Jason laid out his single condition as they walked. To his surprise, Neha not only made no demur to his stipulation as to the duration of the vow, she welcomed it.
“You are too dangerous a creature for Mahiya.” An unreadable darkness in the archangel’s tone. “The poor child will likely die of fright unless she knows she’ll soon be free of the chains that bind her to you.” She paid no heed to a large owl flying silent as a ghost just beyond the open outdoor passageway where they walked. “Mahiya is not capable of handling such a burden for long.”
Again, Jason kept his silence. The princess had never struck him as weak, but he’d only ever caught the most fleeting glimpses of her, for she was no power in the court, not at the center of any intrigues, and thus of little interest to a spymaster. Yet he knew it could all be a clever subterfuge, Mahiya a well-hidden blade. It made little sense to charge a fragile “trinket” with keeping watch on the movements of an enemy spymaster.
On the other hand, Mahiya might have been the only available choice, the sole known direct descendant of the same ancient bloodline as Neha who was both alive and not bonded to a lover.
Even as he went over everything he knew of the princess, he took in the liveried and armed guards hidden behind fluted columns of red stone; the way modern lighting had been integrated to appear a seamless part of the centuries-old structure; the lithe loveliness of the ladies-in-waiting out for a night stroll who bowed as Neha led him not across the gardens, but up a level and into the fourth-level courtyard.
As the exquisite palace on the highest level was used only to house guests the caliber of the Cadre, and otherwise left empty but for the watch rotation, this was effectively the most remote section of the fort, the walls falling off steeply on either side. However, parts of it were newer than the rest of the structure, this level having been altered from its original design roughly three hundred years ago.
A pavilion, delicate columns holding up the roof, sat in the center of the courtyard. That much was unchanged, but gardens had been added around it in the shape of a single stylized flower, each of the “petals” planted with different blooms. A fountain created gentle music somewhere, but he couldn’t immediately see it—then he realized the water was cascading down the raised sides of the pavilion to run into fine channels that kept the gardens healthy in spite of the desert climate in this part of Neha’s territory.
Where once the entire courtyard had been surrounded by interconnected apartments, there were now two separate palaces—one on the side that faced the jagged terrain of the mountains and one that overlooked the city. The remaining two sides appeared to have been part of the older architecture. However, both sets of buildings now stood apart from the palaces, the apartments no longer interlinked.
The entire section was under heavy guard.
Those guards didn’t bow as Neha passed, their absolute attention on their task. Sari whispering in the wind as she walked, Neha kept her wings scrupulously off the clean stone of the pathway that led to the lamp-lit pavilion, the otherwise open sides curtained with gauzy silks currently tied back to columns that reminded Jason of elongated vases, the arches above finely scalloped. A woman stood at the center of the pavilion, and she wore a sari that may have been palest pink, but appeared a creamy white in the soft light—as if she mourned where Neha didn’t.
Jason already knew that her face was small and pointed, her body softly curved and of a height that would barely reach his breastbone, her eyes a light tawny brown so vivid against her honey-colored skin and black hair that they were the first things anyone noticed about her. The eyes of a lynx or a puma. Eris’s eyes had been blue, but Eris’s father possessed the same distinctive irises that marked Princess Mahiya as illegitimate.
However, no one in the world had Mahiya’s wings—deep emerald and vivid cobalt with splashes of rich black, the wild spray akin to a peacock’s fan. Except that somehow, Mahiya had managed to remain out of the limelight, until no one mentioned the princess with wings to rival a bird famed for its beauty when they spoke of the most stunning wings in the world.
She went into a graceful curtsy as Neha approached, bowing her neck to reveal the vulnerable nakedness of her nape, her hair parted down the centre and gathered into a simple knot at the back of her head. “My lady.”