Burning Glass (Burning Glass, #1)(24)
Maybe, if I was very fortunate, Emperor Valko wouldn’t be as every rumor suggested. Maybe he would share some traits with his brother.
I pressed a hand to my stomach and reminded myself Anton wasn’t as gallant or caring as he’d led me to believe. It had been a show designed to bring me to the palace in haste, as he’d been commissioned to do. No doubt he shared many traits with the emperor, and none of them would bring me any comfort.
CHAPTER NINE
WE DIDN’T APPROACH THE EMPEROR’S ROOMS AS I’D EXPECTED. Lenka led me down two twirling flights of stairs until we reached the main level of the palace. She needn’t have guided me any farther. All I had to do was step into the river of people flowing westward past the amber lobby. Lenka accompanied me anyway, and for that I was grateful. I wasn’t prepared to be among so many people, so many crowded emotions. I kept my arm pressed to my maid’s, despite her annoyance at my closeness, and fought to leech her energy and forget everyone else’s. We marched together down the marble-pillared corridor. My belly was a pit of worry. My heart thrummed so hard, I feared it might bruise my chest. I tucked my chin and latched my gaze on the parquet floor. I hoped the emperor wouldn’t notice me.
It was a stupid idea to wear my hair down. Now I felt even younger, even smaller in comparison to my enormous duty. I was supposed to be a protectress. I should allow myself to rub shoulders with the nobles, to glean from them what I could and discern any potential threats, not hang on my maid’s apron strings. I took a step away from Lenka as I attempted to be the sovereign Auraseer, but immediately my body started shaking. I felt threats everywhere.
The auras of the nobles were different from those of the city dwellers, not because of the aristocrats’ distinguished societal positions, but because they felt more practiced at veiling the hostility they bore for one another. Life at court made them artists of deception. Still, what I sensed from them was enough to tighten my throat and send a fit of tremors through my body. Clutching my neck, I bumped back into Lenka and cowered from the highborn sweeping past me. How could I be certain their ill will wasn’t directed at the emperor?
For their part, the nobles were oblivious to me. Without my token robes, they didn’t recognize me as the sovereign Auraseer. Heads held high, they walked onward and in through the doors of the great hall.
Lenka shrugged me away and made me stand up straight. “Pull yourself together, child! Remember your training.”
I wanted to weep. What training? While the other Auraseers at the convent had sat in the study hall and wrote essays on the subtle distinctions between hunger, avarice, and desire, I’d scribbled notes to Yuliya or used too much of my inkwell to play mind-numbing games of X’s and O’s.
I bit my lip to control my wobbling chin. No, I wouldn’t think of the convent. I wouldn’t remember the last time I saw its burned ruins or inhaled the thick and cloying stench of the dead.
I bent over in a sudden fit of nausea. As I closed my eyes, I saw Yuliya’s lifeless face, the gash in her leg, her bloody sheets. My nose stung, a warning I might cry. I should. I hadn’t shed enough tears over everyone who had died because of me.
“Stop this at once!” Lenka jostled my arm. Her voice was nothing more than a hiss. Shame, more than concern, permeated her aura. I must be a public disgrace.
I rushed into the shadows behind one of the great hall’s doors. Here I was farther away from the nobles, though not outdistanced from the tumultuous memories in my head. “I’m tired from my journey. Please . . . I can’t do this tonight. I can’t go in there.”
Lenka’s horselike mouth pursed and shriveled up with wrinkles to match Sestra Mirna’s. “Don’t you dare speak of shirking from your responsibility! This isn’t the convent. You cannot say you are sick and hide away in your room. You will attend the emperor, as you will every time he requires you. When you are through tonight, you can take to your box bed. Its design does serve a purpose.”
Dread turned my stomach to stone, and I wiped the moisture from under my nose. “Very well, then.” Lenka was right. I couldn’t hide. I had Dasha and Tola to think of. “Just let me collect myself.”
“There is no time for that.” She prodded me out of the shadows. Her face looked skeletal in the half-light. “Go in there and keep your wits about you!” With one final shove, she launched me into the great hall and promptly abandoned me.
My heart pounded like a volley of musket fire. I struggled to stand up straight and took several long breaths. The serpentine press of the nobles’ auras slithered closer. Competing with them was the memory of the convent in flames.
Think of something else. Think of anything else.
My childhood home. No, that wasn’t a vivid enough recollection.
The scent of my mother’s hair. Rosemary and . . . I couldn’t remember.
Think of me. I blinked, recalling Anton’s words from this afternoon. “Think of me,” he had said when I was on the verge of completely losing all control among the commoners in the square. Anton had done what I couldn’t do on my own. He’d distracted me. More than that, he’d brought me back to myself.
I lifted my gaze to the massive domed ceiling in the great hall. Think of Anton.
The ceiling was painted a robin’s-egg blue and embellished with swirling golds, indigos, and reds—intricate and interwoven like living embroidery. I saw what wasn’t there: the prince’s buttery-brown eyes in the wintry light of Torchev.