Crown of Shadows by C. S. Friedman Read Free Book Online

crowning the cheeks and forehead. Hair as black and as lustrous as silk shimmered in a loose chignon at the nape of her neck. Slender hands with impossibly delicate fingers smoothed the black velvet of a display table. Fragile, she seemed. Slender and pale and so very fragile. Like a china cup that might shatter if you held it wrong. Like a pane of fine stained glass with its delicate webwork of lead veins, beautiful to look at but oh, so easy to destroy. Her presence awakened new feelings within him, disturbing feelings, so different from his usual feelings about women that for a moment he could do nothing but stand there mutely, unable to respond.
    “Can I help you?” she asked. It was a reflexive response to the presence of a customer, which she began even as she turned toward him. Then the dark eyes met his—God, those eyes, you could drown in them!—and with a short gasp she stepped back. To his amazement, it seemed as if she were afraid. Of him? He looked around, startled, expecting to see someone else in the room. But it was just the two of them. The response was for him alone.
    “I’m sorry,” he said hurriedly. Not knowing what he had done wrong, but anxious to correct it. Was it possible that in his fevered entrance he had seemed threatening? She seemed the kind of creature who would shy away easily, like a wild and wary skerrel. “I didn’t mean to startle you—”
    She drew in a deep breath; he could sense her struggling to compose herself. “It isn’t you,” she said at last. “It’s just... I thought you were someone else. Someone I didn’t expect here. I’m sorry.” She shook her head slightly; the black hair rippled about her neck. “I shouldn’t have reacted like that.” She smiled then, and her expression softened. “Can I help you with something?”
    He fumbled in his pocket for the papers he had brought, and somehow he managed to tear his eyes away from her long enough to make sure they were the right ones. “I need some custom work done. Here.” He handed her the drawings, a well-worn package. “It’s all there.”
    She led him to one of the velvet-clad tables and pulled up a chair before it; he sat opposite, and watched her as she studied the drawings. God, but she was beautiful! In another time and place he would already have been making a play for her, if only for the sheer pleasure of the hunt. But in this time and place he felt strangely helpless, and he sat there quietly as she studied the drawings, watching as her slender fingers smoothed the papers flat for better perusal.
    “A coronet,” she mused.
    Something tightened in his throat. “Family heirloom,” he managed. “It was... lost.”
    Lost in a pool of blood, shattered by sorcery. Shards of metal swimming in the red that dripped down chair legs, over tiles—
    “Hey. Are you all right?” Her hand reached toward him.
    He shivered as the vision receded. “Yeah,” he managed. “Just a little faint.” He forced himself to put his hands on the table, so that he might look a little more natural. “I wasn’t feeling well this morning.” There was an understatement! “I thought it had passed.” He managed an awkward grin. “Guess not.”
    “Can I get you something?” When he hesitated, she suggested, “A glass of water?”
    “No, I ...” He drew in a slow breath, tried to think clearly. “Yes. Please. That would be wonderful.”
    Water. It meant a moment when she wouldn’t be watching him, a moment when he could struggle to pull himself together. Those visions... he should have taken something before he left his room, he knew that now. A few grains of tranquilizer to ease the painful interview along. How in God’s name was he going to get through this?
    You have to, he told himself. Calesta says this has to be done, therefore you will do it. Period.
    “Here,” she said, as she set down a small glass before him. Her voice was gentle, soothing; he could listen to it for hours. “I wish we had more to