“Please, listen,” I said. Then, hearing footsteps coming from the ballroom, I took Valko’s hand and pulled him deeper down the narrow corridor. I stopped where the hallway broadened in a circular area surrounded by four doors—perhaps servants’ apartments. “I feel a darkness inside me.”
He grinned. “This isn’t darkness, Sonya.” He grazed my lips with a brief but tantalizing kiss. “This is abandonment. Of everything that seeks to repress us. This is life, to fully know each other. It is glory.” His zeal for what he believed we were equaled his passion for expanding his empire. “Together we share acceptance and understanding—both of us born into power and with great destinies. Those things are uniquely difficult to endure.”
I frowned and shook my head in amazement at him. Did he really think I’d been born with a beautiful gift? That I was taken from my parents to live in a whitewashed convent by the sea? He didn’t know anything about my life of hiding with the Romska, that they had to rope me to trees until I’d stop screaming from the pain of all their auras inside me. He didn’t know my parents were killed when it was discovered they had a “blessed child” they’d given away before the empire could take her. He had no idea how hard-pressed my life had been.
Valko didn’t understand me, but on the other hand, did I truly understand him? How did it feel to live a lie for so long, to pretend you were someone else because the person you really were had been declared dead? When his mother came to visit, did she tell him of Anton, that his brother lived and thought himself heir? How many years of bitterness could that breed in a person? And after all that time, only to return to the palace and be met with suspicion, rumored by some to be an imposter?
We didn’t have as many things in common as Valko thought, but we had enough. And it made me feel true pity.
I let him kiss me again. I would tell him of Floquart, but for the moment I could not cause him more suffering. We were safely tucked away from anyone seeking to do him harm. For the moment, and after such a life, he could taste a form of beauty that had nothing to do with wealth and power. And I could surrender myself to the exalted way he made me feel.
Our kisses deepened. His breath came in rasps. He held both sides of my face like I might vanish if he slackened his grip. Candles flickered in sconces along the wall and cast us in a pool of light. The darkness swirled inside me, but I kept it at bay by offering more of myself to the emperor.
“Be my mistress, Sonya,” he said. “Share my life with me. I may give my hand to another, but my heart will be yours.”
My skin prickled with warmth. A lightness flowed through my limbs. I felt weightless, buoyant.
Mistress. The word took on new meaning. It sounded like an honored title.
After all my years of hiding, after my parents sacrificed their lives to give me freedom, was this what I was to become? Burning beneath my breast, I felt the tender flame of Valko’s adoration. Could it be my parents were wrong? Was it such a very bad thing to be owned by the empire?
“Say yes,” Valko prodded, as if this were a secret proposal and he had asked me to elope.
The loveliness of the life the emperor painted for us began to warp like a water-damaged canvas. Harder questions began circling my mind.
What had prompted Valko to care for me in the first place? Did his affections begin because he saw Anton’s interest in me first—or, more accurately, my interest in the prince? Would the emperor have fallen for me without the rivalry of his brother?
And what about Valko’s Esten bride? Would she give us peace and accept our relationship?
I stared into the emperor’s achingly beautiful gray eyes and realized what he wished for us could never be. “I believe you’re wrong about the Estens, My Lord.” I had traveled near the border enough times to understand the frame of their culture, and I didn’t see how I could be Valko’s mistress while he was married to Delphine. “They require fidelity in marriage, whether or not there is love . . . and, I daresay, whether or not the match is royal.”
Someone gave a sardonic laugh. Valko and I whipped around to find Floquart in the corridor shadows. His posture indicated he’d been listening to us for a long time. I tensed and searched for his dark aura within me. Would he now seize his moment to kill the emperor? Would he kill me, too?
“Your Auraseer is very insightful.” He stepped forward into the candlelight. It caught the planes of his face at an odd angle, making him appear gaunt, no longer the prim gentleman his clothes dictated him to be. “But, I suppose, that is her occupation.”
Valko smoothed his hair in a rush. I’d done a fine job of disheveling it. “Monsieur de Bonpré, this isn’t what it seems.”
“No, I believe it is far more.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste at me. “I’ll be taking my leave in the morning.”
The emperor’s astonishment struck my chest and made my ribs contract, as if my bones welded together. “You misunderstand,” he said. “I am devoted to Delphine, to a union with Estengarde.”
Something in Floquart snapped. “Delphine is my goddaughter!”