“Would you like to now?”

I shook my head. “You’re already in the middle of something. I’ll just watch.”

“As you like.”

He took a proffered stick from one of the servants. Watching him line up a shot, I could see he intended to hit his ball and knock out an opponent’s near a wicket. A faint breeze ruffled his hair and the folds of his robe, and he had to take a moment to brush the fabric out of his way. When he finally hit his ball, it went wide, considerably away from his opponent’s ball.

“Ah, well. It was close. I nearly had it, don’t you think so, Muran?”

Muran, a lanky guy dressed in lavender, jumped at being addressed. “Er, uh, y-y-yes, your majesty. Very close. You were almost there.”

Dorian rolled his eyes. “No, I wasn’t. It was an abominable shot, you wretched man. Let Lady Markham have your turn. Give her your mallet.”

Now I jumped. Lady Markham?

But the aforementioned Muran practically shoved the thing at me. Hesitantly, I approached his ball. I was pretty sure I’d been ten the last time I’d played, off visiting one of my mom’s aunts in Virginia.

Remembering Dorian’s hang-ups on his robe, I paused to slip off my coat. A servant immediately raced over to take it from me, folding it neatly over his arms. I turned back to the ball and mallet, sizing up the shot. I tossed my hair back over one shoulder and hit. The ball half-skittered, half-rolled through the grass and went through one of the wickets.

“Exquisite,” I heard Dorian say.

I glanced back at him but saw he wasn’t watching the ball at all. His eyes were all over me. I tried to return the mallet to poor Muran, but Dorian wouldn’t hear of it. He made me finish the game in Muran’s stead. As we played, I immediately picked up on something peculiar.

Dorian was a terrible player-too terrible to be real. He was obviously faking it, but his subjects could not bring themselves to do better than their king. So they too faked their own sort of appalling game play. Watching it was comical. I felt like I was in a scene from Alice in Wonderland. Having no such qualms about winning, I played normally, and even with aching muscles and no practice, I won pretty handily.

Dorian couldn’t have been happier. He clasped his hands together, laughing. “Oh, outstanding. This is the best game I’ve played in years. These sheep won’t know what to do now.” He glanced at his fellow players and beckoned them toward the building. “Go, go, your shepherd is tired of you all.”

I watched them go. “You don’t really treat them…respectfully.”

“Because they deserve none. Did you see the preposterous way they acted in that game? Now imagine that happening every second, every day of your life. That’s what it’s like to be royalty, to live at court among courtiers. Be happy you have no true throne yet. It’s all simpering and groupthink.”

I almost heard a touch of bitterness in his light voice. Almost.

A servant handed my coat back, and Dorian addressed her and a couple of guards. “Lady Markham and I are going to take a walk now through the eastern orchard. Seeing as she’s dressed for business, I imagine she wants to speak alone. Follow, but keep your distance.”

Turning, he offered me his arm again and led me off into one of the garden’s winding turns, into a dense apple orchard. Like the other trees I’d seen, these were filled with fruit. Still more apples lay on the ground, round and red and waiting to be eaten.

When we were sufficiently alone, I said, “I’m not dressed for business, not in these shoes. I was dressed for business the last time I was here.”

He gave me a sidelong look. “Women who show up looking as lovely as you do after barely stomaching my presence last time do not come on pleasure. They come for business.”

“You’re a cynic.”

“A pragmatist. But, business or pleasure, it becomes you.” He sighed happily. “I do so wish more of our women would wear pants like those. The warriors often do but not nearly so tight.”

“Thanks…I think.”

We walked on at a leisurely pace while the sky turned orange and scarlet.

“So I imagine you’ve changed in other ways since our last encounter. The very fact that you’ve come here so congenially indicates as much.”

“Yes.” I narrowed my eyes. “You know, I don’t appreciate you telling me that Storm King bedtime story when all the time you knew I didn’t know what was going on.”

“Mean, perhaps. But also amusing-were you in my place. Besides, I did you a service of sorts. I provided necessary background information, Lady Markham.”

“Don’t say ‘Lady Markham.’ It sounds weird.”

“I’ve got to call you something. Our normal rules of etiquette don’t exactly outline anything for your situation. You are the daughter of a king without a kingdom. You are royalty but not quite royal. So you are addressed like a noble.”

“Well, then, only use it in public. Or stick to ‘Odile.’”

“What about ‘Eugenie’?”

“Fine.”

Silence fell between us. The orchard seemed to go on forever.

“Do you want to tell me why you’re here yet? Or should I think up some other pleasantries to discuss?”

I repressed a laugh. Dorian played flamboyant and scattered, but he wasn’t a fool.

“I need a favor.”

“Ah, so it is business after all.”

I stopped walking, and he stopped with me. Looking down at me, he waited patiently, his face pleasantly neutral. I shivered as another breeze stole through, and he took my coat from me, helping me slip it on.

I wrapped my arms around myself, grateful for the coat’s warmth. Sexy was cold.

“I conjured a storm yesterday.”

“Did you now?” His voice held less levity and more calculation. “What happened?”

I told him the story, just as I had for Maiwenn and Kiyo.

“What were you thinking when it happened?”

At first, I thought he was chastising me. Sort of like when you do something stupid and your mom asks, Are you insane? What were you thinking?

“Like how I felt? What was going through my head?”

He nodded.

“I don’t know. I guess I went through a lot of moods. When it all started…I mean, I felt the same as for any other attack. Planned out what I would do, focused for a banishing. But once my mom got involved…I started to lose it.”

“And when Corwyn had you trapped?”

“Who?”

“The elemental. He was one of Aeson’s men. The spirits you banished came back telling tales, though admittedly, no one’s heard this part, seeing as you didn’t leave any witnesses.”

“I felt…scared. Weak. Defenseless.”

“You don’t strike me as someone who’s scared a lot.”

“No, actually. I’m scared all the time. Stupid not to be. What’s that saying? Only the dead are without fear? Or is that hope? Dunno. At that point, I sure as hell didn’t have any hope either. I felt like I was out of options.”

“And so you chose the only option left to you.”

“I didn’t choose it exactly. Not consciously.”

“No. But sometimes our souls and the secret parts of our minds know what we need.”

He walked over to a large, sheltering maple tree. Presumably it too had those wonderful colors, but the near-darkness made such things impossible to see. Taking off his robe, he spread it on the ground and sat down, leaving space beside him. A moment later, I sat down as well.

“So what have you come to ask me, Eugenie Markham?”

“You already know. I can hear it in your voice.”

“Hmm. So much for crafty subterfuge.”

“I need you to teach me how to use the magic. So it doesn’t take over again. I don’t want to kill someone the next time I freak out.”

“Or,” he added, “you just might want to kill someone with it. On purpose, that is.”

“Maybe.” I shivered. “I don’t know.”

He didn’t speak right away. The darkness around us grew deeper.

“What you did to Corwyn was akin to using a brick to swat a fly when much finer, much simpler methods would suffice. The storms you can conjure are great and powerful things, absolutely. The gods know your father made effective use of them. But I think you’ll find your real power is in controlling the storm’s finer elements. A child can throw paint on a canvas; a master works with fine brushstrokes. You learn the small things, and then the storms will be second nature.”