Burning Glass (Burning Glass, #1)(94)
Valko frowned and tilted his head at him. “Councilor Ilyin, did I never abandon the beard law? By the gods, you should grow yours back.” He sat back in his throne and muttered, “I suppose something must be done about the water. We’ll discuss it later.” He waved him away.
There was a lull in the receiving line as Councilor Ilyin ambled back to the others, his hand on his smooth cheek. As the next peasant waited for the signal to advance, Valko sighed and turned to me, the seven rubies on his crown twinkling. “Such is the tedious lot of an emperor,” he said from his comfortable chair. I didn’t comment. The peasants had waited in line for hours before they were even admitted into the palace. “I’m itching to go over battle strategy with General Lazar,” he went on, “but I saw the wisdom in receiving the people today.”
He smiled and leaned a fraction closer. I tensed, wondering if he’d dare to touch me with his public watching. His gaze dropped to my clenched hands, before lifting back to study my eyes. After a beat, he said, “I’m glad you are here, Sonya. Anything is easier with you by my side.”
The emperor’s soothed aura sent a wash of warmth across my shoulders. His well-timed sincerity weighed me with guilt. I felt the swirl of conflicting emotions that plagued me the night of the ball. I did know that I helped him. He’d opened up to me and shared who he was when at his weakest. That humbling experience had forged our relationship to a deeper level. But he would never change. I had to remember that. While his fondness for me might intensify, his fundamental qualities of greed and lust for power would remain ingrained. They were the very things I needed to alter if I wanted the revolution to succeed. My stomach folded into knots. I had no idea how I would go about achieving what I’d promised.
Perhaps I should try to test Valko now, see if he could be persuaded to feel any genuine concern for these people. As I scanned the peasants for the perfect candidate to invoke the emperor’s compassion, my gaze fell on the next person in line—an elderly man leaning on a crutch. If Valko couldn’t pity him, I didn’t know whom he could.
As the man prepared to hobble forward, I also readied myself. I dug into Valko’s aura and felt his restlessness where it made my knees bounce, his trapped energy as it sped my heartbeat. I struggled to empathize with the emperor. He had spent so much time designing his grand plans for Riaznin. This reception must seem so minuscule in comparison to his larger, more important campaigns.
As I had on the night of the ball, I tried to open myself up to Valko, to connect on a level of pure understanding. Only then could I twist his feelings and encourage his regard for the old peasant man—who was now approaching. But the link between the emperor and me only half flickered, like a flame on a candlewick too short to sustain it.
The problem was my false empathy.
I cringed with the old man’s pain as he winced with each advancing step. Who would help him if I couldn’t?
Behind him, a commotion rose up as someone shoved his way to the front of the line. The people stumbled aside to reveal a brawny, ginger-haired man, his beard worn in two braids and studded with painted beads. A wave of revulsion flooded me, made no easier when the man’s abrasive aura scraped mine.
Valko observed my strained expression. “Are you all right?”
I shook my head. “That is the bounty hunter who brought me to the convent. His name is Bartek.”
“Ah.” The emperor’s gaze searched my face. “So your parents did not report you to the empire of their own accord?”
I lengthened my neck, taking some measure of pride in their decision, even though it cost them their lives. “They did not.”
A pulse of anger shot through me and made my muscles contract. Valko must have finally pieced together something he hadn’t fully realized until now: unlike so many Auraseers at the convent, it was never my desire to be owned by the empire, or to end up here by his side.
His fingers curled around the armrests of his throne. With a stiff set to his jaw, he turned his attention to the bounty hunter, whom the peasants were bottlenecking back. “Let him forward,” Valko commanded.
The crowd fell away, all but the elderly man, whom the bounty hunter knocked aside with his shoulder. The man buckled to his knees, and his crutch skidded across the parquet floor. A peasant woman came forward to assist him and shot livid glances at Bartek.
“Your Imperial Majesty.” The bounty hunter bent at his paunchy waist. When he rose, our eyes met. A flash of recognition curved his lip. “I have come seeking a reward.”
Misgiving spooled around my lungs. Had he found another Auraseer? If so, why would he bring her here and not the convent?
“Who is it you have captured?” Valko asked. “By all appearances, you are alone.”
“I have come regarding the treasonous revolutionary.”
Tosya? My lungs compressed tighter. My pinched-off air spotted my vision.
“Which revolutionary do you speak of?” Valko’s anger sent fire through my veins. “Many such fools have a price on their heads.”
Bartek jutted out his chin and adjusted the traveling bag slung around his shoulder. “Yuri Sergeev.”
I blinked. Tosya was safe. But—“Yuri is wanted?” My voice faltered. “I thought . . .” Had Yuri used his recruitment errand as an opportunity to conduct business for Anton? “What has he done?” I asked.