Page 14 of Rhapsody of Ruin
I pulled on trousers, left the tunic, and crossed to the window built of lies. The false sky threw cold light across my skin. I pressed my palm to the glass anyway, pretending I could feel real night beneath it. Beyond, I knew, the mists lay close over Shadowspire and the gardens dripped with silver dew. The dragons of my line had never chosen a place like this to anchor themselves. We were mountains and fire, not water and mirrored floors.
I was married into water now.
A soft knock sounded and then Torian came in without waiting for permission, which he had earned a hundred times over. He took in the room in one precise glance, then angled his body toward the door to block the view of anyone who might pass.
“You’re awake,” he said. “Or you never slept.”
“Does anyone sleep where the walls listen?” I leaned one shoulder against the sill and tried to make my mouth remember something like humor.
Torian didn’t try to humor me. That was one of the reasons I kept him close. He came to the table and laid a small packet on it, silk-wrapped, sealed. “Names,” he said. “Brenn and Draven brought them. Who laughed hardest during the ceremony. Whocarried the joke to the gardens. Who asked after Kyssa, and why.”
“Who asked after my wife?” The word came easier the second time than it should have.
Torian’s mouth didn’t move, but his eyes did. “Sylara asked first,” he said. “As if testing the quartz for cracks.” He paused. “Iriel watched your face when you refused the bow at the gate. He watched hers when you accepted the marriage. He watched your hands when you touched.”
“Then he saw what he wanted to see.” I turned the packet in my fingers. “He thinks I am a man you can push if you find the right ledge.”
He studied me. “Are you?”
I smiled without showing teeth. “He hasn’t found the ledge.”
Torian’s gaze flicked to the bed. He said nothing about it. That, too, was the mark of a brother who had survived enough with me to know which subjects to leave covered until morning.
He moved to the window and looked out at the painted sky, then at me. “They’ll push in the gardens at midday. Something public. Something that forces you to choose a side before you’ve decided what the sides are.”
“They already tried. The servant.”
“Then they’ll try again. They’ll test her, too.” His glance sharpened. “You stood with her.”
“She stood first.”
He considered that. “Good,” he said after a beat. “Let them think they can predict you by her.”
“What do you predict?” I asked, because he would have thought it through already.
He folded his arms. “That Vaeloria wants your fire chained to her walls more than she wants your goodwill. That Iriel wants your temper out in the open where he can paint it as beast’s fury. That Maelith wants law to do what swords cannot.” His mouth tightened. “And that your wife won’t break when they test her, which will make them hate her more.”
Wife. The word did something strange in me, like a scale settling onto a balance and finding its counterweight. I had not expected the sound of it in my own head to be… steadier than the rest of this place.
“Get some sleep,” Torian said, which meant he was done lecturing me for the hour. “Your face looks like a blade that forgot its scabbard.”
“Compliments this early,” I said. “You must be worried.”
“I am,” he said simply. He went to the door, paused with his hand on the latch. “I’ll have Korrath map the guard routes around the garden galleries. Tharos will check the peace-wraps at the portico. Brenn will listen. Draven will pour drinks until masks slide.” He glanced back at me. “Kyssa will watch Elowyn.”
I looked over sharply. “She doesn’t need watching.”
“Kyssa does,” he said. “From herself.” He let the door click softly behind him.
I stood there with the packet of names and the ghost of Elowyn’s mouth still warm against mine and told myself that the sudden tightness in my chest was simply the vise of politics closing.
By midday, the vise had teeth.
The gardens were an insult to hunger, tables groaning with fruit that glowed faintly with glamour, meats spiced until the scent stole your breath. Lanterns hung like moons from branches that dripped with silver dew. Harps and drums wove a pulse that made the heart stumble and then match it. Vaeloria watchedfrom a raised pavilion, veiled and serene. Iriel sprawled like a cat loosed into a dove-cote. Nobles circled and grazed and pretended not to hunt.
We stood in the open like beasts on display.
Elowyn moved through it with that impossible grace that made the court forget itself and the servants remember it. Masks followed her. The scent of her reached me before she did, caught in the breeze that slid along the hedge and the water and up under my armor like an unwelcome hand. I refused to turn to her first.
