I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. I swallowed and my throat hurt with gritty fire.
“Is it you?” Lia asked softly, watching me.
I could only nod in reply, bereft of words.
She turned her face to study the painting, giving me a kind of privacy. “Once I knew who you are, I started thinking that we had art from Oriel. Of course, as you see, we have a great deal of art from all over the empire, but I thought I’d remembered this portrait of the royal family and that you might be the young prince in it.”
She paused for a long moment while I stared at my mother’s alert eyes and gentle smile, my father’s stern jaw and easy authority. My sister … I couldn’t bear to look into her sweet and innocent face.
“Should I have prepared you?” Lia asked softly. “I thought it might be worse to get your hopes up and have it not be them.”
“No,” I said, and it came out thick and guttural. I coughed, covering it with my free hand. I took a moment to rub my eyes. Then looked again. “How is it here?”
“How are any of them here?” she replied lightly. “People brought them. As Anure’s armies rolled over the lands, some heeded the visions, the warnings. They carried what they found most precious with them, passing art, books, music, histories from hand to hand until they came here, where they’d be safe.”
“They’re not yours,” I managed, sounding more accusing than I meant to. Seeing my family here—and other art I recalled from those long-ago golden days—had me more rattled than I’d have thought possible, as if their existence opened up a hole into a world I’d thought burned to ash.
“No,” Lia replied in a careful tone. “And they’re not Anure’s, either, which I feel is the most important point. I do care about the rest of the world, Con. It’s more than only things of Calanthe that I protect.”
True. “Would you have told me, that this painting is here?”
“If all had gone according to plan and Leuthar had dragged you off to face execution? No.” She let go of my arm and turned to face me, expression regally composed. “First, it hadn’t yet occurred to Me, and I doubt it would have given all I had to think about. Second, would you have wanted Me to?” She studied me, then the boy in the painting, her eyes going to my sister. “I think it would’ve only hurt you more.”
“At least you’re honest,” I said. Brutally so.
“Not always.” She stepped away to scan the long hall, her profile lovely and remote. “I’m an adept liar, as all good politicians are, and I abuse the truth without qualm if I need to. Honesty is not always the most important thing.”
“What is?” I asked. In the dimness, I could better ignore the beauty of her unclad body, curl my fingers against the itch to touch her, to discover if her velvety skin felt as soft as it looked. How I could want her, feel this possessiveness and protective urge even as she made me angry enough to see red, I didn’t know.
“What is the most important thing?” She looked at me. “I already told you: Calanthe, and all that includes. First, last, and always.”
I held her gaze a long moment. “Does that include me and my people now?”
Her mouth quirked in a half smile. “Ever the king. Yes. Yes, it does. It should be time for our grand entrance. Shall we?”
I offered her my arm again. She took it easily as before, as if nothing had changed between us. Perhaps nothing had. And yet she’d given me a gift by showing me that the art of Oriel—some of it, anyway—had survived, and she’d given me back my family’s faces. My father, full of vigor and arrogance, not the shuddering corpse he’d become. My sister, with all the promise of the queen she might’ve been.
“Thank you,” I said.
She gave me a glance, surprise in it. “For what?”
How to explain? I cleared my throat. So much talking today. I should get Ambrose to brew his tonic for me. “I couldn’t remember their faces. Now I can.”
She nodded, gliding lightly at my side as we left the long, cool hall and stepped back into a larger open area of the palace, the setting sun streaming in, setting the jewel-encrusted pillars alight with color. “What happened to them?” she asked softly.
“A long story,” I said with enough finality that she should know to leave it there.
She nodded again, the movement part of her graceful walk, the balancing of the glittering crown on her head, the flow of her hair and gown, the light tink of her heels on the marble floor. “I can help your voice,” she said, unexpectedly. “Help heal your lungs. If you like.”
“I won’t refuse,” I allowed. “But it won’t make me tell long stories.”
She cast me a smile, her eyes somber. “I suppose we don’t owe each other our stories. I won’t ask again.”
As we walked on, I somehow felt as if I’d let her down. No doubt it would be far from the last time.
29
I have an excellent sense of timing. Probably I should credit my father’s relentless tutelage on the importance of that, so I could control diplomatic interactions. Rarely do I even need to glance at the spring-and-pendulum-driven clocks on the walls that keep such excellent time. I couldn’t shake the feeling, however, that I’d misstepped in showing Con the art of Oriel when I did. The sight had upset him badly—enough to bring that boiling rage to the surface. A pity, as he’d calmed so much from the seething brute who first walked into my palace.
Still, we’d had the otherwise unscheduled time, as I rarely did, and it had felt dishonest to keep it from him once it occurred to me that the golden-eyed, dark-haired boy in the painting might be him. Not that I’d spent time studying that one portrait among the many that my father had collected. A task I’d taken up along with so many others. It had been the connection to Oriel that reminded me, bringing that particular wall of art to mind—and my memory had served up the image of that royal family’s portrait.
Once I began thinking about it, I couldn’t stop.
Not much of that happy-go-lucky child in the portrait remained in the taciturn and scarred warrior who escorted me. He looked imposing in the black-and-gold clothing Ibolya had found, with the sword sheathed on one hip and a heavy-looking leather bag hooked to his belt on the other side. The rough cloak and stark crown added the right touches, proclaiming him a warrior to be wary of, one who’d earned his scars by rushing headlong into the worst of fires. His alert and predatory gaze provided fair warning, too, constantly scanning for trouble, assessing each person we passed before he followed my instructions and looked through them with regal disinterest.
“We’re approaching the ballroom now,” I advised him. “We’ll enter. The heralds will trumpet—it can be quite loud. I’ll welcome them all and introduce you. Do you want to say a few words?”
“We’ll see,” he grunted. His voice had gotten rougher with emotion, possibly with so much talking, as that seemed to wear on him like someone overusing a weakened limb.
“Just indicate to Me. You do well being silent and forbidding, so you can’t go wrong either way.” I had meant it in all seriousness, but his lips quirked and he glanced at me in amusement. As it did every time, his gaze slid to my bare breasts, firing with hunger, before he resolutely looked away. Sometimes he looked at me as if he’d never seen a woman in such a state of undress. Perhaps he hadn’t. Growing up as Anure’s prisoner in the mines wouldn’t have allowed for any freedom that way. Still, I’d assumed he’d made up for that by indulging during his campaign, as the plentiful rumors had claimed.