Samira narrowed her eyes at the illustration in the margins of the magical text. She wasn't really seeing what she thought she was seeing, was she? The first several times she had looked through this book she had seen nothing of note.
She flipped back several pages and then followed again the hidden story she seemed to have found in the pictures. A woman in a blue gown was being pursued through a forest by squirrels, rabbits, and small birds. Whenever she had her back to them, they appeared as what they were. When she faced them, however, they were monsters with fangs and claws, scales, and patches of mangy fur. Some of them looked like a few creatures Samira had met and chatted with in the Night World, in fact.
Halfway through the book, the woman reached a castle in the woods where an aged, ugly wizard lived. He held a book in his hands and appeared to be the one casting the spells. Once the woman arrived, the illusions changed their nature. Now she was seeing beautiful gardens and rooms, where reality was withered plants and poor furniture. When the woman gazed into a mirror, it was a more beautiful face she saw than belonged to her in truth: her hair was more full, her nose smaller, her eyes larger.
The final page had the withered wizard transformed in the woman's eyes into a handsome man, holding the hand of the woman.
None of the other books that Samira had examined had had pictures that seemed to tell a story. They had all been, as Nicolae had first stated, mere random decorations. She herself hadn't even seen the woman in blue in these illustrations until her fourth or fifth time through, although now Samira couldn't understand how she could have missed seeing the figure.
She looked up from the book to where Nicolae was sitting across the tower room, a text of his own in his lap, a frown of concentration on his brow.
He had been cold and impersonal with her since that night nearly two weeks ago, when she had talked her way into his bed and enticed him to put his hands on her. For the first day afterward he wouldn't even look at her. He had softened to a formal civility in the days since but only spoke to her when necessary, and answered any of her own queries with the briefest of replies. She had been too confused and distressed—and embarrassed—to breach the divide between them herself, or to try to discuss what had happened.
It had been a lonely two weeks, without anyone to listen to her petty complaints about her human body; although, admittedly, out of desperation she'd inflicted those complaints on Nicolae's men, Constantin in particular, with the result that they now ran away whenever they saw her coming, which meant she had to hide around corners and surprise them. She also hadn't had any chance to try again with sex, as Nicolae made her sleep on the floor of the tower room, on her pallet.
But enough was enough. She was here to help him, after all, not to satisfy her own sexual curiosities, or those hidden, half-formed wishes for… for something more than she knew how to describe.
"Nicolae?"
His gaze immediately met hers, and she wondered how closely he had truly been studying his text. Perhaps not at all? "What is it?"
She closed the book and held it up so he could see the front, the tome unwieldy in her hand. "This text. I think there is something important in the margins. In the pictures."
He set his own book aside and came over to her, a line of doubt between his brows. She set the book on the table, and he flipped open the cover to the frontispiece. He touched the writing with his fingertips and shook his head. "No, this book is worthless. It's gibberish. I spent a whole month on it a while back but could make no sense of it. I couldn't even tell what type of magic it was trying to describe."
He flipped forward a few pages, to where the illustrations began, and then looked at her, one brow raised. "What did you think you saw?"
She remembered his scorn when he discovered that she thought that looking at pictures was the same as reading and hesitated.
His other brow went up and he lowered his chin, urging her without words to say something and explain herself.
She swallowed. "I think it's about illusions."
He laughed. "That would be too much of a coincidence, don't you think?"
"What? Why?"
"Since you deal in illusions, yourself."
"I deal in dreams."
"They are all but the same."
She lowered her brows. Stubborn sod. "Well, maybe I can see that it's a book about illusions because I am so familiar with them, then," she said challengingly.
To her surprise, he seemed to consider the idea. His jaw shifted to the side, and he chewed the edge of his lower lip. "All right. Show me what you see in the pictures."
She went through the apparent story with him, pausing frequently, certain that he would see it on his own now that she had pointed it out, but each time she stopped he told her to keep going, his eyes narrowed in concentration.
She reached the end. "And here they are, both beautiful, both in love."
"That's what you see?"
"Yes, of course. I may not know how to read, but I can certainly look at
pictures
."
He put his fingertip on the drawing of the couple at the end of the book. "You see a handsome man and beautiful woman here, in love."
"Yes." She frowned up at him. "Don't you?"
He shook his head. "I see a flowering bush and a tree stump."
Her lips parted in surprise. "But… I swear, Nicolae, I see them as plain as the moon in the sky!"
"I believe you." He closed the book with a casual disregard, as if he dismissed it as being of any worth. "And it was clever of you to figure out that this might be a book of pretty illusions. But how is that going to help me to defeat Dragosh?"
"I don't know. But if it's real magic, it must be of some use! Don't dismiss it before you've even taken the time to consider it."
"I've been considering modes of magic for longer than I care to think, and illusions are not what I'm looking for. It's weapons I want, that will give me the power I need."
"But maybe this
is
a weapon, if you use it the right way," she insisted. She felt as if he wasn't listening to her; wasn't giving her discovery a fair chance.
"Games with smoke and mirrors. Yes, there could be something of minor use in there, but so, too, have I found potions of minor use, spells of minor use, demon summoning of minor use. None of it is good enough."
"But maybe that's all there is!"
He shook his head. "There's something greater. I know it. I just have to find it."
"If there was something greater, I think someone would have found it before you," she muttered.
"What was that?"
She squared her jaw defiantly. "If there was big magic to be had, I think I would have seen some sign of it in all my years. Wiser and more knowledgeable men than you have devoted their lives to it, and yet I see no all-powerful, never-aging wizard ruling the world."
"You think this is all a waste of time. You think I'm a fool."
