Chapter 6 #2
Romanus gave the slightest of bows, a meager half-bend of the waist and a sweeping gesture with his hand, before taking his usual chair. “Please. Sit.”
Between one blink and the next, Oliver’s chair was joined by a second one, the small, round side table between them.
Oliver turned his back on the emperor, and took Amelia by the elbow. He didn’t dare speak, but tried to convey with raised eyebrows that she should run.
In response, her jaw set, and her gaze firmed, and she stepped around him and took the chair nearest the fire.
With an inward curse, Oliver took the other.
Romanus studied them at his leisure, swirling and then sipping his wine, his gaze low-lidded and assessing in that maddening, superior way that Oliver had come to expect.
He’d not been shy with the emperor before, full of his usual bluster and self-preserving sharpness.
But in this moment, with Amelia beside him, he could think of nothing to say.
“I notice,” Romanus said, finally, “that you’re two magic-users short. Your sister”—he pointed to Amelia—“and the Corpse Lord were not a part of your clandestine meeting. What secrets are you keeping from them?”
Oliver wanted to tell Amelia that, to his knowledge, Romanus was unable to read his thoughts during these rendezvous. But he wasn’t sure if that was true of everyone’s thoughts. Suppose Oliver had some natural shield that Amelia lacked?
Suppose he was arrogant and full of himself?
He said, “Talented as they are, Tessa and Náli are still young. Sometimes it’s simpler for Amelia and I to discuss strategy without their questions and input.”
Romanus tilted his head to an interested angle. “Young, yes. But the Corpse Lord has been wielding his blood magic since he was born. He’s far more practiced than either of you.”
“With magic, yes,” Amelia piped up. “But he’s never led an army.”
Romanus turned all his attention to Amelia; his lashes remained at half-mast, but his gaze sharpened, those near-colorless eyes catching the firelight like jewels. “That’s right,” he drawled. “You fancy yourself a general.”
“I am a general.”
“Of course. And this army of which you speak: I presume it’s marching toward Aquitaine?” A single, expectant brow lifted.
Oliver could hear the dry click of Amelia’s throat as she swallowed. “I think you already know the answer to that.”
He dipped his head, and took a long, unbothered swallow of wine. “I do, yes. It’s a bold strategy, two separate forces, South and North, working in complementary fashion.”
Oliver’s pulse skipped. He had seen no sign of Romanus in the waking world since the camp was ambushed weeks ago.
But that had been a full-scale attack, the portal large and overflowing with drakes.
What if Romanus had opened smaller portals?
If only he himself, or some trusted spy, had slipped through and was tracking their precise movements?
“We won’t be discussing any of that with you, which you well know,” Oliver said, with a put-on flippant air. “And if this is purely a social meeting, then I’ll warn you that my cousin is far less charming company than I am.”
Amelia shot him a dark look.
“Why does it trouble you so much that I wished to meet your cousin?” Romanus asked.
Oliver sipped his wine—it was lovely, even if it wasn’t physically real—and stared him down over the rim of his goblet.
“Is it jealousy?” Romanus asked. “You want to keep me all to yourself?”
Oliver choked on his next swallow and set the goblet on the table so he could cover his mouth.
Amelia scooted to the edge of her chair, posture strung bowstring-tight, and anger creased her features for the first time since their arrival.
“Oliver’s not jealous of anything,” Amelia said.
“He’s a king’s consort. Erik drapes him in furs and gems and is handsome besides.
” She gave Romanus a derisive up-and-down look that said she thought him the opposite.
Oliver managed to get some of his breath back and swatted at her arm. “Amelia,” he warned, and then started coughing again.
“Whatever plans you believe you hold for Oliver,” Amelia continued, heedless, “he’s not a plaything for you to toy with.”
“I agree,” Romanus said, and Amelia, already gathering breath for another rejoinder, went still. “An emperor does not toy. He takes.”
Amelia’s mouth worked in confused, silent fury.
Oliver dragged in another breath and said, “My cousin is very spirited. She was the disgrace of the ballroom as a girl.”
Romanus set his goblet aside.
“She doesn’t—”
A hard shove landed against Oliver’s chest, an invisible force that pushed the air from his lungs and sent him tumbling backward in his chair.
The solarium spun around him, and then was gone. His eyes snapped open, and he was met by the sight of tent canvas overhead, ghostly blue-white in the hour just before dawn. Beside him, the warm mass that was Erik shifted and snored.
