Chapter 14. Before Luca #2
She shook her head, distracted by the thread of thought she was still holding on to. A few seconds later, she was pacing the length of the room. I’d lost her now. She was folded deep into the shadows of her own genius, and when that happened, it took a long time for her to surface.
I’d noticed a shift in her over the last few months, but Rhea Vitrasian was a secretive woman. She’d been anxious, her mind divided, and she’d been giving fewer lectures. I hadn’t seen a single invitation arrive for her in weeks.
I crossed the study, putting the ore back where she’d gotten it.
The parchments strewn across her desk weren’t neatly stacked like they usually were.
Now that I thought about it, they hadn’t been in quite some time.
Her work was consumed by recording and testing her scientific findings or writing reports on her experiments, but the records on her desk were missing the usual formulas and sums.
“What is this?” I asked.
She didn’t stop pacing, hands clasped behind her back and gaze fixed on the floor. “A new play. For the Fifth Feast.”
I studied the parchment. The messy ink looked like the words had been written quickly. Almost compulsively. Vitrasian’s handwriting slipped from its usually uniform script to a slanted stack of lines that nearly ran off the page.
“It’s a tragedy, of course,” she said, her voice sounding far away again. “Always a tragedy.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but footsteps echoing in the theater’s gallery stopped me. They stopped Vitrasian, too. Her pacing ceased, and she looked up at the doorway with an almost fearful expression.
I set down the page and went out into the theater, taking the steps up to the entrance.
But when I saw who was coming down the corridor, my feet slowed.
Casperia’s daughter flitted in and out of the sunlight cast through the columns that lined the walkway, her lavender palla like the delicate petals of a lotus flower.
When she spotted me, the look on her face shifted, like she was as surprised to see me as I was her.
I picked up my pace through the gallery to meet her halfway down the corridor. My heart was already in my throat, the same way it had been when I stood only feet from her on the terrace that night.
She stopped, letting me make up the distance between us, and by the time I reached her, the look of surprise on her face had been replaced by a cool, even expression.
I couldn’t resist the urge to really study her, letting my gaze fall down her face to the hollow of her throat, where the braided cord of her talisman hung.
The sight of it immediately made my jaw clench.
She was quiet for a long moment before she spoke. “You shouldn’t have come to the villa,” she said.
After the servant’s reaction when I asked to see Casperia’s daughter, I hadn’t been sure that she would even tell her that I’d come. She’d made it clear by the way she looked at me that she didn’t approve of the gesture.
“Seemed rude not to return what belonged to you,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “Is that really why you came?”
I swallowed. I wasn’t used to people speaking so bluntly, and she seemed to be taking pleasure in my discomfort.
There was nothing hiding beneath the tone of her voice or that glint in her eye.
Casperia’s daughter was a different creature from the class of Magistrates I’d been surrounded by since my uncle brought me to the Citadel District. It made me more than a little uneasy.
“You clearly don’t know enough about my mother to be afraid of her,” she said, this time with a little wariness in her tone.
I was suddenly aware of the message folded in my pocket. The one that bore the seal of her own house. It burned against my hip like a flame.
If she knew about her mother’s invitations, she wasn’t showing it. And it was possible she was even involved with the plan. She and I would eventually hold the two faction leader seats, which meant that the daughter of Casperia had just as much reason to oppose me as her mother did.
“You should take more care,” she said. “This game we play is a very long one.”
I studied her. Those words didn’t feel like the warning of an enemy. And I didn’t know why, but I was almost sure that there was part of her that liked that I had come to see her.
“I came to the villa because I wanted to see you.” I gave her an answer as blunt as the question she’d asked.
“Me? Or my mother?”
My jaw clenched. So, she did know, or at least suspect, that her mother had set her sights on me.
“I’m much more curious about Magistrate Casperia’s daughter,” I said.
There was a flash of something in her eyes again. A quicksilver glimmer that came and went in an instant. She took a step backward, and the pull of her in the air was like the water moving in the river below. It was a current that tried to take me with it.
She reached between the folds of her stola and chiton, producing a small scroll. “I’m here to deliver a message from Priestess Ophelius for the Philosopher.”
I took it, eyes snagging on the carved red wooden dowels that secured the parchment. They were the same as those on the message I’d seen Vitrasian burn the day of the First Feast.
“What’s a Magistrate’s daughter doing delivering a message for Ophelius?” I asked.
“I’m her novice.” When I said nothing, she smirked. “You find it strange that someone in my position would serve as a novice in the Illyrium?” she guessed.
“It’s…” I searched for a word that wouldn’t offend her. “Unexpected.”
“So are you.” She said it so quickly that I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. And in some way I didn’t fully understand, the words felt like a knife. “You’re an heir to a seat in the Forum. A legionnaire, even. What are you doing serving as a novice to the Philosopher?”
She took a step toward me until she was close enough that I could feel her warmth filling the space of the cold stone corridor.
She was alive and full of heat, like the life inside her was bleeding out into the air around us.
I had the sudden urge to draw it deep into my lungs, and when I did, the scent of rose and cinnamon made me drift even closer to her.
A voice echoed out of the shadows as three men appeared in the next corridor, making me instinctively take a step back to hide myself behind the column. When I looked up, Casperia’s daughter had done the same. She was tucked behind the next pillar, a square of sunlight between us.
We stared at each other, an unspoken understanding taking hold. If we were seen together, there would be no end to the rumors. And we both knew what speculation like that could do in the Forum.
Her cheeks flushed just a little, her chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
Her reaction had caught her by surprise, revealing a softer, more vulnerable version of her face than I’d seen before.
As if she could hear me thinking it, her breaths slowed, her chin lifting to an arrogant angle.
In a matter of seconds, the woman in front of me changed color, like the fish that swam through beams of sunlight on the reefs.
Casperia’s eyes went to the open door of the theater behind me. “What is she to you—the Philosopher?”
There was a blatant suspicion in the words.
I could see her trying to riddle it out—something that would explain the strangeness of me.
It seemed to truly bother her. But I didn’t know how to answer that question.
Rhea Vitrasian was a kind of hero to me.
A leader and a friend. Aside from Vale, she was the only soul in the Citadel District I trusted.
“A teacher.” I gave her the simplest answer I could think of.
Casperia’s eyes met mine, the sunlight turning her brown irises to a glowing amber that almost seemed to swirl. She was studying me now.
She blinked suddenly, as if snapping out of a trance, and she immediately took a step backward. “Don’t come to the villa again,” she said, her voice a breath.
“Then where should I go if I want to see you?”
That faint flush colored her cheeks and the sight of it made my stomach clench.
She fixed her gaze to the center of my chest. “Matius, son of Matius, of everything you could want in this city, I am the very worst thing.”
She turned and my hand instinctively lifted to reach for her. But my fingers only encircled air, narrowly missing the edge of her palla. And I was instantly relieved that they did. Because if I had been able to touch her, I wasn’t sure what it would have done to me.