“Have you broken your fast?” he asked, caught by the way a ray of sunlight lit up the tawny brown of her eyes to even more startling intensity.
“No.” She betrayed no surprise or hesitation at his presence, as if she’d realized his purpose and used the time between his sighting of her and their meeting to put on her emotional armor, if not the clothing that served the same function. “One does not leave a guest to dine alone . . . my lord.”
Pretty words that meant nothing. “My name is Jason,” he said. “I have never been a lord nor do I wish to be one in any sense.”
A blink. “I cannot use your given name.”
Jason considered the cultural mores of the land where he stood, layered them over the short period of his association with Mahiya, her status as a princess, as well as the unspoken rules of Neha’s court, and understood that for her to use his name in public would breach a barrier, leading others to believe the ritual of the blood vow had segued into a far more intimate relationship. “In private, then, I am Jason.”
An incline of her head, followed by a graceful wave as she led him into a sunny room that overlooked the main courtyard. The polished wooden table within, of a size meant to accommodate six, was already set with breakfast—the places situated across from one another. “There are no servants in this palace except for those who come in once a week to clean,” she said, picking up the elegant silver teapot to pour him a cup after they’d both taken their seats. “However, I can have someone assigned to you should you wish it.”
“No.” He took a sip of the sweet tea rich with milk and spices, and returned the cup to the table, intending to pour himself a glass of water.
Mahiya’s eyes flicked up from where she’d been putting food on a plate. “It is not to your liking?” Before he could answer, she rose and disappeared through a small door, to return with another pot only minutes later. “Perhaps you’ll prefer this.”
The pure taste of fine black tea touched his mouth when he lifted the cup to his lips, the leaves no doubt sourced from the plantations in Neha’s territory. “Thank you.” He didn’t tell Mahiya not to serve him, because it told him something else about her that she put down the plate she’d been making to create another one—one much more suited to his tastes, her decision based on nothing but his preference when it came to tea.
A smart woman with many facets . . . who preferred to give an impression otherwise.
Serving herself after passing across his plate, she said, “You wake early.” A penetrating look. “Or you do not sleep. Did you, perhaps, fly all the hours before dawn?”
“I’m not mortal.” Angels weren’t immune to the need for sleep, but the older they became, the less they needed. Jason slept perhaps two nights out of a month, and it was enough to maintain his strength. “However, you need more sleep than you’ve been getting.” Faint bruises marred the skin under her eyes, bruises that couldn’t be accounted for by a single night without sleep.
A genuinely startled look before her lashes veiled her expression. “I wake when you wake, my lord.”
“Jason.”
“Jason.”
It was no victory, he thought, the capitulation as meaningless as any of the other pretty words she said to him. This was not the woman who had talked of garrotes and offered to search a room for a hooked needle, shields of polite courteousness having risen to hide the truth of her in the hours since he’d flown into the vanishing night. “Tell me,” he said, deciding to use not brute force to get past those shields, but rather a subtle enticement to the inquisitive nature she’d earlier betrayed, “about Eris’s guards.”
Putting down her tea, she began to speak, her tone one that said she’d expected the question—which meant she had also worked out why he might need the information. It turned out there were twelve guards in total, a unit whose sole task it was to “protect” Eris by keeping him in his palace. “The unit is composed of highly trained angels, no vampires.”
A winged guard made sense for a prisoner capable of taking flight. “Who do you believe killed Eris?”
Another flash of surprise. This one, she made no attempt to hide, and he understood something else about the princess—she was unused to having her opinions solicited, much less listened to with the respect they no doubt deserved. No one saw more than a person others dismissed as beneath their notice. It was why Jason placed so many of his spies among servants.
However, Mahiya was not a servant, and he didn’t know her well enough to judge whether or not she played a very clever game with him, her “true” face as false as the obvious facade. Only one thing was for certain: Princess Mahiya, with the blade-pins even now hidden in her hair, had just become an even more fascinating creature to his spymaster’s mind.