Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(56)

“You may not.”

My jaw dropped. Was the letter just to torture me, then? Why not just give it to me after it was over, and I had completely missed it? I tried to cover up my frustration by grabbing my napkin from my lap and wiping my face. At least the cover allowed my lips to turn freely into a sneer.

“And why not?” I asked.

The goblet disappeared behind the curtain for a while before reappearing, this time settling back on the table. The sip took far too long to be anything but intentional.

“You know why,” said the lord. A finger ran across the jagged edges of the crystal goblet. “Unless you intend to order me to let you go?”

I forced my mouth into a thin line before putting the napkin back on my lap. My eyes fell to the napkin, suddenly interested in seeing that I smoothed it just right.

“I thought not,” said the lord confidently.

“You may come with me,” I said quietly. “If you like.”

I didn’t know how I would speak to my friends and family alone if he were with me, but the distraction of the lord of the castle out among his people might provide enough cover for an opportunity or two.

The lord behind the curtain laughed. It may have been as close to a joyful laugh as he could muster, but I heard it laced with traces of ridicule and contempt.

“How very gracious of you!” he said. “But I am afraid the answer is still no.”

He stood up, his chair scraping backward. Some of the specters flew into motion, cleaning his dinnerware, putting on his veil and hat, and then settling against the wall as always.

“Good night, Olivière,” he said as he came around the edge of the curtain. “It has been a pleasure speaking with you.”

I stopped myself from saying something more explicit in response that would drip more venomously with that very same edge of disdain he displayed.



***



I tapped my fingers impatiently on the stone table as the specters cleared away my breakfast and brought out the board and figures. I snatched the white elf queen off of the board as soon as they set her there and started rubbing my hands over her smooth surface. If I rubbed hard enough, what would break first, the bone figure or my skin?

I could hardly see straight. The garden was spinning around me. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of a way to get to the wedding that would leave my captor happy. The worst part was that I knew that was precisely why he tormented me with it in the first place. Because it was the first time in months that I felt anything more than boredom—and I felt powerless. And angry.

I began tapping the elf queen against the board in her vacated spot, watching the black elf queen, her mirror image, across the board in the same position. And then I was struck. Two queens. Two kings. Four … horses? Four castles. And other pieces I wasn’t sure I knew. But this was a game, obviously. A game meant for white and black. A game meant for two.

I jumped up from the bench and ran into the castle entryway, looking for any specter within reach. A dozen appeared from the shadows at the edges of the room and lined up before me.



***



“You seem a quick learner, Olivière. I have to admit myself surprised.”

I did my best to smile. However, I knew from experience that my best attempt to smile when a smile was unearned could send livestock running. Still, I had to try.

“Well,” I began, “I am when I actually want to learn something.”

Surely I could get away with unspoken contempt. He wouldn’t really have expected otherwise.

The figure in black sitting on the bench opposite me laughed. He began gathering the scattered pieces, dropping each one on its place on the board. Chess, he had told me, was his favorite game. But it was a bore since his servants always let him win.

I’d told him it would be my pleasure to make him lose. That had made him laugh, too.

“Are you ready then?” asked the lord.

I nodded.

The gloves gestured toward me. “Ladies first.”

My hand gripped the white velvet of my skirt, and I fought to keep a surge of heat from reaching my face. I’d told the specters to help me dress in one of the fine ball gowns before I asked them to tell their master what I wanted. They had even gone so far as to intertwine white ribbons and roses throughout my dark locks.

When the lord appeared in the garden to join me, he stopped, nearly lost his balance, and then stood straight again. He laughed, and I could almost picture the amused look on his face. The face I imagined was alarmingly like Lord Elric’s from my dream.

I was trying too hard. And I was ashamed to know that it fooled him not in the least.

I started with a pawn. The pawn, I’d learned, was practically powerlessness, a mere echo of the seven other identical pieces. It could only move forward, one slow step at a time, breaking its pattern to move diagonally only in the incredibly unlikely event that it was able to catch a more worthy piece off-guard and capture it. When there was enough action on the battlefield, the pawn might just get away with it. But to begin the game, the pawn’s one-time ability of moving forward not one, but two spaces would have to be most I hoped for from the pathetic piece.

“So,” I began as my fingers left the ivory pawn in the middle of the empty battlefield. “Why only white roses?”

The lord commanded a bolder first move, guiding one of his black knights to leap over the unbroken chain of black pawns guarding his king.