Dark Magic by REBECCA YORK Page B

devils. Forbidden to all in this kingdom under pain of death.
    She took her lower lip between her teeth, more afraid than ever that she had fallen victim to the strain imposed by the siege. Was she coming unraveled like an ill-made piece of cloth?
    “I would have imagined the king’s daughter in a larger, more luxurious chamber,” he said in a conversational tone.
    She looked around, seeing the room through his eyes. The narrow wooden bed with a small table beside it. The old, sagging chair. The stone floor partially covered by a threadbare, woven rug. The marriage chest she had started to fill in her tenth year. The shrine to the goddess. The plainly made armoire stuffed with rich clothing.
    He was right; her quarters were hardly luxurious because they didn’t have to impress the king’s subjects like the intricately embroidered gowns she hated wearing in court.
    Pretending she was the one in control of the situation, Devon raised her chin and used the voice that made people take a step back.
    “My private chamber is none of your concern. How dare you come in here.”
    “You think I dare too much?”
    She couldn’t answer.
    As they regarded each other across three yards of charged space, she scrambled to place him in the shrunken confines of her world. He couldn’t have come here in the past two weeks. No one had gotten in or out of the castle since the Lubantans had laid siege.
    She tried to recall where she might have seen him. Certainly not in the great hall when the nobles ate together, nor in the yard where the men practiced their swordsmanship.
    When he moved slowly toward her, she took an involuntary step backward, then another and another until her shoulders pressed against the stone wall.
    “Stay away from me.” Even as she gave the command, she heard the quiver in her own voice.
    He continued to regard her. Then he closed the space between them so quickly that she hardly saw him move.
    One of his large, square hands closed around her wrist, taking her captive, and she felt his strength. He could crush her bones if he chose, yet his grip eased, and he held her as gently as she might cradle the injured birds she had sometimes found in the forest.
    He was like no man she had met in her father’s court. No man who had come to ask for her hand and been turned away by a king who would extract the highest price possible for his daughter. All of them were respectful to Princess Devon.
    Respect had nothing to do with the way he was looking at her. He leaned toward her, and to her shock, he touched his free hand to the tender place where her hair met the side of her cheek, stroking his finger back and forth, setting up a tremor of sensation through her. “Your hair is like spun silk. And your skin is soft.”
    “Don’t.”
    “Why not? You like it, don’t you?”
    “No,” she denied, because that was the only thing she could say. Should say.
    “You’re lying.”
    She had learned to control her reactions so that no one could guess her innermost thoughts. For her own welfare, much of herself was hidden from the world of the castle. Her love of learning. Her yearning for a different life. The core of strength that had sustained her through too many trials.
    But she feared that this man’s penetrating gaze saw through the mask she had fixed upon her face. She should push him away. She should not be so close to this stranger. When she’d come into her womanhood, Lady Ellena had told her that she should never be alone with any man—except her father and her brother—until her wedding night. Yet she could not move.
    “You and I have an appointment.”
    She shuddered. “That’s impossible. I don’t even know you.” Then a thought came to her. “Did my father arrange it?”
    “Your father.” He laughed. “This has nothing to do with the old reprobate. This is between you and me.”
    “You dare call him that?”
    “You have a higher opinion of him?”
    When she didn’t answer, he tipped his head