The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #13)(75)

“The biggest building in Caldwell! I saw it on TV once when I was keeping Layla company in her room. You can sit right next to the glass and look out all over the city as you eat.” She frowned as he seemed to swallow hard—and not because he’d taken a big spoonful of the oatmeal. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely.” Trez nodded and puffed his chest out as he went all male on her. “I think it’s a great idea. We’ll have Fritz make the reservation for tonight—I’ve got some pull in this city so it won’t be a problem. And they have dinner service until nine and ten o’clock.”

Selena started to smile, picturing herself in one of the Chosen robes, her hair done properly, her body normal … and Trez across the glossy black table they’d shown on the TV ad, with the napkins so white, the plates so square, the silver glinting in the candlelight.

Perfect.

Romantic.

And nothing to do with being sick.

“I am so excited,” she said.

The next bite of oatmeal she put in her mouth was sweet and creamy and altogether the most perfect … what did humans call it? Brake feast?

That made no sense. But who cared.

“It’s a date, isn’t it,” she realized. “Praise to the Virgin Scribe, I have a date!”

Trez laughed, the sound a rumble in his broad chest. “You’d better believe you do. And I’ma treat you like a queen. My queen.”

As they both tucked in, she thought, wow, such a strange emotional landscape this all was, deep valleys of despair, followed by vast vistas that were so emotionally pure and beautiful, she felt honored to have them. It was almost as if her life, with its compressed time span, had been shoved together like a bolt of cloth, that which might have been smooth going and unremarkable, now undulating with great resonance.

She would have preferred the luxury of centuries. But in this moment, right now, she felt so very, deeply alive. In a way she couldn’t say she had been before.

“Thank you,” she said abruptly.

“For what?”

She stared down into her oatmeal, feeling a blush hit her cheeks. “For tonight. It’s the best night I’ve ever had.”

“We aren’t there yet, my queen.”

“It’s still the best night”—she looked into his dark eyes—“of my entire life.”





TWENTY-EIGHT


iAm woke up to the smell of soup, and as his brain started firing again, there was no Is this a dream? bullshit going on for him. In spite of the fact that he’d been out cold from a concussion, not one second of what had landed him in this cell in the Queen’s palace was lost on him: not the quick change of clothes in front of Almost Abraham Lincoln, not the back-end approach through the Territory, not the blow to the head followed by his brief wakey-wakey before.

The soup, though, was a surprise. It was something he remembered from his childhood, a blend of pumpkin and cream, spice and rice.

And there was another scent in the cell. The same one that filled his nose when that priest had come to double-check his markings.

Opening his eyes, he—

Recoiled.

A maichen, or maid, was kneeling before him, her body and head draped in the pale blue of her station, her face covered with a mesh mask that showed him absolutely nothing of her eyes or features. In her hands, a fine wooden tray held the bowl, a spoon, a carafe, and a glass, as well as a large torn-off piece of bread.

No priest. No one else was with them.

He inhaled again—and then realized that the female must have come in with the court offical before and he just hadn’t seen her.

He pushed against the floor. And that was when he discovered he was naked.

Whatever. He didn’t want to make the maichen feel awkward, but if she didn’t like the view, she could leave.

Not that she was looking at him. Her head was lowered in submission, as she had been trained.

s’Ex apparently was prepared to take some kind of care of him while he was in prison—or at least keep him alive for the time being. And for a moment, he pitied this poor female whose social rank was so low she was sent in, by herself, to possibly dangerous males without consideration for her safety or her sex.

Then again, in the hierarchy of things, she was considered to be essentially worthless.

Sad. But he had other problems to worry about.

Without acknowledging the maichen or his birthday-suit situation, he got to his feet and walked over to the screen in the far corner. The water facilities were behind it and he took advantage of them—getting another reminder he wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

As he bent over a commoners’ sink to wash his face, he had only a single crank to turn the faucet on, rather than separate ones for hot and cold.

It was not because he was a prisoner: The whole wait-for-hot-water issue was among the things he’d had to get used to outside of the Territory. Humans insisted on toggling some mix of opposites to a perfect temperature. Here at the s’Hisbe? All water was ninety-eight degrees. From drinking to washing to brushing your teeth, it was one single constant, neither hot nor cold.

Splashing his face, he picked up the black towel that hung on a wall rack and dried off. Soft. So soft. Nothing like human ones, and he was just a prisoner.

He retucked the damp length out of habit and stepped free of the screen. “Tell s’Ex I want to see him.”