She doesn’t laugh, and it makes me feel bad for saying it. We study the painting, wordless.
She pushes the thick hair off her neck, over her slender shoulder, and I’m caught by the urge to trace stray strands from her skin. To feel her warmth, to run my fingers along her arm and around her waist again.
The sudden grief on her face spoils the idea. “They say,” she says softly, “that nothing can harm a descendant of Efan. They say we have divine blood in our veins and that God will watch over his chosen line. You must think that’s strange.”
Of course I do, but she looks at me now, all of her heart on display, trembling in front of me, and suddenly I see it very clearly. Her father wasn’t kept safe—he was murdered, and the idea of it haunts her. The certainty that something wrong happened at the very heartbeat of her existence, something ruined before she ever had any say or stake in the matter. Something that could ruin her, too.
I know. Because it’s the same fear in me.
“I don’t think God plays favourites,” I admit, afraid she’ll think I’m callous and unbelieving. “I think we have to watch out for each other.”
She looks at me a long moment. Not scrutinizing or searching, simply looking, like I’m oil on canvas. Like she’s memorizing the colours of my soul. “Is that why you wear this uniform, then? You truly believe it’s the best way to do good?”
“Yes,” I say, “and no.”
I can’t help being honest. She turns my thoughts grey again, that in-between fog of doubt.
Her eyes linger on my face, and I want her to like what she sees. I want her to find what she’s hoping for. In this moment, all I want is to tell her the truth, to be honest and see what she thinks of it, to see if she’d still laugh at my stupid jokes even knowing who I am. If I played it right, she’d still forgive me at this point. I’m not my father. She’s not her mother. I could get her on my side before the war breaks.
The idea grows like a trap, luring the words into my mouth.
A sudden noise saves me from myself.
Both of us jump. I hold out a hand, keeping Ali back, and walk carefully around the tall bookshelf behind us.
Long-lashed green eyes stare back at me, caught.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. I was looking for … books,” the singing girl says, glancing rapidly from shelf to shelf, proving to me she’s as mindless as she seems.
Ali’s quickly at my side, expression firm. “Lieutenant, please excuse us. I’d like to have a word with my friend alone.”
Thank God.
It’s the escape I need, before I do something stupid.
I take it and run.
AURELIA
Athan obeys without a question, a nice perk of his being military-bred and conditioned to orders. I need offer no explanation. Once he’s disappeared out the library door, I cross my arms at Violet. “Were you following us?” I demand.
“I was attempting it,” she replies airily. “The two of you are like mice. Here and there and everywhere.”
“Who put you up to it?”
She doesn’t answer, creamy cheeks pinkening.
“It was the peacock feathers, wasn’t it?” I hiss.
Violet clutches my arms gently. “Now wait, Ali. Just listen. Havis was worried about you. He didn’t want you running into any trouble this week with strange men from foreign countries.”
“Havis is a strange man from a foreign country,” I say. “And what does it matter to him what I do?”
“He’s protective of you, of course. He considers you dear to him.”
Trust Violet to make it sound romantic! But this has nothing to do with his false affection towards me. This has everything to do with the fact that I know too many of his secrets, that I read his letter, and he doesn’t trust me with any of it. I actually wish he were here right now, to confront him properly.
“Violet, you can’t tell him a thing.”
I refuse to give Havis a reason to slander Athan’s reputation—and I know he would, at first chance, to keep me under his rein. I’ve been alone with Athan all day. Scandals can grow in any direction with fertile whispers like that.
“Oh, there’s nothing to share,” Violet says with a clever smile. “I see no strange men. It seems, instead, you’ve found an attractive lieutenant from an allied nation, which has nothing to do with his stipulations.”
I realize what she means, her cheerful deception pulling a grin from me. She’s too clever for Havis. “You’re the dearest,” I say gratefully, then pause. “You think the Lieutenant is attractive?”
I’m a bit afraid of the answer. Not that I’d deny it, but saying it aloud feels too official. Like I’m committing myself to something I don’t yet understand.
And then what could I ever do about that?
“Certainly,” Violet replies. “Too young for me, of course, but he has a refined grace that’s delightfully boyish, yet still conveys a hint of something deeper.”
“He does,” I say, pleased by her analysis.
“I’m a rather quick judge of character,” she reveals, “and I think he’s a sweet match for the sweetest heart I know.”
I kiss her cheek. “Oh, thank you, Violet! I’m sorry Havis tried to bring you into this.”
“Well, I got a fan from it. And don’t worry, I never intended to tell him a thing. I’m here simply because I’ve never seen you flirting so madly with a boy—the show’s been irresistible! Though I have a lot to teach you, darling. You’re going to kill him with all these depressing facts about war.”
I laugh and kiss her again, once, twice, then quickly on the lips.
22
AURELIA
The days of quiet halls are everything. Wonderfully everything.
Reni is happy to be king of an empty castle, spending his hours in the council room with Uncle, pulling in the sour Lord Jerig from time to time, and as I predicted to Mother, he refuses to let me anywhere near his business. He’s polite to the remaining Safire and little more.
Heathwyn is my only deterrent to spending time with Athan. “Polite discouragement,” she reminds me.
But since I can’t fulfill Mother’s first duty, with Reni, I have no choice but to fulfill the second, with the Safire, and so I abandon polite discouragement—really, I abandoned it days ago—and spend every quiet hour that I can with Athan and Cyar.
I’ve never loved quiet this much.
We hide in the hangar as rain stammers on the metal roof, playing card games. They teach me words of Savien, and I teach them Etanian. I know, now, that when Cyar arrived at their Academy, the Savien language was new and unfamiliar to him, his mother tongue being Rahmi, and that Athan was the one who coached him through it and then helped him tackle Landori afterwards. I know that Cyar has a girlfriend, a year older, with black hair and dark eyes, and that he sees her only in the summers, though with his training ahead in Thurn this will be the first one away, and that makes him sad. He misses her. They write letters and she talks about helping his mother with gardening back home and she particularly loves sunflowers.
I know a lot of things about Cyar.
But Athan remains a step ahead. He dodges questions and latches on to whatever Cyar says. He always has something to add. Languages come easy to him, and to prove it, he tells a story about his brother trying to jump off a pier, switching from Savien to Rahmi to Landori and then even to a few words of freshly learnt Etanian. I don’t know the point of the story. Then I compliment him on his leather watch, and he says it was a special gift from his pier-jumping brother long ago. Then, a few moments of conversation later, he circles back to the topic, grinning, and says, “Or maybe I stole it from him. I don’t remember.”
Always stories within stories.
I know he says these things to make me laugh, and perhaps that’s why I sometimes don’t. I like watching him try. I’m sure that deep down this entire show is because he’s only a farm boy and what else does he have to brag about? Certainly not the crescent moon of purple lingering ugly beneath his eye. I’d like to grab him and make him slow down for just a moment. I want to look at him and really see. But he’s too quick.