“I prefer your hair loose,” he said.
I inhaled a trembling breath. “Do you?”
“Mm-hmm. The way you wore it the first time I saw you.” He pulled out the string tying the ends of my hair together. “The way you wore it when you kissed me.”
Hands shaking, I stroked Raina’s mane again.
The emperor slowly unwove my braid. His touch was feather soft, but it made my blood flame with entrancing heat. “Why did you leave the other night?” he asked.
I removed my hand from the mare and clutched the gate rail. “I cannot compromise my duty to you.”
“I don’t believe that’s true.” He fanned my hair across my back. “I’m never more safe than I am when you are with me. Why did you leave, Sonya?” he asked again, combing his fingers through the waves of my hair.
My eyelids fluttered as his aura grew bolder, as mine grew bolder with it. I kept my grip anchored to the gate rail. My chest rose and fell as I struggled to keep my lungs filled with air. “I can’t . . . abandon myself. Bad things happen when I let go like that.” Hazily, my gaze lingered on the black ribbon around my wrist.
Valko swept my hair to the side and brought his lips to my ear. The warmth scuttled a chill across my shoulders. “Maybe bad things happen because you don’t let go often enough.” He lowered his mouth to my neck and pressed a long and warm kiss there. Just as my knees began to give way, just as I was on the verge of surrendering myself to the dark recklessness inside me, the emperor spun to leave. “If you like the mare, she’s yours,” he said lightly.
I wobbled on my feet, shocked from his sudden departure and his stunning gift. “But . . .” I fought to think through my muddled senses. “I cannot ride her anywhere.”
He grinned and tossed me a final look. A spark of cunning lit his eyes, like he was well aware of the dizzying effect he had over me. “No,” he replied. “But you’ll have the pleasure of knowing she belongs to you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AS THE WEEKS PASSED, I BECAME MORE VIGILANT ABOUT MY role as sovereign Auraseer. I practiced reporting my daily findings to Pia in case Valko might ask me, but often all I came up with were things like “Cook is upset with the emperor, maybe for his request of venison a third night when the hunters have yet to bring back any deer” or “The hunters are irritated, probably because they must journey to farther and higher country to fetch the emperor his favorite-of-the-moment meat.”
Nothing earthshaking. Nothing seriously threatening. I didn’t want to admit to Pia that what I noticed most were the shimmering threads of blue in Valko’s gray eyes, or the way I felt important when he sought out my gaze from among a room of first-ranking nobles.
I kept the key to the hidden door Anton had given me under a loose floor plank in my bedchamber. I waited for the night I should use it, the night I needed to disappear if Valko’s attentions became unwelcome. The difficulty was determining if they were.
His apathy had vanished, and in its place grew something bold and vibrant. The emperor’s new emotions were a more powerful distraction from my crimes at the convent than anything had yet proven to be. They also made the palace brimming with nobles and servants tolerable. Valko’s aura was the most powerful of them all. If mine wasn’t already harmonized to it, I found myself searching out its melody, the way it sang inside me with desire and abandon, and then matched myself to its orchestration—for as long as I dared. Only then could I go night after night without touching the statue of Feya or resisting clawing my own trenches in the box bed.
If council meetings grew too long and dreary, the emperor would summon me to sit closer to him. Under the cover of the satin tablecloth, his hand would find mine and trace abstract patterns along my palm. My breath would seize, my heart hammer as it struggled against opening to him. It seemed every time he touched me, his aura came with the force of a raging storm. He’d let go before I could separate my feelings from his, before I made up my mind if his small acts of tenderness were unwanted—even long after his aura was absent and I returned to my bedchamber to stare at the knot marking the loose plank.
I wandered the palace corridors at night contemplating the same questions. Can I lose myself? Do I ever dare lose myself again?
When the answer was no, when the image of Yuliya’s dead face plagued me, I found myself outside Anton’s door, searching for the song of his aura, the mystery of its subtler strains. I imagined him breathing deeply as he cleared his mind and body of emotion, like he had done when he’d prevented me from sensing his feelings upon our last encounter.