Amelia, and the emperor, were alone together.
~*~
The chair hit the mosaic floor with a bang like a sword on a shield. Oliver was gone. Simply…gone. Not in a puff of smoke, not in a gradual fade-away. The moment the chair connected with the floor, he disappeared as though he’d never been there.
Oh Gods. She gripped the arms of her own chair, palms slick with sweat, and tried to keep her heart inside her chest as she turned back to the emperor.
He was sprawled back in his chair, knees spread, elbows resting on the chair arms, head tilted to the side.
He watched her as though she was a fascination, an exotic creature inside a cage.
There was nothing lascivious in his gaze, and, to be frank, that would have been less disconcerting than the way he seemed to size her up as he would a cow headed for slaughter.
“Where did he go?” She tried to sound demanding, but could hear the shrill note in her voice. “Where did you send him? If he’s hurt…”
“He’s quite well. I didn’t send him anywhere; he’s merely been banished from this plane back to his rightful one. At this moment, he’s doubtless waking up beside his handsome king.”
She hadn’t known for certain until he’d just confirmed it that he’d been the one to dispel Oliver from the meeting. Why? What did he want with her?
Her mind conjured a half-dozen images of prisoner torture: racks, and hammers, and nails, and boiling oil.
“Be calm,” Romanus said, which made her less calm.
“Can you read my mind?” she blurted, before anything like logic could guide her toward a safer topic.
The corners of his pale lips quirked upward in the faintest of smiles.
She had no idea how old he was, if he was truly immortal, as legend claimed, but his face was smooth and unlined.
Even his attempted grin didn’t offer any smile lines or dimples; no sign of a life spent finding anything humorous.
“No. I cannot,” he said. “But you reek of fear. It’s unnecessary.”
“Considering your men attacked mine on the road, through a massive hole in the sky no less, I think I’ll beg to differ.”
He stroked his chin, expression considering. “I’m surprised you survived that attack.”
A cold child skittered down her back. She pictured her pallet in her tent, the camp where her body lay sleeping, but when she tried to send herself there, she came up against a hard wall. He was keeping her here. And the twitch of his mouth for a second time said he’d felt her attempt to flee.
“I have a drake,” she said. “I have five drakes. I won’t be easy to kill.”
“Who says I mean to kill you?”
“Don’t you?”
“No. Quite the contrary.”
She blinked. “What does that mean?”
He leaned forward, and she leaned back in automatic reaction. “Give me your hand.” He extended his own, large, elegant, and long-fingered. White as fresh cream.
She’d rarely seen something more frightening.
“No.”
His fingers curled and uncurled in invitation. “Come now. If I wanted to harm you, I wouldn’t need your hand to do so.”
“Then what do you need it for?”
“I want to see something.”
Her grip on the chair arms slipped, and she closed her fists tighter around them. “You can see.”
“No.” Again, he beckoned with his fingers. “Your hand, please, my lady.”
She found it both hilarious and terrifying that he was so mannerly. How many nations had he invaded? How many men had he slaughtered? His soldiers were slaves born into captivity, forced to fight, and yet he said please.
It was curiosity rather than obedience that finally lifted her hand and placed the back of it in his palm. She didn’t think he could hurt her here—though, truly, she had no idea of what he was capable. But she wanted to see what he would do. What he wanted to see.
He bent forward, so that his hair slid off his shoulder with a sound of silk-on-silk. It swung forward in a bone-white curtain and brushed her knee. Though fabric separated true touch, she shivered.
He hummed, and lifted his other hand to trace the lines on her palm with the pads of his fingers.
His skin was cool, almost cold, and impossibly smooth.
If she hadn’t seen the subtle rise and fall of his chest and known he was a living, breathing thing, she would have mistaken the touch for that of a marble statue.
“What?” she asked. “What are you looking for?”
In answer he flexed his thumb and dug his nail into the center of her palm. A sharp sting of pain heralded the welling of blood, and by the time she snatched her hand away, he was already withdrawing, holding up his first finger to show a blood drop there, round and gleaming.
Her heart throbbed wildly, and her head spun. She lifted her injured hand for a closer look, and couldn’t decide if she felt about to swoon because he’d frightened her, or because his sharp thumbnail had been laced with poison. “What did you do to me?” she demanded, voice shaking.
“Nothing,” he said, mildly, then lifted his finger, and licked the blood off its tip.
Amelia did swoon then, and the blackness was welcome.