Lenka shrugged me away and made me stand up straight. “Pull yourself together, child! Remember your training.”
I wanted to weep. What training? While the other Auraseers at the convent had sat in the study hall and wrote essays on the subtle distinctions between hunger, avarice, and desire, I’d scribbled notes to Yuliya or used too much of my inkwell to play mind-numbing games of X’s and O’s.
I bit my lip to control my wobbling chin. No, I wouldn’t think of the convent. I wouldn’t remember the last time I saw its burned ruins or inhaled the thick and cloying stench of the dead.
I bent over in a sudden fit of nausea. As I closed my eyes, I saw Yuliya’s lifeless face, the gash in her leg, her bloody sheets. My nose stung, a warning I might cry. I should. I hadn’t shed enough tears over everyone who had died because of me.
“Stop this at once!” Lenka jostled my arm. Her voice was nothing more than a hiss. Shame, more than concern, permeated her aura. I must be a public disgrace.
I rushed into the shadows behind one of the great hall’s doors. Here I was farther away from the nobles, though not outdistanced from the tumultuous memories in my head. “I’m tired from my journey. Please . . . I can’t do this tonight. I can’t go in there.”
Lenka’s horselike mouth pursed and shriveled up with wrinkles to match Sestra Mirna’s. “Don’t you dare speak of shirking from your responsibility! This isn’t the convent. You cannot say you are sick and hide away in your room. You will attend the emperor, as you will every time he requires you. When you are through tonight, you can take to your box bed. Its design does serve a purpose.”
Dread turned my stomach to stone, and I wiped the moisture from under my nose. “Very well, then.” Lenka was right. I couldn’t hide. I had Dasha and Tola to think of. “Just let me collect myself.”
“There is no time for that.” She prodded me out of the shadows. Her face looked skeletal in the half-light. “Go in there and keep your wits about you!” With one final shove, she launched me into the great hall and promptly abandoned me.
My heart pounded like a volley of musket fire. I struggled to stand up straight and took several long breaths. The serpentine press of the nobles’ auras slithered closer. Competing with them was the memory of the convent in flames.
Think of something else. Think of anything else.
My childhood home. No, that wasn’t a vivid enough recollection.
The scent of my mother’s hair. Rosemary and . . . I couldn’t remember.
Think of me. I blinked, recalling Anton’s words from this afternoon. “Think of me,” he had said when I was on the verge of completely losing all control among the commoners in the square. Anton had done what I couldn’t do on my own. He’d distracted me. More than that, he’d brought me back to myself.
I lifted my gaze to the massive domed ceiling in the great hall. Think of Anton.
The ceiling was painted a robin’s-egg blue and embellished with swirling golds, indigos, and reds—intricate and interwoven like living embroidery. I saw what wasn’t there: the prince’s buttery-brown eyes in the wintry light of Torchev.
As I focused on his image, the buzz of the nobles’ auras softened inside me as if a conductor had hushed his orchestra. I took an astonished breath. This is working.
I kept my sight on the ceiling, wishing I could run my fingers over the places where it shimmered in the light of the chandeliers. Remembering Anton’s touch, a warm sensation spread across my back where he had placed his steadying hand.
Exhaling, I lowered my gaze and walked deeper into the great hall. Two long tables ran the length of the room, their surfaces draped in midnight-blue cloth and bedecked with evergreen boughs and glowing candles.
I pictured Anton in profile as he snapped the reins of the sleigh, the way his head tipped back in admiration to watch the sun glint off the snow-capped hills on our journey, or when the light shone a spectrum of color along the crystalline branches of a frozen weeping willow.
I advanced three more steps. Porcelain plates, crystal goblets, and gold utensils beckoned the nobles to sit on high-backed, velvet chairs. A string quartet added to the enchantment. The courtiers practically waltzed to their designated seats, the ladies in their jeweled headdresses and tiaras, the men in their polished boots and gold-buttoned kaftans.