21. 20
The silver dress fit like a glove.
The fitted bodice shimmered in the candlelight as I stared at myself in the mirror.
The white sleeves fluttered, the featherlight fabric shifted by the warm air coming through the open window.
I was still in the House of Pain. I hadn’t left again since returning with Davian.
Fella had led me up here after I fell asleep, and the next day, I couldn’t face going to Yona. I didn’t want to explain any of it.
Davian had said nothing, but I could sense the smile when I joined them for dinner the second night.
I fingered the chains that looped from the empire waist, a nervous habit as I steeled myself to descend the stairs. I pushed silver pins into the hair curling into my face, a gift from Fella, and rolled my shoulders back.
It was a party. That was all. If I ignored the fact that my betrothed would be there, and that our main reason for attendance was to ask a Leader of a House about a recent string of murders, then it was only a party.
A party as the date of a man I had increasingly complex feelings about. A man I desired more than I wanted to admit to myself. I shook my head. We had to solve this, and I had to return to Ekris, before the only community I knew rejected me forever.
I descended the stairs, then hesitated. With my chin high, I took the main route through the House, through the door to the client lounge.
Inside, it was smoky, and a lutist strummed while singing a slow ballad.
His voice was entirely enchanting, and I slowed to a halt.
He touched his instrument with delicate care, plucking the notes as if each one cost him something, singing about the death of his lover with a vibration that rumbled with real loss.
A hot breath hit the back of my neck. “I’m glad the dress fits.”
I shivered, and my cheeks heated. “It is lovely.”
He hummed, and I turned. Of course, he was too close to me, and as I leaned back he steadied me in place with a light touch to my hip. I stepped backwards out of his touch, and he frowned.
Davian was intimidatingly good-looking tonight.
Not in the same rakish way from the other day, with his shirt apart and skin glittering with sweat, but in a manner that commanded attention.
His overcoat was midnight black, as were his trousers, which did not surprise me.
However, he wore silver, too, his shirt and kerchief complimenting mine in a way that signalled our togetherness.
My stomach flipped at that, and I distracted myself by admiring the details.
The silver dagger cufflinks, the matching single dagger earring, and his mirror-shine black leather shoes.
I reluctantly lifted my eyes to his, and blinked in surprise. “Your face,” I said. “It’s—”
“Disarmingly handsome?” he purred.
“I was going to say better.”
“Also true.” He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, as the lutist sang of his love returning from the dead. “I told you we heal well.”
I sucked in a breath as his fingers brushed my earlobe.
“Are you telling the Ekrissian all our secrets?”
I jolted half out of my skin as the Samiscan Leader appeared beside Davian.
He, too, looked exquisite. His wiry form was clad in a traditional himation dyed in an impenetrable black, wrapped to cover his entire body except for his left arm and his shins.
Rubies dripped from his fingers and a knowing look sat in his eyes.
“Leader Camriel,” I said, in apology for an unknown crime, but one I felt guilty for nonetheless.
“Annie,” he replied, with a wink.
Davian broke into a grin, elbowing his Leader. “She’s not an Ekrissian right now.”
Camriel studied my dress from head to toe, as if trying to decide if that was true. The back covered all of my mark, and only my countenance and posture suggested anything of Talia’s influence. Yet he seemed unconvinced.
My mouth dried under his watch. “Are you coming with us?”
“I am the Leader of the House, I am the only one here actually invited,” he said, sardonically.
“You’re not invited?” I yelped, glaring at my so-called date.
“Not exactly.”
I groaned. “Davian.”
He only raised an eyebrow, and I cursed myself at my own familiarity with him. There was something in this routine, the way we used each other's names to say far more, to chastise like an old couple. It was friendly—and almost intimate.
“Don’t worry,” he replied breezily. “Theolis won’t be able to refuse us. Not with you by my side.”
I stared at him in total confusion.
Camriel barked out a laugh, as if he had just understood a private joke. He put his hand on Davian’s shoulder. “It’s not a terrible plan.”
I looked between the two men. Did the Leader of the House of Wisdom have some special interest in Ekrissians or something? How would I change our likelihood of entry? “I don’t get it,” I admitted. “Do I have to flirt our way in, again?”
Camriel’s bark of a laugh spluttered into disjointed coughs so loud that the lutist stopped playing entirely. Davian’s face was a mixture of amusement and horror.
“With Theolis?” Davian said, only making Camriel burst into another endless cacophony of laughter. “I really would rather not see that.”
I blushed to my roots, knowing I must have made some faux pas, but not knowing how.
I didn’t think Theolis was married, and I didn’t necessarily mean her exactly.
In fact, I was fairly sure the Leader of the House of Wisdom had been a widower for some time, after the death of her husband.
I recalled Talia suggesting she had ‘outlived’ him, and was all the better for it.
Perhaps that was the source of amusement, perhaps she was seen as a spinster. Or definitely immune to my own charms.
“Again?” Camriel managed, through peals of laughter as he wiped his eyes. “Where have you been taking this girl, Davian?”
“Oh, you know,” Davian replied with a grin. “My usual romantic haunts. Prisons, mostly.”
Camriel winced at that, and sobered. There was an awkward moment after his laughter ended where a silence hung between us. Then he patted Davian’s arm, cleared his throat, and gestured towards the door. Time to go.
Davian offered me his arm as Camriel led the way out of the salon.
I looked up into his firelit eyes, wrapping a hand around his forearm. “I still don’t understand.”
“No time,” he said, even as there clearly was. He glanced at the broken grandfather clock in one corner of the room, hidden under vines. “We’re already late.”
I rolled my eyes. “You said you wanted to be two hours late.”
“Exactly,” he replied. “We’re going to be late to being perfectly late.”
Camriel led our party out of the salon, and then through the empty entrance hall.
Out in the night air, there was a welcome chill, which heralded an overdue change in the seasons.
I couldn’t wait for it, after the stifling air of Dytho in the summer.
Autumn and spring were the only truly temperate times of the year.
A carriage awaited us, and it was not the one I was accustomed to seeing—the smaller four-person carriage with two horses that Fella had driven the other day.
This carriage was far grander. Four black horses in black leather holdings and groomed tails pulled a larger carriage, painted entirely in black, with silver accents and wheel spokes.
Davian released my hold on his arm to open the door with a satisfying click.
There was a carriage driver this time, but Camriel still hauled himself up alongside him instead of riding with us. I wondered what that was about, and then blushed when I considered he might be trying to give us privacy.
Whatever Davian had told them of me, they both assumed there was something more to us. I only wished I could deny it more convincingly.
At that moment, Davian turned back to me and offered me his hand. He wore no gloves this time, his leather ones more suited to riding and travel than a fine event such as this. I stared at his waiting palm, and then I stepped past it, and clambered up into the carriage without his help.
I sat at the far window. There were enough for six of us in here, but of course, Davian sat in the middle and his legs parted wide enough for his knee to brush against mine. He thumped his hand on the roof.
I scooted further to the corner, moving my knees against the carriage door so his leg no longer brushed mine. But I made the mistake of watching for his reaction. His gaze had followed my skirts, and then a wicked and knowing smile split across his mouth.
“You’re in a good mood,” I said, as we moved into the night.
He made a pinching gesture with his fingers. “Close.”
I studied him, and realised there was another reason that explained his relaxed humour and the way he slouched in his seat. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m offsetting the nerves.”
“Why are you nervous?”
“Because I’m sitting opposite a beautiful woman,” he said, quickly. Then he dragged his eyes over me in a practised and louche manner. “You do look radiant by the way.”
I blushed, despite it all. “Thank you,” I replied. “But that’s not it.”