“That it isn’t why I came here.”
He lifted his brows like he didn’t believe me. “I’m sorry if I’ve given you the wrong impression.” He took my hand and brought my knuckles to his lips. His aura teased me with a chill of pleasure. I smothered it. He wouldn’t get far with his game of seduction. He brought my hand down and rested it against his thigh. “Perhaps my indulgence in you has given you the idea that you can be my mouthpiece.” He grinned gently, like he was explaining something to a little girl. “Even my wedded empress would not have that privilege, dear Sonya. My affection for you doesn’t change the order of our relationship. At court, you are my guardian, nothing more. But here . . .” His hand swept the hair from my face. “Here I welcome your boldness.” He leaned in closer to my mouth.
I froze with revulsion. I would never let him kiss me again. But as his currant-tea breath drifted nearer, and the tease of his aura nudged mine, another tactic presented itself. If I gave him what he wanted, would he soften and relent to my plea? Then again, if I truly had the ability to curb the emperor’s emotions, I didn’t need to surrender to his advances. I needed to test my skill. My friend’s life might depend on it.
“Wait.” I pulled back and stalled him with what I hoped was a demure smile. “Not yet.” Not ever, I silently promised myself.
“You’re not still angry with me, are you?” His thumb brushed the center of my lower lip.
I wanted to laugh. My friend in chains? My neck sore with whiplash from being struck in the face? “I’m not angry,” I replied, and knew he had no gift to feel my deception. With my own, I clawed deeper into his aura and sought his puppet strings. All I felt was his voracious yearning. My head grew dizzy as I fought to resist him. “But I do wish to talk with you.”
The night of the ball I’d manipulated his emotions by first letting them swallow me whole. But if I did that now, I might lose myself to his lust. I needed to distract him first and find a safer pathway to his aura.
He groaned softly at my hesitancy, but maintained a smile for the gratification I’d hinted was to come. “Then talk to me.” His fingers traced the neckline of my dress. “Quickly.”
Grasping at straws, I picked up Tosya’s volume of poetry. It might serve as a convenient way to stoke his feelings in a different direction. “Tell me more about this.” By Valko’s actions thus far and his amorous mood, I felt safe in assuming he hadn’t found me guilty of possessing the book. I didn’t even know if this was my copy.
At the sight of it, the emperor’s mouth contorted like he’d tasted something sour. “It’s nothing more than the ramblings of a madman in verse. Sheer blasphemy. I can’t understand why anyone heeds it.” A flint strike of anger lit inside him. Good. I was familiar with anger. I clung to it. My hands shook with his flickering rage. I compounded it. I thought of Pia bruised and weeping behind the bars of a cell.
“But I take it people are giving it heed,” I replied. My trembling fingernail slid into the groove of the title’s embossed lettering. “Or else you would not be so upset.” Deeper and deeper I burrowed into his aura in desperate search for the means to overpower him.
Valko eyed me with a chuckle. “Am I so easy for you to read?”
I made myself smile back at him. “Sometimes.”
He shifted nearer. “What I would give to see you so transparently.”
His double meaning didn’t escape me. A rush of his heated desire swept through my body. Just as I wavered with it, my muscles clenched in resistance. But should I fight his unwarranted lust? I needed to harmonize myself with his feelings. As his aura curled with longing, my heart tripped over itself. I redoubled my efforts to bring him back to his anger—an emotion I wouldn’t struggle to push away.
“Is this Yuri’s copy of the book?” I asked, and examined it closer. “Was it found in his room? Perhaps that’s how suspicion was raised about him working with that poet, Tosya Pashkov.”
Now that I’d baited Valko again, I combed through his aura for another spark of resentment. I found it when a dull pain in my jaw surfaced, as if I’d spent the night grinding my teeth. I bit down hard, and the pain intensified. Stay angry, I silently commanded him. If he did, I might find the synthesis between us and use it to bend his will to free Pia.
“I don’t need to worry anymore about that soldier.” Valko took a long breath of overconfidence.
Alarm coursed through me. His emotions were already shifting. I quickly inhaled his sudden pride and fought to trap it in my chest.