The Unbroken by C. Clark (ebook reader .txt) 📕

Luca half pushed herself out of the chair, strain clear on her face.

Touraine went over, arms out. Luca shooed her back.

“Don’t be stupid. Get the chair. Corner of my room.”

Touraine retrieved the chair. It was normal for Luca to be angry. A plan had fallen through; her weapon had misfired. Touraine wasn’t above being afraid of where that anger might turn. No matter how unfair it was, she couldn’t let Luca see her as a liability. Right now, Touraine was definitely that. She needed to give Luca something in return. She’d learned young that fairness and Sands rarely went together.

As she wheeled Luca across the threshold of the bedroom, her face warmed with the memory of this morning. The way Luca had looked at her as Touraine helped her dress. The husky whisper of Luca’s voice.

Touraine could help Luca out of the sleek trousers now. She could make the rumors true, and Luca probably wouldn’t mind as much as she seemed to.

It’s the truest rumors you deny the hardest.

It was one thing to dodge Rogan in the compounds or the field. It was another impossibility entirely to deny the Balladairan heir. Even she wasn’t that stupid.

And Luca had already given her so much. What gifts would she give to a lover?

Touraine stopped beside the bed and stood in front of her. Luca’s mouth was twisted with her mood. She raised a pale eyebrow.

Touraine bent over the wheeled chair and kissed Luca on the mouth. No small satisfaction knowing it would catch the scholar off her guard.

It did. Luca tensed but relaxed into it almost instantly. As if it were a matter of course that Touraine would give her this.

And then Luca’s hands were pushing against Touraine’s chest, pushing her off, even as she held on to Touraine’s vest. The princess’s face was bright pink.

“You want this?” she asked, shrill with surprise.

Fear kept Touraine frozen in place. Her mouth worked, but she couldn’t get the words to come out. Say yes. Say yes. Make your life easy for once, you sky-falling idiot.

“I didn’t think so.” Luca let go of the vest and sank back into her wheeled chair with a huff. “That’s got to be the worst kiss I’ve ever had. If you’re going to pretend to want me, you’ll need to pretend harder.”

Touraine let out a strangled cry, caught somewhere between insulted and flabbergasted.

“Well, no offense to you. I’m sure you can do better under other circumstances.” Luca shrugged and sighed, shaking her head. The corners of her lips twitched, the only warning before she exploded into laughter and Touraine followed her, chuckling nervously.

It was like the venting on a meat pie, and the tension steamed out—just a bit. Enough so that when Adile knocked on the door and offered to bring tea, Luca invited Touraine to stay for a cup—and she said yes.

To leave that new space so soon would have made Touraine’s relief feel false. And maybe it was. Maybe in the morning it would be gone, and regret would crash in. Right now, it felt real, and right now she was lonely.

While they waited on the tea, Luca began to lever herself out of her wheeled chair and into the bed.

Touraine reached to help. “Your Highness, do you—”

An impatient wave. After a series of grunts and winces, Luca sat in her bed, legs stretched out. She sucked air through her teeth as she kneaded the muscles in her right leg. Slowly, the lines of pain in her face softened.

Touraine pulled the chair from the small writing desk and sat at the side of Luca’s bed, facing her.

“Does it hurt often?” Touraine found she was rubbing her own leg in sympathy and stopped.

“Yes. It’s why I hate these stupid parties.”

Adile came in and set the tea on Luca’s bedside table.

The warmth of the cup was a comfort in Touraine’s hand. “You fight, though.” When Luca raised a questioning eyebrow, Touraine added, “You stand like a duelist.”

“And it’s awful,” Luca said after a sip. “However, being able to fight could be the difference between life and death. Knowing the latest dances, not so much.”

The same logic ruled the Sands’ training.

“It happened on my birthday. A beautiful autumn afternoon.” The word beautiful came out more like “sky-falling.” “Red leaves on the trees, even more rotting underfoot, the smell of two hundred horses’ shit, and about fifty trumpeters who kept blowing triumphant even after I’d fallen.”

“You mean the autumn parade?”

Luca nodded.

Touraine laughed softly. “I just thought it was a national holiday. Your birthday. Same thing, I guess.”

At a sore spot on her leg, Luca hissed. “Yes. I was lamed on my birthday because of a shoddy saddle buckle.”

Touraine raised an eyebrow. “A saddle buckle? That’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?”

She thought of the stories where dark villains from the south allied with Balladairan princes and betrayed them, only to fall to the righteous heroes. They’d inspired her own fantasies—and experiments—of rigging Rogan’s saddle. In her head, she had been the Balladairan hero, despite all physical evidence to the contrary.

Luca cocked her head. A trail of blond hair escaped to fall across her face, and she pushed it back. “How do you mean?”

“It’s the oldest trick, isn’t it? Makes it all look like an accident.”

“Ha! If my uncle had wanted to kill me, there are a million equally subtle and more guaranteed ways to make it happen. That only barely works, even in the stories.”

Touraine’s face warmed in embarrassment.

“If I’m honest,” Luca added, grimly, “I think he’ll try to discredit me first. Less messy.”

“Over the rebellion.”

Luca nodded, doing that dismissive wave again. “I don’t want to think about him. You like the old adventures, then? Did you ever read ‘The Journeys of the Chevalier des Pommes’?”

Touraine grinned and nodded. The Chevalier des Pommes was a knight of lore who walked a thousand leagues, and every time he slept, an apple tree grew. “What about it?”

“When I was quite small, I tried to fall