Chapter 48
Selena helped me carry Diara to the couch. We covered her with a blanket, tucking a pillow under her head. The Naiad gently brushed Diara’s hair from her face.
“She seems as though she could use a friend,” Selena said, her eyes flicking to mine.
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“I would only caution you with this. It’s difficult, loving someone who is angry.”
My teeth gnawed on my lower lip. I said nothing of how I’d recognized Diara’s anger in myself. How it only made me feel more at home with her. How, for me, it had opened a measure of trust in a palace where I trusted so few.
“I’m running late,” my mentor sighed. “She’ll be awake in half an hour. She won’t remember anything. If she asks why she was asleep, just tell her she came back from getting drinks and asked if she could take a nap. They’re always easy to convince right after, with trace oxytocin still in their blood.”
She stretched out her hand, offering to help me up, then dusted my shoulders for me. “I’ll be at the ceremony tonight, but I’m not sure I’ll have the chance to see you. If I don’t…” Staring into my eyes, she paused, and I had the sudden feeling a hidden message lay behind her blue gaze.
“If you don’t what?” I asked, equally curious and impatient with the change in subject.
Selena lifted a curl from my shoulder as she had the day we met, smoothing it between her finger and thumb. “Just remember. This night was planned for you, but you are in control. Take things at your own pace. Voice your concerns. Voice your inner feelings. Voice your desires. And remember what I said. There is more to the agreement between Nikolaos and Thaan than meets the eye.”
“If there’s more, it’s not apparent,” I said stiffly.
Selena gazed at me for a long moment. “I hope that’s not the case. To distrust the person you’re cordaed to—” She exhaled, slow and calm, but emotion flickered behind her eyes. “It’s a fate worse than death.”
She gave me a final squeeze and, with a small smile, slipped out the door.
My rooms instantly became too quiet.
I glanced at Diara’s sleeping form, curled on my couch.
Half an hour. I could be there and back, if I hurried.
Softly closing the door behind me, I followed my mentor.
The statue of a crane sat outside Selena’s quarters, its thin legs frozen as it danced in shallow water, a ripple of stone waves flowing from its foot. Lithe and delicate, somehow lonely, it reminded me of Selena, though I couldn’t exactly say why.
As I crept to Selena’s door, the taste in the air caused me to pause. The biting scent of metal under a flare of heat oozed from under the door like a quiet draft. Anger. I held my breath, immediately backing into the wall. He was already in there—I’d missed the first minutes of their meeting.
For several minutes, no sound came from Selena’s apartment, though I knew they were there. Then, unmistakably, a pop of air like that of a bottle being uncorked. A moment later, glass shattered against the door so loudly I started.
“Maren needs friends at court,” Selena snarled, her normally cool tones ugly and hard. “However obedient she might appear, she isn’t loyal. She doesn’t trust us, and why should she?”
“I said no,” came the unmistakable tenor of Thaan’s voice.
“You make life miserable for her and she will only test the limits of her oath to you. You’ve seen it before; history repeats itself.”
“I said no. That is all, Selena. Maren will do as she is told. And so will you.” Fabric swished as one of them rose to their feet. “Ah, yes,” Thaan said, amusement in his voice. “Destroy a second glass. The effect is quite becoming.”
“I’m not blood-bound to obey you,” Selena snapped.
“Our contract was never signed in blood, my dear, but bound to me you are, by blood and bone and beating heart,” Thaan said smoothly, his voice indifferent. Fabric ripped—hard, fast, and short—a handkerchief perhaps, though it was followed by the sharp slap of a hand on the table.
“Get out,” Selena growled. “Go. Take your living puppet with you.”
“A puppet, is he?” Thaan drawled, though there was more warning than humor in his voice. “An interesting choice of words. I’ll make sure he remembers you said them. Come, Cain.”
Footsteps padded low across the floor, the door to their shared office opening and closing, the click of the handle so quiet the sound was almost indiscernible over my beating heart and Selena’s ragged breath.
I didn’t immediately stand. Taking a moment to digest the conversation I’d just heard, I leaned against the wall, cool through the soft cotton of my dress. A long, shuddering sigh came from Selena’s room, and then all went silent.
I couldn’t stay. She’d notice my heartbeat if I did.
Pulling myself to my feet, using the crane to leverage my body out of the tight corner, I walked back to my suite in the southern tower, though at every step, the floor felt further away from my numb feet.
It didn’t make sense. Selena harbored her own disdain for Thaan, through veiled confessions of contempt and derision. Had she once been in love with him? I shook myself at the idea, the very thought bitter on my palate.
To distrust the person you’re cordaed to is a fate worse than death.
A nagging voice in my head persisted all the way to my rooms. I climbed into my bed, staring at the white gauzy canopy that hung over my bedposts, trying to quash the voice without success.
Bound to me you are, by blood and bone and beating heart.
Selena was cordaed to Thaan.