“Of course,” she said. “Neither was any threat to me.” As near a declaration of friendship as it got with this family. “They managed our shipping concerns in High North and on the islands. They were competent. Sensible. Brother and sister, like —” Deka and me, I suspected she would have said. “A great loss to the family. Again.”
By the bleakness of her expression, I realized suddenly that she was not surprised by the manner of their deaths. And her wording had been another clue, as had Wrath’s warning.
“I’m hungry,” I said. “Take me somewhere with food and eat with me.”
She glared. “Is that a command?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not forcing you to obey it, so no.”
“There are many kinds of force,” she said, her gaze as hard as stone. “If you tell my mother —”
I groaned in exasperation. “I’m not a tattletale! I’m just hungry!” I stepped closer. “And I want to talk about this somewhere private.”
She blinked, then flushed — as well she should have, because she should’ve caught my hints. Would have, if her pride hadn’t interfered. “Ah.” She hesitated, then looked around the forecourt as if it were full of eyes. It usually was, one way or another. “Meet me at the cupola of the library in half an hour. I’ll have food brought.” With that she turned away in a swirl of fur and whiteness, her shoes clicking briskly on the daystone as she walked.
I watched her walk away, amused until I realized my eyes were lingering on the slight curves of her hips and their even slighter sway, thanks to her stiff, haughty walk. That unnerved me so badly that I stumbled as I backed down the steps. Though there were only servants to see me — and they were carefully not looking, probably on Morad’s orders — I still quickly righted myself and slipped into the garden as a cover, pretending to look at the boring trees and flowers with great fascination. In truth, however, I was shaking.
Nothing to be done for it. Shevir had gauged my age at sixteen, and I knew full well what that age meant for mortal boys. How long before I found myself curled in a sweating knot, furiously caressing myself? And now I knew whose name I would groan when the moment struck.
Gods. How I hated adolescence.
Nothing to be done for it, I told myself again, and opened a hole in the ground.
It did not take longk. t take lo to reach the library. I emerged between two of the massive old bookshelves in a disused corner, then made my way along the stacks until I reached the half-hidden spiral staircase. Kurue had built the library’s cupola as a reward for those palace denizens who loved the written word. They usually found it only by browsing the stacks and sitting quietly for a while, losing themselves in some book or scroll or tablet. It made me obscurely proud that Shahar had found it — and then I grew annoyed at that pride and more annoyed at my annoyance.
But as I reached the top of the staircase, I stopped in surprise. The cupola was already occupied, and not by Shahar.
A man sat on one of its long cushioned benches. Big, blond, dressed in a suggestively martial jacket that would have looked more so if it hadn’t been made out of pearlescent silk. The cupola’s roof was glass, its walls open to the air (though as magically protected from the winds and thinner air as the rest of the palace). A shaft of sunlight made a churning river of the man’s curly hair, and jewels of his jacket buttons, and a sculpture of his face. I knew him at once for Arameri Central Family even without looking at the mark on his brow, because he was too beautiful and too comfortable.
But when he turned to me, I saw the mark and stared, because it was complete. All the scripts I remembered: the contract binding the Enefadeh to the protection and service of Shahar’s direct descendants, the compulsion that forced Arameri to remain loyal to their family head … all of it. But why did only this man, out of all the Central Family, wear the mark in its original form?
“Well, well,” he said, his eyes raking me with the same quick analysis.
“Sorry,” I said uneasily. “Didn’t know anyone was up here. I’ll try someplace else.”
“You’re the godling,” he said, and I stopped in surprise. He smiled thinly. “I think you must remember how difficult it is to keep a secret in this place.”
“I managed, in my day.”
“Indeed you did. And a good thing that was, or you would never have gotten free of us.”
I lifted my chin, feeling annoyed and belligerent. “Is that really a good thing in the eyes of a fullblood?”