Counting Shadows (Duplicity)

unkempt, but instead… princely. It’s really the only word suitable for him.
    He’s clean now, and dressed in proper clothes: brown breeches and a sage-green tunic. It’s the attire of a Guardian, and Lor looks the part. He stands tall—even taller than I first thought—and his shoulders are straight and proud. He’s cut his hair so it’s barely an inch long, and even though only lowly foot-soldiers usually wear their hair like that, he manages to pull off the look.
    And Lor is building back the muscle he lost in prison. His wound is almost completely healed—something I can’t explain, and something he doesn’t want to. But he’s healthy enough to spend most of the past few days holed up in one of my spare rooms, doing push-ups and sit-ups. As he works out, he sometimes sings tuneless songs under his breath. His cadence is as terrible as Ashe’s, but the words sound nice. They’re short and eloquently simple, and I guess they’re part of his native tongue.
    I wait a moment longer before replying, trying to straighten out my thoughts. “You can’t leave my chambers. Father says I’m supposed to stay in here until my mind is more rested.” Which basically means he’s grounding me like a toddler, but I keep that part to myself.
    Lor waves his hand, as if flicking away my words. “I’m not going to be kept holed up in some girl’s room just because you’re being stubborn.”
    I flip the page of my book and read the first sentence, hoping it will make me look calm. “I’m a princess,” I say. “Not ‘some girl’. My chambers are quite nice, and you should be grateful that I’m sharing them with you.”
    “I don’t have any choice but to share them,” Lor snaps. “You picked me as your Guardian. Remember? I’m your eternal partner, and all that crap.”
    “I could have left you to be eaten,” I say.
    He scoffs. “Don’t try to sound charitable, sweetheart. The only reason you saved me is because of my tattoo.”
    I peek over the page again and raise my eyebrows. “I still could have left you.”
    Lor grunts and crosses his arms, turning away from me. But he doesn’t move. He just stands there, book in one hand, apple core in the other, and stares out the window. After a moment, he begins tapping his foot in a terribly uneven rhythm.
    “Are you throwing a tantrum?” I ask.
    “No.”
    “I think you are. You’re a sore loser.”
    He taps his foot a little faster.
    “It’s nothing really to be ashamed of,” I say, and turn back to my book. “Some of my cousins were still throwing hissy-fits at your age. It comes along with the territory of being royalty. You always want to win, and you hate to lose.”
    “You sound like you’ve been reading my uncle’s psychology theories,” Lor mutters.
    “Your uncle’s what?”
    He sighs. Then he shakes his head and mutters something under his breath, in that strange, beautiful language of his. “I keep forgetting I’m in an undeveloped land.” He turns back to me and spreads his arms wide, in a flourishing gesture. “Psychology. It’s the science of the mind. How it thinks, how it works, how it memorizes. On a basic level, how it functions.”
    I slowly shake my head. “You must have a very strange uncle.”
    Lor grins that crooked smile of his. He can’t seem to help from doing it, even when he’s upset. “He is kind of strange. Brilliant, but strange.”
    “Tell me more about your family,” I say. “Are they all involved in the sciences?”
    Lor smirks. “Nice try, but you’re not going to distract me. I still need out of this place. Preferably soon. Like right now.”
    I close my book, letting it snap shut with a thump and a waft of old-paper smell. “Make me a promise. I’ll take you out of here, but you have to tell me more about your family.”
    Lor grins and nods.
    I wave a hand toward the library. “All right, fine. We can sneak out the back way. But…”
    Lor doesn’t hear me trail off. He just punches the air, gives a little whoop, and jogs toward the library door. Apparently, he wasn’t exaggerating when he said ‘right now’.
    I finish my sentence in my head. ‘But I still need you.’ There’s a very good reason I haven’t let Lor leave my chambers. It’d be so easy for him to try to escape and get struck down by the Guardian vambrace. And it’d be very hard for me to try to find Asair if Lor dies.
    If Lor tries to escape, I’ll stop him, no matter what it takes.
    We are eternally bound,