Burning Glass (Burning Glass, #1)(47)
Often, when the weight of his crown became too heavy, when the nobles would inevitably return to their grumbling, he would find me at the stables grooming Raina. Sometimes the emperor wouldn’t touch me at all. Sometimes he would sit on the stool in the corner and share his pent-up frustrations. Must he entertain the nobles so frequently? Did Councilor Ilyin suspect he was merely “the changeling prince”? If Valko had grown up with his father, would Emperor Izia have taught him how to better manage everyone’s expectations?
One day Valko fell silent after airing all his grievances. I ran the brush once more across Raina’s back and glanced at the emperor. He leaned back against the planked wall, idly running a hay strand between his fingers as he watched me intently. When our eyes met, he smiled.
“You understand me, don’t you, Sonya?”
I set the brush down. “It is my duty to try.”
“No, not like that. I mean you understand how I’m feeling.”
“I feel everything you feel, My Lord Emperor.” Such as I did this very moment, when a little bud of sweet awe and curiosity bloomed inside me, outgrowing the dizzying passion I usually felt within the reaches of Valko’s aura.
His grinned deepened. “That isn’t what I meant, either.” Sitting upright, he detached himself from the wooden slats of the stall. “You understand me because you feel how I feel, even when I’m not here to influence you.”
I swallowed. Was he speaking of his attraction to me? Did he want me to admit mine?
His gray eyes sharpened, not in an unsettling way, but in the way eyes do when someone has made a great discovery. “You must wonder how your life would be different, Sonya, if your parents had raised you, too,” he said gently. “That is how you understand me . . . because we are alike.”
I blinked at him, my breath halted at how well he knew me. The sweetness inside me grew until it flowered across every last shadow of winter. I smiled at the emperor, forgetting the very reason I had been separated from my parents. “Yes, we are, Your Majesty.”
That night brought another reading lesson with Pia and another pitiful attempt at learning to regulate my ability and rein in my undisciplined mind. After we practiced her letters, she thumbed through illustrations of fairy stories while I struggled to name them based on her inward reactions. But I mistook her quickened pulse of fear for her breathless sense of heartbreak. That made me wrongly guess the story of the Snow Child who melted upon first discovering love was instead the tale of the Bone-Legged Woman who devoured wandering children.
No wonder I couldn’t decipher my own feelings.
After Pia left, I paced the long corridor outside my rooms and lingered a little longer near Valko’s bedroom door. I even brought my knuckles up, but in the end couldn’t make myself rap against the wood—not when the eyes of the supreme god, Zorog, stared back at me from the relief carving. He knew what I had done in Ormina, the blood of innocents I carried inside me like a stain. He knew it hadn’t been necessary to lock the Auraseers and sestras in the east wing. I’d wanted to. That’s why Valko believed the two of us were alike. Maybe that’s why I lost control and gave in to the auras of the peasants. Maybe I knew what might happen if they stormed the convent.
Had the darkest part of me wanted the Auraseers to die?
My shoulders curled over my chest. I felt hollow inside. A needling pain gnawed at my stomach, where it had been growing stronger day by day.
Pulling my hand from Valko’s door, I spun away to return to my chambers. I sought my penance with Feya and only slowed my steps to meet her as I passed Anton’s room and felt his shuttered energy within. Just as I didn’t knock on Valko’s door, I didn’t knock on his brother’s. The emperor would have answered, would have spoken to me, but never the prince.
One rainy day on the cusp of spring, I stared at the stained-glass window in the council chamber and watched the water flow around the leaded joints of the panes. I determined to keep my face blank and not sigh at the sensation of Valko’s smallest finger circling my knee beneath the table. The emperor was more keen on me than he’d been in a few days—his emotions a heady rush swirling inside me. They begged for me to throw myself at him, despite our audience of stern men. Thankfully, Anton wasn’t here to see me so delightfully frazzled. No doubt any fragment of his regard for me would vanish. I’d fall even farther from his high standard.
“What do you think of my proposal, Sonya?” Valko asked. The rain drizzled down the panes of the Ozerov coat of arms. I shuttered my thoughts of the prince away.
“Proposal, My Lord?” Did the emperor speak of his marriage offer to Madame Delphine Valois? I often forgot he was marrying at all. I didn’t want to think of him kissing another woman the way he’d kissed me. Still, I knew he was impatient for the Esten emissary to arrive with news of Delphine’s acceptance or denial.
Valko’s fingernail slid over my knee and sent a pleasured chill up my spine. I fisted my hands to ward off a flush to my cheeks. I couldn’t allow him to get to me like this, not when he would soon have a bride. “My expansion into Shengli,” he clarified with a smile. His gaze pierced mine and searched for what I was feeling, thinking.
“Oh, yes, of course.” I collected my thoughts, surprised that he had asked for my opinion on the matter. He’d never asked for my opinion in this setting. No one had. But I did have my own feelings regarding the continuing border wars with Estengarde and the ones resurfacing with Shengli after decades of peace. And now, with the strength of the emperor’s forthcoming marriage alliance, he wanted to lay siege against Shengli and annex it into our empire. As there was no daunting mountain range between us, Shengli was easier to invade than Estengarde and had more plentiful resources of gems and timber. But the Shenglin army, a lethal force of mastered discipline and skill, posed its own formidable barrier between us.