“Are we going to town or not?” he asked.
Cassidy looked away. “Yes. Give me a few minutes to change clothes.”
“I’ll get the pony cart and meet you at the front door.” Because he needed air and open space.
Because standing here in her suite, he had the odd sense that something delicate was being weighed down by their words and feelings—and was about to break.
I survived. A lot of men didn’t.
The words circled round and round in her mind.
Cassidy didn’t want to get into a serious discussion, and Theran’s stiff posture as he drove the pony cart into town didn’t invite small talk. So she kept silent and absorbed the look and feel of the land during the short ride into town.
I survived. A lot of men didn’t.
Those few words told her more about Theran Grayhaven than she’d learned in the past few weeks.
No, he didn’t want pity. He wasn’t the only boy who had been taken into the mountains to be trained to fight. He wasn’t the only boy who had been hidden from the Queens who had been corrupted by Dorothea SaDiablo. And there had been other boys who had suffered far more than he had.
Gray, for instance.
But she saw his quest for a Queen differently because of those words. It hadn’t been as simple as having a Queen who knew Protocol and the Old Ways of the Blood. It had been about having a Queen who could dazzle, who could restore the heart in men weary of fighting—men who might be asked to fight some more in order to restore Dena Nehele and then keep it safe from the Blood in the rest of Terreille.
The Queen was the heart of a land, its moral center.
Theran had needed a heart he could believe in without reservation. He hadn’t found that. Not in her.
That was something she was going to have to think about. But not today. Today she would be a visitor from Kaeleer who was being given a tour of her host’s home village. Today she would be Cassidy instead of a Queen.
Tomorrow was soon enough to think about who she would be in the days ahead.
As they entered the town of Grayhaven, she reviewed a mental list of what she could use against what she could shop for with a man trailing along. Yesterday she would have dragged Theran into shops that were bound to make most men uncomfortable. Now she considered which kinds of places her brother, Clayton, had gone into without balking; she figured those probably wouldn’t discomfort Theran either.
“Any particular place you want to go?” Theran asked, sounding like he’d bitten into something sour.
“Like tends to gather with like, so every town has communities. I would like to ride through the town and see as much of it as possible, but, for now, I’d like to see the shops where the court usually makes purchases.”
She’d made an effort to keep her tone “interested visitor” instead of Queen. He eyed her for a moment, as if he knew something had changed, but he wasn’t sure what.
“All right,” he finally said.
The shopping district had several carriage parks—plots of land where conveyances could be left while people were going about their business. Each park had a couple of youths who kept an eye on the horses and would even deliver a carriage if its owner didn’t want to walk back and claim it.
Since that took care of the pony cart, Cassidy was quick to suggest walking and wondered why Theran hesitated.
She didn’t wonder long. The men who recognized Theran nodded in greeting, then jolted when they saw her and realized who she must be.
“I gather the Blood here don’t make a distinction between a formal and informal visit?” Cassidy asked, stopping in front of a shop window. She wasn’t paying attention to the merchandise; she just wanted a moment to ask Theran about this behavior.
Which was when she focused on a movement close to the window and caught a glimpse of the proprietor’s face before the man rabbited out of sight.
Theran placed a hand on her elbow and tugged her away from the window.
“What . . . ?”
“That particular shop caters to men.”
“So?”
“Let’s just say you were staring at things that most ladies pretend don’t exist.”
Which made her sorry she hadn’t been paying attention, because she had no idea what he was talking about—and she was certain he wouldn’t let her go back and look.
“What distinction?” Theran asked.
“What was in that window?”
He shook his head.
“If ladies aren’t supposed to know about it, why were those things in the shop window?”
“Formal and informal,” Theran said, getting that Warlord Prince turning stubborn tone in his voice.
Fine. She’d just make note of the shops nearby and she’d come back with Shira one day soon.
“When a Queen is going about her own business in her home village, she’s treated like everyone else.”
“I doubt that.”
“All right, she might get a little extra attention from the shopkeepers, but the people we’ve passed . . . I don’t know how to respond to them.”
“They don’t know how to respond to you either,” Theran replied. “I don’t think any of them has experienced an ‘informal’ visit from a Queen.”
“The Queens declared Protocol to go shopping?”
He stopped walking. Since she didn’t want to upset anyone else, she focused on his shoulder.
For the first time since she’d met him, she saw genuine amusement.
“We’re standing in front of a bakery,” he said. “You won’t cause a scandal if you look in the window.”
She knew her face was turning bright red, but she dutifully shifted positions so she could look in the window.
“I can’t say for a fact,” Theran said, “but I don’t think any Queen has walked around this town informally in years. Might not be Protocol in the strictest sense, but the Queens didn’t walk among the people casually.”
“They’ve never done that here?”
“Not since Lia.”
He frowned so fiercely after he said that, Cassidy ended up giving him a nudge with her elbow.
“If you keep glaring at those pastry things, you’re going to turn the sweet cream sour,” she said.
Oh, the expression on his face when he focused on what was in front of him!
His eyes slid sideways and looked at her. “Maybe we should buy a few, just to save other folk from that soured cream.”
“Maybe we should,” she agreed too politely.