Page 122 of A Game of Veils

Now it’s my turn to admire his sculpted form, not as massive as Raul but impressive in his own right. In the middle of his chest, his brand of Inganne’s sigil stands out slightly paler than his rich brown skin.

As I run my fingers down those muscular plains, Lorenzo closes his eyes with a shaky breath. Then he sweeps me off my feet and deposits me in the middle of the bed.

Clambering after me, he beams with fond amusement. “Our wedding day, is it?”

The room around me shimmers. Pale pink fabric drapes across the canopy frame—the color of Ardone, the godlen of love who oversees weddings. Matching roses, her symbolic flower, bloom along the head and footboard. The posts jut out into the shapes of elegant swans.

An awed giggle tumbles out of me. With his gift, he’s painted a picture of a bedchamber decorated for an elaborate wedding celebration.

Lorenzo lowers his head to bring his lips to mine. As he caresses my body unhindered and I continue exploring his, a pinching sensation deep in my gut pierces through the dreaminess of the moment.

It is only a dream. Perhaps Marclinus will arrange a bedroom like this for our wedding night, should I make it that far, but there’ll be nothing loving about the act we commit in it.

I may never again feel this cherished or so cherishing in return.

But I might have never gotten it at all. So I sink into the waves of affection and desire, bottling every sensation deep inside me.

I can lock away this new precious secret and keep it to the end of my days. It doesn’t need to be more than one brilliant moment to still matter.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Aurelia

As the after-dinner revelries begin to break up, I slip away among the first members of court to depart. It seems as good a time as any to indulge the curiosity that’s been niggling at me ever since Lorenzo shared his many revelations this morning.

After he left by my bedroom’s regular door, I realized I hadn’t gotten him to show me how to open the entrance to the hidden passage that connects some of the palace rooms. No amount of peering and prodding at the wall he pointed to revealed the means.

But he said that he and the other princes stumbled on another entrance in an unused room near their own chambers. If that one is obvious enough that you could find it by accident, I should be able to locate it knowing approximately what I’m looking for.

First, I have to determine which room it is.

I pause in the hallway I know holds all of the princes’ bedrooms. The doorframes look similarly ornate, but one toward the end has just a little more flourish to it, the carved vines with their gold sheen curving farther out from the edges.

Only the most honored of the palace’s inhabitants had the benefit of such immediate access for their servants—while past emperors still considered that access a benefit rather than a threat to security.

I walk over to the door and test the knob. It turns without resistance.

A glance inside confirms that no one has slept in this room for a long time. The cleaning staff must come through periodically for a brief sweeping, because no dust lingers on the floor, but the furniture is draped with protective sheets.

I skirt the sprawling mound of the bed and study the wall to the right of it, the same area where Lorenzo said the entrance is in my room.

There must be some button or switch, perhaps enchanted in its function, to open the way to the passage behind. The servants would have needed to come and go without much fuss.

I simply have to find it.

Leaning closer to the wall, I notice a slight imperfection in the red-and-gold striped wallpaper. The outer layer has curled a bit with age—and perhaps with recent use.

My fingers skim a faintly rough line that I suspect is one edge of the door. It runs from the baseboard to a spot a few inches above my head.

All right. I’ve found the panel, but there’s nothing to pry it open with—and prying hardly seems like a convenient technique. How is one supposed to release it?

I’m sliding my hand over the wall checking for any other subtle protrusions or indentations when the regular door swings open behind me.

With a lurch of my heart, I spin around.

Raul and Bastien halt just over the threshold. The door thuds shut. We stare at each other for a few uneasy seconds.

Then Raul’s mouth twists into a scowl. He strides forward, his pale eyes flaring. “It didn’t take you long, did it?”

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