She shook her head in bewilderment. “I have no idea how I even caught Valko’s eye.”
My jaw unhinged. “Valko?” Had I heard her right? “His Imperial Majesty Valko? The lord emperor of all Riaznin Valko?”
Pia’s eyebrows peaked in a way that said guilty. “It was months ago. I doubt he even remembers my name.” She wrinkled her nose. “I hope he doesn’t.” Retrieving her plate, she collected the leftover dusting sugar onto her finger and sighed. “I really should have brought more cake.”
I considered her. The tingling in my palms revealed her anxiety, but my heart didn’t pang with unrequited love. “So . . . you don’t care for him?”
With all the solemnness Yuliya used to give in prayer, Pia said, “I love Yuri.”
“And you never cared for Valko?” I couldn’t place why I needed to know this. Perhaps the role of being the emperor’s guardian made me feel this rush of protectiveness for him. Is that what I was feeling? Protective?
She shrugged. “I’m required to esteem him as any servant must dutifully regard her monarch—surely the same way you regard him.”
I picked at a minuscule tear in my nightgown. How did I regard the emperor? He was arrogant, that was a certainty. Indifferent to others. He also had a reserve of dark passion; I saw it in the council meeting earlier today. Of course he sought out someone bright like Pia, the same way I did. “Then why did you give yourself to Valko?” It was all I could do to not reach out and feel the pulse of my friend’s wrist to determine if her quickening heartbeat was overpowering mine, or if my own primal curiosity was to blame for the heat prickling through my body making my toes curl and flex.
“Give myself?” Pia burst out laughing. “Oh, Sonya! It was a kiss.”
A strange sense of relief washed over me and eased the tension from my muscles. “You mean . . . that’s all that happened between you?”
She nodded. “And only once, I promise!” Biting her lip, she leaned forward as if this were her darkest confession. “You know Yuri holds my heart, but I’ll admit even he has never kissed me with such rapture. You don’t understand how breathless the emperor can make you feel, how flattering it is to have his sole and private attention, how his gentle esteem causes you to imagine yourself the equal of his high rank and importance. I don’t know what I would have done if Lenka hadn’t walked in on us!”
I snorted. “No wonder Lenka has it out for you. If you’d told Valko ‘no,’ you would have saved yourself the wrath of the most contemptible woman in this palace. Besides, even an emperor can’t have everything he desires.”
Pia arched a brow as she considered me. “Would you have told him no?”
My pulse fluctuated again. Perhaps the sweetness of the cake had reached my bloodstream. “Of course.”
“Hmph.”
A soft knocking came at my door. Three raps, quick in succession. I startled. Pia’s eyes popped wide. Had Lenka returned? She’d already dressed me for the night and brushed out my hair. Besides, she always just walked in. My antechamber didn’t have a lock.
The rapping came again, a little louder and faster. I stood while Pia scrambled to collect the dishes onto her tray. Lenka would be furious that Pia had come to pay me a visit, even though it wasn’t against any rules I could think of. But when I placed my hand on the door latch, my insides flooded with an energy distinctly not belonging to my head maid.
Once Pia was standing, tray in hand, I cracked open the door and set my eye to the gap.
My breath caught, for it was Anton who stood outside, his face lost in the shadows between two pools of light from the corridor sconces. His kaftan was gone, though he still wore his boots, reaching above his knees, his loose shirt haphazardly tucked into his breeches. His hair was mussed as if he’d spent the last hour running his hands through it. I’d never seen him so distressed, so human.
“May I come in?” he asked. His voice, naturally rich and low in timbre, always rumbled with volume, making it scarcely possible for him to whisper.
I hesitated, my hand floating to the ribbons at my nightgown’s scooped neckline. Wasn’t it improper to let a man into my rooms when I was alone? Especially a man I was still angry with for going out of his way to ignore me. But then I wasn’t alone. I glanced back at Pia. A huge smile broke across her face. Anton? she mouthed. I fought an eye roll.
“Please, Sonya,” the prince said. When I returned my attention to him, he glanced toward the emperor’s rooms. “Let me in. I must speak with you.”