"No! You managed to capture me, which is more than anyone else has ever done. All I mean is that the small magic you've been finding might be all there is to find. These illusions," she said, gesturing to the book, "these might be the best it is possible for a human to do, just as capturing a dream demon is the most the demon book could offer."
"It's not good enough."
A boiling frustration roiled up within her, born of his stubbornness, of the past weeks of silences, of the hours spent alone inside her own mind, of trying to figure out what he was thinking, of trying to figure out what she herself was feeling, and of trying to figure out just how little she could get away with eating in order to avoid going to the shed. Unfortunately it was impossible to go without food at all, she'd discovered after giving in to ravening hunger on several occasions.
And now he was dismissing everything she had to say, every thought she had come up with. Her patience was gone.
"Maybe you are pursuing a goal that you are never meant to reach. Maybe you're not
supposed
to defeat Dragosh. Maybe you're not
supposed
to molder away here in your tower, thinking of revenge. Maybe you weren't meant to lead an army or to be a wizard."
"What would you propose I do instead?" he asked tightly. "Marry a village girl and settle down to the slavery of a life of farming and bawling brats?"
"Yes! If it meant you'd have sex every night and smile once in a while."
"I am a
prince
."
"A prince on an island, living in a ruin, with only five men to call his army."
"And whose fault is that?"
She sucked in a breath. It was
her
fault. She was the one who had interrupted what truly should have been: his marriage to Lucia, uniting Moldavia with Maramures, and thus forming an alliance with all of Transylvania. He would have been the linchpin of a vast and powerful alliance. She felt her argument fall apart around her.
"It's Dragosh's fault, and he will pay for all he has done to me, just as he will pay for killing my brother."
She looked again at the book of illusions. He was right: It was too small a tool to accomplish what he needed. But what else had she to offer? Nyx had said it was up to Samira to put Nicolae's world right. It was two weeks into her sojourn as a human and she still hadn't an inkling of how she would accomplish that.
"Maybe you're right," she admitted softly. "I just make things worse, don't I? I'm no help at all."
He was silent a moment, and then, grudgingly, "I didn't say that."
She shook her head and tried to smile, not meeting his eyes. "It's all right. I know it's true." She cast her eyes to the window. "Maybe I should go outside. If I have only two and a half weeks left of humanity, I should make the most of them. I'll never see the sun again after this, after all."
He looked strangely taken aback by her words, although she had no notion of what he might be thinking.
"Here," he said, going to a chest against the wall. He opened it and took out a small leather pouch. He took a few coins from it and tossed them to her.
She missed catching them, slapping closed her hands on empty air, the coins clattering to the floor. She had to crawl under the table to pick them up. "What are these for?" she asked from beside the bench. .
"Have Constantin take you into the village. Buy some proper clothing from one of the women."
Was this a sop to his conscience? She looked at the coins in her hand and thought about getting rid of the green caftan in favor of something prettier. She shrugged. If it would make him feel better, who was she to complain? "Go," he said, and shooed her away.
Nicolae stood by the window and watched as Samira and Constantin went across the walkway to the reed-thick bank of the opposite shore. Samira's hair shone like sun-struck rubies in the afternoon light, her beauty undiminished by the man's caftan she wore so awkwardly wrapped around her petite body.
He had forgotten, these past several days, that she was a demon. It wasn't until she had pointed out that she had only two and a half weeks of daylight left to her that he remembered where she was from, and even then his own reaction had not been what he had expected.
He'd felt sorry for her. Sorry that she was having such a miserable time as a human woman, and sorry that daylight was something she would never see again. He'd felt almost guilty, especially for what he'd done to her while she was in his bed.
He'd never been with a virgin before. Although whether you could call a sex dream demon a
virgin
was an interesting question of semantics. But her body was virgin, as was her experience of being a woman with a man. And what had he done but blundered in and forced his finger into her, despite her protestations. He cringed in embarrassment at the memory.
At the time, he'd thought her a temptress and a tease. He'd thought she was deliberately manipulating him; toying with him; using her body like bait to be snatched away as soon as she'd broken down his will and shown herself the mistress.
He hadn't thought of her as a scared girl who hadn't known what to expect.
He'd been angry at himself already for giving in to the temptation that her body and come-hither looks so deliberately presented; now he was angry at himself for his crude roughness with her, as well. He used to pride himself on being a warrior, but also on being a prince who practiced the best that nobility had to offer. One did not abuse those weaker than oneself. Those with the greatest power demonstrated it through instances of compassion and gentleness.
Had he lost that, along with everything else?
How long had it been since he'd really looked at the welfare of anyone but himself?
He looked down at the courtyard where Grigore and Stephan were practicing swordplay with something less than enthusiasm. Andrei was cleaning a piece of armor that needed no polishing. Petru was sitting on a bench, staring into space.
How long had it been since he'd shared a drink and a laugh with them? How long since he'd sat up late, sharing stories of the old times, or plans for that which yet might be?
He was becoming the ugly old wizard that Samira had seen in the tome, hidden away alone in his fortress.
He frowned, going back to the table and to the book, opening it to the first page with illustrations. Nothing in the vines and small animals looked to him like the woman in blue Samira had described. And yet he did not suspect her of lying. She had been too sincere, too excited for that, and he wouldn't credit her with the imagination to make up such a story. If it had been up to her, doubtless all the monsters would be having sex with each other, and the story would have ended with a bedroom scene with the wizard.
He stared hard at the vines, seeking some pattern, some hint of what Samira had seen. Was the figure in blue only visible to those of otherworldly origin?
He felt a sudden wish that he could see the figure; not for his own sake, but for Samira's, so that he could go to her and tell her she had been right. She had seemed so unhappy, and he had felt himself the cause.