what had gone before? Didn’t she recognize in him a soul like her own, passionate and eager? Ai, Lady, had she always hated him and loved him in equal measure?

Nay, that was the worm speaking.

The daimone was now so thoroughly intermixed with her own being that it was becoming impossible to separate out her own thoughts from those it spoke within her mind, from those it uttered with her voice.

“I am not like you, Hugh,” she said, each word a struggle as the daimone tried to form other words on her lips: “I’ll stay with you, I’ll love you and only you.”

“If you turn away from me now, Liath, then what choice will I have but to go back to being what I was before? You are fire. You can cleanse me. Your love can purify me. Stay with me, Liath.”

Fire.

She reached for that single lamp flame, flickering as the wind rose. His arms tightened around her.