Read Online The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

murmured.
    He was already walking away, back into the room full of shelves.
    â€œWhat is that room, sire?” she asked.
    â€œMy laboratory,” he answered, opening a drawer.
    â€œWhat do you do there, if I may ask?”
    â€œWhat anyone does in a laboratory—potions, distillations, elixirs, things of that sort.”
    She conducted practicals at the village school for Master Haywood—practicals, in one form or another, were compulsory until a pupil reached fourteen. But it wasn’t as if mages made their own potions at home. Commercial distilleries and potion manufacturers adequately supplied their needs. In fact, many households didn’t even possess the necessary implements to make the recipes she taught.
    Was it just princely eccentricity that had him equip an entire laboratory for himself, or was it something else?
    The prince came out of the laboratory and closed the door behind him. He was tall and lean—not thin, but tightly built. When she first saw him in her collapsed house, he’d had on a plain blue tunic and dark trousers tucked into knee-high boots. Simple country attire, nothing like the elaborate state robes he donned for his official portraits. 
    Now he wore a black jacket with a hunter-green waistcoat, black trousers, and shoes of highly polished black leather—the jacket was more formfitting than the tunics men wore in the Domain, the trousers, less so. 
    Her gaze returned to his face. Official portraits were notoriously unreliable. But in this case, the pictures hadn’t lied. He was handsome—dark hair, deep eyes, and high cheekbones.
    In his portraits he always sneered. She had once remarked to a classmate that he came across as mean-spirited, the kind of boy who would not only tell a girl she looked like a bumpkin but deliberately spill a drink on her. In person he appeared less cynical. There was a freshness to his features, an appealing boyishness, and—as far as she could see—no malice at all.
    Their eyes met. Her stomach fluttered.
    Without a word, he opened the door behind him again. But instead of the laboratory, he walked into what appeared to be a bathroom.
    â€œWhat happened to the laboratory, sire?”
    Sound of water running. “That is a folded space, not part of this hotel suite.”
    â€œIs that where we are, in a hotel?” She’d thought, for some reason, that they were at one of his lesser estates, a hunting lodge or a summer cabin.
    The sound of even more water running. “We are less than two miles from where you were when you came out of the trunk.”
    â€œWe are still in London ?”
    â€œVery much so.”
    Now that he mentioned it, she saw that real flame—rather than light elixir—shone behind the frosted glass mantles of the wall sconces. She’d have noticed sooner had she been less preoccupied.
    He emerged from the bath with a towel. Crouching before her, he pressed the damp towel against her temple.
    â€œOww!”
    â€œSorry. The blood is a bit caked on by now. But you should not need more than a good cleaning.”
    She endured the discomfort. “Your Highness, will you please tell me what’s going on?”
    Why was she here? Why was he here? Why was the sky falling today of all days?
    â€œLater. I would be remiss as your host if I did not offer you the use of a tub first.”
    She’d forgotten the state she must be in, dirty and battered. 
    â€œYour bath is filling as we speak. You will be all right in there by yourself?”
    He’d asked a perfectly legitimate question, given that he’d had to carry her a great deal of late. But all the same, what a thing to ask.
    â€œAnd if I’m not all right, sire?”
    She immediately regretted her question. It was far too cheeky. And before her sovereign, no less. She might not have received much parental guidance of late, but she still liked to think of herself as better brought up than