Liahstorion shifted where she stood, drawing Eda’s eye. Her deep violet skirt pooled like water around her ankles, her bare brown arms traced with swirls of silver that gleamed in the light spilling out of the ballroom. “I’m thirsty,” she said. “I’m going in.” And she left them.
Ileem looked after his sister. “She doesn’t agree about the treaty. She wants war. Vengeance.”
“Then why did she come?”
Ileem shrugged. “To look after me, I suppose. She doesn’t trust me to keep out of trouble.”
“I thought you were the older sibling.”
“I am. Well, I’m the youngest of seven sons, and she’s the youngest of us all, but she was born to be a queen.”
“And you?”
He eyed her intently, his expression unreadable. “I was born to bind together the might of two great nations and make them stronger than anyone ever thought possible. I was born to fulfill the will of my god.”
A chill shuddered through her. “Your god?”
His hand went unconsciously to his ear cuff. “My mother pledged me to the god Rudion when I was born. At twelve, I made her vow my own and took the god’s mark. It is my sworn duty to serve him all my life.”
Eda’s thundering heart already knew the answer, but she asked him anyway. “Who is the god Rudion?”
“The Lord of the Mountain. The god you call Tuer.”
She couldn’t help but gape at him, her world shifting into a strange new pattern. Had Tuer sent Ileem to her? Was he her answer? “I too serve Tuer,” she told him. “I’m building a temple in his honor.”
Ileem smiled, swift and fierce. “A noble undertaking indeed, Your Imperial Majesty. I’m glad my vow has brought me here.” His whole body seemed to relax, tension she hadn’t realized was there melting out of him. “Do you dance at Enduenan parties?”
“I have only to give the musicians the word.”
He held out his hand. “Then give it. Dance with me.”
She thought for a moment while he waited, his hand still outstretched. Then she took it, his skin warm and rough beneath her fingers. “I will dance with you,” she said. “But it remains to be seen whether or not you can keep up.”
It was later than she wanted when she stepped into Baron Domin’s private suite in the royal wing of the palace, an hour or two before dawn—she and Ileem had danced a long while, the knowledge that they served the same god pulsing warm between them. She’d come via the roof to avoid her guards, swinging down onto Domin’s balcony and stepping in through his window.
He was, predictably, asleep, sprawled out on his silk sheets, his head lolled to one side, drool soaking his pillow. She stepped up to his bed, knelt, and shook his shoulder. She liked Domin a very, very little, but more importantly he likedher,and she wanted to keep it that way. He was hardly more than a boy, and she knew he fancied himself in love with her. She tried to encourage that as often as possible, while still making no promises of an amorous nature. “Domin, wake up.”
He shifted, yawned, stretched, and opened one eye at a time, looking at her with some degree of confusion but no alarm. “Your Imperial Majesty?”
“I need to know how the Denlahns entered my country without my knowledge.”
He blinked and yawned again.
“Get up, Domin. Ring for tea if you need it.”
Domin gave a sigh of resignation and climbed out of bed. He flushed to realize how little his thin nightshirt conserved his modesty, but Eda didn’t blink, just raised an eyebrow, impatient with him. There was a robe lying haphazardly on his dressing table, which he grabbed quickly and put on, then walked with her over to the armchairs arranged next to the balcony.
Eda sat, folded her hands in her lap, and eyed him expectantly. “Well?”
He sat too, jiggling one foot and avoiding her eyes. “It’s been a plan for a while, Your Majesty, from before you were even crowned.”
“And yet you neglected to inform me.”
Domin shifted in his seat. “The others made me swear on my rank. It was the only way they would allow me to take the Governorship of Idair after my father died.”
Even though he’d only been fourteen and not of age yet—they certainly hadn’t afforded Eda the same courtesy on her parents’ deaths. “Tell me now,” she said, trying to keep the anger from her voice. “The whole plan.”
“They were going to take the Empire for themselves, divide it among them—at least that’s what they claimed, though I’d swear on the gods’ graves that Rescarin and Lohnin at least had an eye on the crown.”
