“What do you mean?” Anger lodged in my breast. I shifted out of the sunlight to see him better. “You promised—”
“The convent has been fortified and food rations sent weeks ago to tide the peasants over until spring.” His voice was low and clipped, his jaw muscle tight. He sat down and scooped together his papers, stuffing them into a portfolio. As he bent down to set it on the floor, he muttered for my ears only, “I told you I would see it done.” His meaning was clear—Not now, Sonya.
Valko’s gaze flickered between us. “I have no memory of this. Was it arranged without my consent?”
Anton busied himself with a loose button on his kaftan. “I didn’t see any reason to trouble you.”
“Ormina is not part of your province,” Valko said.
“You sent me to bring back an Auraseer,” Anton snapped, and released a heavy breath. “While I was there, I could not help but see the state of things. As you are tasked with much, I was only trying to alleviate you by helping with a simple matter I could manage myself.”
“My Auraseers are not a simple matter.”
“They are not yours.” Anton clenched his teeth. “At least they should not be.” A breadth of three fingers separated our legs. The space bubbled with energy.
At the prince’s heated declaration, the room fell silent. The councilors’ eyes collectively shifted from Anton to Valko. A shadowy swirl of tension mounted inside me. My muscles went stiff with it. My hands trembled beneath my legs. The tension twisted into something deeper, uglier. The sun through the stained-glass window, which had made Anton appear so gilded and beautiful, had an equally mesmerizing, though much darker, effect upon Valko as his face caught in a patch of unsettling crimson.
All the warnings Anton gave me about his brother came back with full force. The prince had drawn out the emperor as a volatile, heartless creature, though I’d yet to sense those things in him. The subtle Valko of the past few weeks had been tiresome, but at least stable and safe. I could stay alive as sovereign Auraseer with such an emperor. But not with this beast rising within him.
What had Anton unleashed? What had I?
I bit down on my tongue and shrank back. My body shook with the emperor’s fury.
“And why, pray tell,” Valko began calmly, “should they not be my Auraseers?”
Anton’s gaze traveled to my shoulder, not quite arriving at my eyes. “I only meant to say they should be a given a choice to serve you. Most would do it gladly.” He spoke carefully, clearly realizing he was now treading on thin ice.
“A choice?” Valko laughed. “Why would any woman—any girl”—he flitted a hand at me—“want for more than the life she is given at my side? Why must a choice come into play for such a privilege?”
The prince looked down and folded his hands on the table. Pressure crackled inside me like dry lightning as he fought not to speak.
“Sonya,” Valko addressed me with the same falsely collected tone. His gray eyes shone like a wolf’s. “If you had a choice, would you serve me?”
My heart thumped out of rhythm. How should I answer? His temper, roiling inside me, begged me to lash out at him, to declare I would be far away, to the south with the Romska for the winter, or perhaps with a mother I had scarcely known. A father. A brother. My muscles tensed with fury over everything I’d been denied.
I drew a sharp breath, ready to attack Valko with my account of how unfairly Auraseers were treated, and then I checked myself. Tola and Dasha’s innocent faces seemed to watch me from afar. I didn’t want to be the weight that broke the branch. In the past and under the influence of others’ auras, I had made rash decisions that caused great harm. I’d vowed to restrain myself for Tola’s and Dasha’s sakes. If Valko’s anger fell on me, would it be enough to sentence me to death? I didn’t want to test him, to find out if he could be that cruel. Unshed tears clouded my vision as I strained to muzzle myself, to not say anything that would condemn me, but the emperor’s aura tangled me with rage.
“Leave her out of this,” Anton said.
Valko’s mouth stretched wide into a satisfied grin. He’d found some kind of proof in Anton then—what, I didn’t understand.
“Perhaps, brother,” Valko said, “you wish they were your Auraseers.” Anton shook his head, but Valko pressed on. “Perhaps you think you should be emperor.”