*
The sky was the lush gray of a balmy evening when he came in to land on the balcony outside his suite. Ignoring his own doors, he knocked on Mahiya’s. She opened the left side a fraction, her wary expression changing the instant she saw him. “Oh, it’s you!” Smile reaching her eyes to light them to tawny brightness, she pulled the doors fully open.
At that instant, Jason felt something slam into him, a powerful, amorphous realization that he tried to capture, to examine, but it was so much smoke, wisping out of his hand yet leaving an imprint behind. “Why were you worried?” he asked, feeling as if he’d been marked in some immutable way.
“I—” Mahiya shook her head. “Come in first. The food is hot.”
Walking inside when she turned away, he shut the doors at his back. She didn’t startle at the act, the silverwork on the pale pink of her fitted tunic and on the ankle cuffs of her white harem-style pants catching the light from the tiny crystal chandelier above. The comb in her neatly bound hair was intricately worked silver set with diamonds, the gauzy white scarf thrown over her shoulders from her front embellished with threads of the same metallic shade at the ends. “You dress formally.”
Taking a graceful seat on the flat cushion in front of the low table, her wings spread out behind her in a glory of emerald and peacock blue with splashes of jet, she picked up the water jug. “You’ll need to dress, too. Neha has summoned us to a formal dinner. But we have time enough to eat and drink.”
He took his place opposite her, noticing the color on her lips, the skillful use of other cosmetics to highlight her cheekbones while playing down her eyes. This, too, he thought, was a subtle mask. “The food at dinner will not be agreeable?”
“The food will be exquisite, but the conversation will curdle my stomach. And you will be too busy watching and listening to everyone to eat more than a bite or two.”
He thought perhaps the strange sensation in his chest might be amusement. Illium occasionally incited the same response in him, but this was somehow gentler, more tender. “In that case, I thank you for your thoughtfulness.”
She gave him a sharp look, eyes narrowed. “Be careful or I’ll stop feeding you.”
“A great punishment indeed.” And it would be; this fragile ritual of homecoming was important to him in a way she could not comprehend. “May I have some water?” he said, absently noticing a little bag of carrots set on a small table that held an unlit lamp, as if Mahiya had put the bag down, then forgotten about it.
“Since you asked so nicely.” Lips twitching, she poured it for him, then removed the lids off the trays that sat between them. “I was in the mood to cook, so you have several choices. Do you want to try a little of each?”
“Yes.” He knew he should protest the way she served him, but she seemed to take pleasure from it . . . and so did he. So he stayed silent, took the plate she made up for him. As they ate, his mind cascaded with memories of how he’d tried to cook after he was alone, how he’d burned everything, lived on fruits and raw cassava root for a time until his stomach rebelled.
Later, when he’d arrived at the Refuge, he’d demanded to be treated as an adult regardless of his chronological age, and no one had argued. Until Mahiya, he wouldn’t have said he’d missed such a quiet indication of care as someone bothering to notice whether he ate or not.
“Now,” he said, after they’d cleared away the plates and she’d poured them both mint tea, refreshing and strong, “tell me if the reason your stomach will curdle is the same one that made you afraid to open the door.”
Mahiya looked at him over the top of her teacup, tendrils of steam caressing her lips. “Are you always this persistent?”
He raised an eyebrow, and her lips parted in a quiet laugh. “Of course you are. How else would you have become the best spymaster in the Cadre?” Cupping her hands around the tea, she said, “Arav . . . a man with whom I had a relationship when I was little more than a girl”—the laughter leaching out of her eyes—“is in the fort, and he’s being persistent, too, in an unwelcome way.”
Black fire, cold and deadly, formed in his bloodstream. “Did he touch you?”
“Only my hand.” Putting down her cup, she rubbed at that hand. “He caught me in the courtyard an hour ago when he had no reason to be on this level of the fort. I know he did it to remind me of his presence, to intimidate—I walked away from him earlier, and no one does that.”