Anton frowned, his gaze raking over me. “She cannot be much older.”
Dimly, I registered being affronted at that. He couldn’t be much older than me. But what did it matter how old I was if no other Auraseer could outrank me in age? As Anton said, the law was the law and . . . I could no longer think. Nausea took a sudden hold of me, and I tightened my grip on the chair. This couldn’t be happening.
Sestra Mirna clasped her hands together at the front of her bloody apron. “Sonya will be ready within the hour to accompany you to Torchev.”
“Within the hour?” I blinked at both of them. “I cannot possibly . . . Yuliya has her burial rites. She cannot be laid to rest for three days.” My heart ached with immeasurable grief. My eyes burned, too dry from incessant weeping to produce more trapped tears. They wouldn’t make me leave now, not without saying a proper good-bye to someone who had died because of me. This day had been cruel enough.
I felt Anton weighing my words over, as if they were a measure of barley cupped in his hands. His booted toe tapped the stones in deliberation.
“She was my only friend here,” I said, grasping for his sympathy. Was a prince of Riaznin capable of any—even a fragment?
Tap, tap, tap. His boot kept its cadence. Perhaps he asked himself the same question. Could he give a no-account girl like me compassion?
My heart drummed. “Give me three days.” In three days I could do many things. Accept Yuliya was dead. Somehow part with her. Find a way to escape before the emperor required me.
Anton’s boot stilled. I held my breath.
“We must leave this night.” His gaze lowered to my nose, anywhere but my eyes. My chest fell, collapsing like my bones were brittle clay. “My brother is insistent. Your circumstance will not move him.”
“But death has touched him, too. Your own mother—”
“Do not speak of my mother!” His finger whipped to point at me, as threatening as if he’d held forth a blade. “She was buried while I traveled here for you. I could not take part in her last rites. I could not even bear the weight of the stone to seal closed her coffin. This errand for another Auraseer”—his hand waved dismissively at me—“for the means to protect the emperor and his mighty throne”—those words pelted like acid—“came at the expense of everything else. So believe me when I tell you, Valko does not have ears to hear your plea.”
It took all my resolve not to step back, not to hide or throw up some defensive measure against him. Instead, I allowed his visceral anger to absorb through my skin. Until it fired along my nerves and entered my bloodstream. Until I became its source and could spit it out myself.
“If you cannot stand up to your own brother, you are no better than him! You are worse than that, you are his puppet!”
His eyes flashed. “And will you stand up to him? Your head would be on the chopping block before you unpacked your trunks.”
Trunks? As in more than one? I bit out a harsh laugh. “Only a prince would assume I had that many belongings.” Something tickled my face, and I swiped a hand under my nose and the corner of my eyes.
Anton threw back his dusk-blue cape so it billowed in folds behind one of his broad shoulders. He turned to Sestra Mirna, whom I’d forgotten was here for how statuesquely she stood. “If this girl is the example of how Auraseers are raised at this convent, then this place has wasted far too much of Riaznin’s wealth.”
The sestra shot me a withering glance. “Sonya has only been with us eight months.”
I rubbed under my eyes again. Was I crying? I never shed tears when I was angry. And I couldn’t cry when I had wished to a moment ago.
“The emperor will not find that excuse tolerable,” Anton replied.
“Yes, you have made the emperor’s stance on this convent quite clear.” Sestra Mirna straightened her back. “Let us not waste any more words. Sonya will leave—”
“When we have buried Yuliya,” I finished for her, “and paid our respects to the fallen Auraseers.”
She frowned at me, her gaze drifting to my hair. “What are you doing, child?”
I pulled my hand away from my head to discover a clump of hair caught between my fingers. “Dasha,” I murmured, spinning around to the open doorway.
The little girl stood barefoot in her nightdress, her hands working away at what little hair remained on her scalp. Beside her, Tola whimpered, nose running and face streaming with tears. I touched my wet cheek. How much had they heard?
“Are you leaving us, too?” Tola asked me.