He slowly approached me, still fidgeting with his clasp like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Just as I felt the promise of being able to sort out his feelings, part of him folded into himself with that same secrecy from the stables.
I bit my lip in frustration. How was he able to conceal his emotions like that from me—me, who should be able to read anyone? Then again, I could scarcely interpret my own aura, let alone how anyone else’s might be distinguished from it. As for what little I could sense from Anton, he felt nervous, as if anticipating my rebuke for some reason I couldn’t determine. Or was this my nervousness, my anticipation?
“How are you?” I asked. “I expected to see you at dinner tonight.”
He parted his lips. A door creaked open. I whirled around to see two guards emerge from the room beside the emperor’s. When I turned back to the prince, a change had come over his face. His features took on a stonelike but intensely focused appearance. My chest expanded with his as he inhaled a long and steadying breath. With it, his aura shut tight and entombed all of himself. My head prickled with a sensation between calmness and numbness as the excess oxygen flowed through my body.
Anton picked up his pace and walked past me without uttering a word.
I blinked in stunned amazement. What had just happened? Had he used a breathing trick to distract me? He must’ve known if he calmed his emotions, I could not read them. I watched him as he nodded at the guards, who strode by in the opposite direction. Maintaining his distanced aura and intense focus, Anton entered his room and never again glanced my way.
I slumped back against the wall, overcome with hurt and rejection. I was used to Anton pretending not to see me from across a long room, but I thought after last night something had changed between us, that he might actually care about me. I never imagined he’d resort to some form of meditation to keep me—and the prying person I innately was—well away. But of course he did. I could count on one hand those in my life who had wanted me in their association.
I closed my eyes and rubbed an ache in my brow. What a fool I must have just appeared, beaming at the prince like he were a long-lost friend I hadn’t seen in months, like he were Tosya, journeying here from the Romska camps just to wish me a midnight hello.
I kicked open my door and slammed it closed behind me. I paced back and forth in my antechamber and balled my hands into fists. How many times would I put myself through this—through believing Anton would ever see me as more than someone he was duty-bound to help, when the fleeting moments arose? He would never go out of his way to greet me or give me a smile. He didn’t need me, nor would he ever confide in me. We would never be true friends.
I slowed my steps, and my hand spread across my breastbone. Was that all I wanted from him, to be friends?
Was that all I wanted from Valko?
At least with the emperor I felt wanted and valued and good enough, like he desired my friendship as well.
With a groan of frustration, I ran my fingers through my hair. From across my open bedchamber, the wooden figurine of Feya stared back at me from her perch on the windowsill. I didn’t want to think anymore. I didn’t want to attempt to interpret what I was feeling. I swallowed hard, strode into the room, and gripped the base of the goddess with the spatter of Yuliya’s blood.
The next morning was the second in a row that Pia hadn’t brought me my breakfast tray. Lenka wasn’t sure what my friend had done this time, only that it must be another punishment “for slacking in her duty.”
Since the emperor didn’t require me until the council meeting this afternoon, I hurried to the library, fetched three books of fairy tales—including my favorite story of the Armless Maiden—and made my way to the kitchens. The tiles were littered with chicken feathers, and the wooden table slabs dripped with pig’s blood. Pia was nowhere to be seen. I stepped carefully through the room and flinched when the butcher chopped into a leg of raw meat and red flecks splashed the air.
“Have you seen Pia?” I asked a little boy plucking a chicken. The bird’s wrung neck hung limply from its body. I kept my distance.
The boy looked up at me. His eyes widened to see the sovereign Auraseer. “Milking the cows,” he replied, and blew a feather off his sticky mouth as he shot a glance at Cook. “Pia got caught filching a pie last night,” he whispered.
I bit down on a smile. Filching a pie? Oh, Pia.
Walking outside, I found her just where the boy said I would. She sat on a low stool, all of her dark hair tied back in her kerchief as she hunched beside a large dairy cow and squeezed milk from her udders into a half-full tin pail.
“Excuse me.” I set my chin above the fence that separated me from the palace barnyard. “Have you seen the elusive pie thief?”
Pia squinted up at me. The morning sun made her eyes as warm as honey.