StarCrossed. Part 41

I actually liked the way his voice sounded when he called me Celyn, but I had a point to make. "No, I just mean, they call me that for a reason. I'm good at what I do. I can help you, if you let me."

There was silence as he stared down at the cell floor. His mouse-colored hair was s.h.a.ggy and tousled, as if he'd been dragging his hands through it. Finally he looked up and nodded. "All right," he said. "I trust you. But be careful."

I gave a half smile. Careful wasn't my usual approach, but why press the point?

"Celyn? I mean - Digger?" He looked up at me, and his face was open and vulnerable. "You met Barris. Did you also see -"

"Koya?"

Whatever pa.s.sed across his face at the name was gone so fast I couldn't identify it. He nodded. "How is she?"

How to answer that question? Interesting? Incomprehensible? "Bearing up well, under the circ.u.mstances?" Whatever those circ.u.mstances actually were.

Durrel gave a slight sigh. "Thank you. This can't be easy on her."

"Or you," I said pointedly. "You know what people are saying? About you and your stepdaughter."

He made a face, just a small wince of distaste. "It's just gossip. Sometimes I think Talth courted it. She had a cruel streak, particularly when it came to her daughter."

"Could Koya have killed her?"

There was that odd little fog to his expression again. "Of course not."

"Are you sure? You sound a little -"

"Completely." The weight of that one word killed that conversation.

I frowned, trying to dredge up another question. "All right, didn't you tell me it was a maid's word that had you arrested? She claimed to see you leaving Talth's room before the body was discovered?"

Nodding slowly, he said, "Geirt. Her chambermaid. But I told you, she had to be mistaken."

"Or lying," I said. "If we could talk to her, figure out what she really saw, or why she'd lie about it -"

It was like a shaft of light had broken through the gloom of the cell. "Celyn, that's brilliant. But the servants are long gone, it sounds like." And just like that, the shadows fell again.

"Maybe Koya knows what happened to her. I'll see what I can find out." Below us, the ugly bell clanged out the hour. The visiting period was ending. "Pox. I have to go. Do you need anything?"

"I need to see my father."

"I'm working on it. He's not so easy to reach, these days." I explained about the guards at Charicaux, but Durrel only looked more confused.

"No, you must have been mistaken. We - my father doesn't have any retainers like that."

The pistol carried by the guard at the gate had seemed pretty conclusive, but I let it pa.s.s. "Don't get discouraged. We'll figure this out." I forced more confidence into my voice than I felt.

He reached a hand out the small window, and my fingers brushed his. "Thank you," he said faintly, but I heard him.

Behind me, Wet Onions had awakened again. "Lift your skirts up a little more, girl. I can't see much from here."

I was tempted to give him a taste of what I kept under those skirts - a three-inch steel blade that I was getting pretty good at throwing - but I just gave him a tart look as I pa.s.sed by. "Watch your fingers," I said. "Someone might come by and bite them off."

He gave a cackling laugh, but it was Durrel's small chuckle I heard, all the way down the stairs and across the bridge.

About the Author.

Elizabeth C. Bunce is the author of A Curse Dark as Gold, which won the William C. Morris YA Debut Award. StarCrossed was inspired by her pa.s.sions for Renaissance life and cla.s.sic fantasy, as well as an obsession with cat burglars, and its s...o...b..und story was written in part during the coldest Midwestern winter in thirty years. Elizabeth lives near Kansas City, Missouri, with her husband and their dogs. Visit her online at www.elizabethcbunce.com.

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