Queen of Shadows by Dianne Sylvan Page B

in at least eight different languages. She’d thought the Prime’s bedroom had a lot of books, but here were at least ten times that many. Given what he’d told her about the Haven, she wondered how many of these he had brought with him, and how many had been here as long as the building had stood.
    Miranda pulled a yellowed copy of Shakespeare’s comedies from the shelf and sought one of the window seats, grateful just to lose herself for a while in something that had a happy ending.
    She handled the paper carefully, afraid it might crumble, and read aloud to herself, her quiet voice echoing in the silent room, punctuated with the sound of turning pages.
    “ ‘I pray thee now tell me, for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?
    “‘For them all together, which maintained so politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?’ ”
    A voice came from the door, and though she wasn’t expecting it, for some reason she didn’t start.
    “ ‘Suffer love!—a good epithet. I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.’ ”
    Miranda looked up and smiled, continuing, “ ‘ In spite of your heart, I think. Alas, poor heart! If you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours, for I will never love that which my friend hates.’ ”
    David smiled back. “ ‘Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.’ ”
    She closed the book and set it on the cushion, running her hand down the front cover. “This was always my favorite of his plays,” she said. “Melodramatic, full of misunderstandings, but with a hearts-and-flowers finale. I used to pretend I was Beatrice and act out her lines in front of the mirror.”
    The smile widened a hair. “Not Hero?”
    Miranda chuckled and shook her head. “No way. Hero was shallow and not very bright. She and Claudio would have had a bland life with bland children and a bland dog. Beatrice and Benedick, now that was a couple I could get behind. They would have had adventures together.”
    She noticed that he was dressed more casually than she had seen him before, and didn’t have the coat. He wore actual jeans, faded in that designer way, and a longsleeved dark blue shirt that set off the color of his eyes. The Signet lay glowing between his collarbones, wildly out of place with the rest of his attire.
    “How are you feeling tonight?” he asked.
    She thought about it. She was stiff, and sore, and hadn’t slept well, but she didn’t feel the edge of creeping panic she’d had every night so far. She could deal with being tired and in pain. That’s what drugs were for. “Okay.”
    “Good. I’d like to begin your training tonight.”
    “Training?”
    “Yes. You have to learn to control your gifts.”
    “And you’re going to teach me.”
    “I am.”
    The idea of mucking with her “gifts,” which was hardly the word for them, made her deeply uneasy, but he was right. She had to do something. She couldn’t be the servant of her power forever. It would kill her inside a year unless something changed.
    Learning to use it wasn’t nearly as scary as the thought of ending up in the County Hospital D ward . . . wasting away with the choir of the damned as her only company. She had been in that place once, seen the vacant stares of the incurable cases, and even then, long before the voices began to penetrate her mind, she could feel the desolation that had soaked those dingy white walls.
    “Miranda?”
    She shivered and looked up at him again. “Sorry. Okay, let’s do it.”
    He frowned, concerned, but didn’t ask the obvious question. “This way, please.”
    She followed him back to the suite, into his bedroom, where he sat in one of the two armchairs that flanked the sofa and gestured for her to take the one opposite. She pulled her legs up and crossed them, wincing at the pain it caused her back.
    “The first thing I’m going to