Burning Glass (Burning Glass #1)(27)
My lips parted as I struggled to form words to respectfully decline the offering. I managed a small squeak. The candle nearest me flickered and dripped a bead of wax. The guests’ curiosity closed in around me. Valko’s gaze never wandered. The room was silent. Not even the clink of a knife against porcelain disturbed the quiet.
The servant’s brow gleamed with sweat. He darted a nervous glance over his shoulder to the emperor. The portly lady beside me lifted her napkin to her mouth and whispered, “You rise, take the meat, and then you bow, child.”
I swallowed. My tongue felt like paper. “Thank you,” I said to the servant, disregarding the woman, “but—”
He dished me a serving, cutting off my protest. My hands went clammy. Perhaps if I did as my neighbor suggested, everyone would go back to their meals and not bother to see if I took a bite.
I stood slowly and lowered in a curtsy. My unbound hair fell in front of my shoulders. How foolish of me to think it would be enough to satisfy the emperor.
He gave me a minuscule nod, but his mouth remained a straight line.
I sat back down. Wished for the nobles to return to their private conversations. Hoped Valko would be bored again.
Vapors of emotion crowded the air. Anger and envy and curiosity threaded around me like the laces of a corset, squeezing out my breath. I turned a pleading look to Anton. Mercifully, his gaze was upon me, but his hands were also white-fisted on the table. I tried to sift out his aura, interpret something from him and find a way out of this. Couldn’t he whisper something to his brother to explain my peculiarities—what eating this meat would do to me?
He did not. As his hands curled tighter, he gave me a nod, almost like a command.
My shoulders fell as disappointment spooled through my body. He wasn’t my ally. Once and for all, I needed to beat that into my head. I couldn’t look to him for my rescue, like some fool of a maiden in a children’s story.
I slid a morsel of meat onto my golden fork. My hand trembled. I opened my mouth, and the swan flesh touched my tongue. A burst of pain flowered above my heart. Vertigo gripped me. My emotions were a tumble. They flashed from soaring abandon to earth-rending sorrow and wrath. And for all that, I held my muscles rigid, forced my teeth to thrash the meat, to swallow it, to become one with the misery of death.
Satisfied, the nobles looked away and resumed their chatter.
Valko grinned. His face was blurry through my watering eyes.
I didn’t let the tears fall until he grew bored of me. Until he turned to the general at his side, who said something that made him toss back his head with raucous laughter. My brows drew together. Was the emperor mocking me?
His merry mood heightened as the evening wore on, long after I’d swallowed the last excruciating morsel of meat. I’d never witnessed someone shift so quickly from one mood to the next. As more dishes were passed and more spirits drunk, as entertainers and jesters collided and stumbled over one another in rehearsed madness, the emperor clapped and laughed louder. Veins bulged at his forehead and neck.
Some part of his lightheartedness rang falsely. I kept swiping my tears, amazed and furious that his aura—which I’d first absorbed so easily—was now distant and strange. I couldn’t relate to his humor. His mother had just died and been buried. Why wasn’t he despondent, when that emotion was so largely what I felt? Could all this suffering be my own?
The swan flesh lingered like poison in my bloodstream and only made my mourning intensify. How could I laugh like the emperor when I knew a convent’s worth of Auraseers had burned to death behind doors I’d locked? Did I really think if Valko forced a smile, I would as well?
Then I realized—perhaps the emperor’s sentiment wasn’t humor. Perhaps it was a mask. A mask for his own mourning. And perhaps a small part of his deception was meant to disguise his bafflement over me. A mere girl was now sovereign Auraseer, a position more important than all the ranks of guards standing in perfect formation outside the windows of this room.
A bit of peace descended on me, a bit of power. I clung to it. I didn’t spare Valko or Anton another glance. And later, after the emperor had retired for the night and as I crossed the great hall at the beckoning of a nobleman who wanted to meet me, the prince stepped in my path to finally acknowledge my existence. His brows were hitched together as if in pain. All I thought of was the way he’d left me at the palace porch, how he hadn’t intervened on my behalf when the emperor’s meat was brought before me.
“Sonya . . . ,” Anton began, not quite knowing what to say.
I startled with exaggerated surprise, as if I’d just noticed him. “Oh, forgive me, Your Imperial Highness! I had no idea you were here, nor indeed that you were still living.”
His eyes narrowed in offense, then he released a heavy sigh. “You should understand that—”
I walked around him, cutting him off. I didn’t care to listen to all the reasons why I was too lowly to be publicly acquainted with him.
I marched out of the great hall, and I didn’t look back.
CHAPTER TEN
THAT NIGHT, AFTER MY MAIDS LEFT, I STOOD AT THE THRESHOLD between my antechamber and bedchamber and debated on which room I should sleep in. The box bed seemed to stare like a dark creature waiting to devour me whole. I could always lie down on one of my couches. But then all the gilding and ornamentation of my antechamber might suffocate me just as surely as the cramped interior of my bed. At length, I gathered my blankets and pillows and arranged them on the floor beneath my window. Perhaps the winter clouds would relent and permit me a glimpse of the hidden starlight.