“I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Em.” The thought of her facing such an intrusion makes my heart ache.
She waves her hand dismissively, as if trying to banish the unpleasant memory. “It doesn’t matter now. I’m just happy I could help you.”
“I’m so grateful you came, Em.”
Emerin’s expression softens as her earlier irritation fades. “You’re my sister. I’ll always be there when you need me.”
Emerin reminds me of the way Asha used to be before the weight of her responsibilities sharpened her edges.
“Thank you,” I say, even though I know no amount of thanks will ever be enough to truly repay Emerin for being here for me, for loving me unconditionally.
“Do you have any idea who might have poisoned you?” Emerin asks.
“I think…” It takes everything in me to say the words. “Someone who doesn’t agree with me marrying Jasce.”
Emerin’s brow wrinkles. “I have a feeling your husband will find out who, and he will punish them accordingly.”
A memory of Jasce confronting Tristan overwhelms my vision. The determined set of Jasce’s jaw. The cold fury. The calm way he spoke as he counted to ten. Then, the slow, purposeful way he followed Tristan into the street. Jasce knew the entire time he would kill him. He just played games with him first.
“You know,” Emerin says after a moment, “for a man with a fearsome reputation, Jasce is quite smitten with you.”
I can’t suppress the smile that finds its way to my lips. “Is it that obvious?”
“As obvious as the dawn. I see it in the way he looks at you. Like you’re the only thing anchoring him to this world.”
I grab a jar of rose oil, pour some onto a cloth, and use it to wash my body. “I love him.”
“I know you do.”
After I finish washing, I lower the cloth to the edge of the pool. “What about you? Are you still meeting with Corvin?”
The lines near her mouth deepen as she stares down at the water for several long breaths. “He married a woman his mother wanted for him.”
“Oh, Em.”
She sniffs and glances up. “It’s all right. Asha would have never agreed to let me marry him.”
“Still,” I say as Emerin bathes with marjoram oil. “You liked him. I could tell.”
“Maybe…” She places the cloth she was washing with on the side of the pool, “…there is a better man out there for me. Someone who challenges me. Someone like your Jasce.” She frowns and quickly adds, “But he will have to be from House of Silver.”
“That would please Asha.”
Emerin nods.
Water drips down my body as I climb out of the pool and reach for a drying cloth. “I believe you will find someone someday, Em, but they will never be good enough for you. Nobody will be. You deserve the world, and then some.”
She smiles, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she shakes her head at me. “I’m not so perfect, Rora.”
I wrap the drying cloth around my body. “You are to me.”
“Did you know, I once poured an entire jar of toads in Asha’s bed because she wouldn’t let me get a new cotehardie?”
A smile pulls at my mouth as I imagine Asha’s horrified reaction. She absolutely detests toads, especially the large, slimy ones that lurk near the fortress moat. I can picture her shrieking in revulsion as she pulls back the bedcovers and finds a dozen warty amphibians hopping around her bed.
Emerin climbs out of the water, and I hand her a cloth to dry herself with.
“And one time,” Emerin continues, her eyes sparkling with mischief, “I picked all the flowers Tahira had just planted because she stole my favorite pair of shoes and wore them through mud puddles.”
