“It’s late. Shouldn’t we go to bed?”
An eyebrow quirked. “After only one kiss? It is sad when women get attached so quickly, but I suppose it’s the burden I must bear, given my godlike face.”
I gave him a sour smile. “Not together. I think I’ve had enough of men for one night.” I still clutched the deadly nightshade under my cloak.
He stretched one of his arms over his head, giving me a view of his abs. “You returned from the party early, and it’s not even nine. Who goes to bed before nine?”
I eyed the comfortable-looking bed. “Sounds lovely to me.”
“Well, I’m supposed to teach you to read.”
I needed him out of here. What would happen if he saw my fistfuls of poison? “Not tonight. I really need to sleep.”
Amusement glinted in his hazel eyes. “Oh, dear. Were you under the impression that you had the freedom to make choices for yourself here? I’m not sure how you got that idea. That’s not how any of this works.”
I gritted my teeth. It seemed I’d have to wait a bit before I could poison anyone, and I’d have to hide this. “Fine. But I’m drenched from the rain. I need to change my clothes.”
He waved a hand at me. “Oh good. I was worried this would be boring, but if you’re taking your clothes off, I suppose that makes things more interesting.”
“You need to leave the room.”
He cocked his head, frowning. “You’re awfully shy for a courtesan. It’s frankly a bit perplexing. Was it a hole in the sheet situation?”
“I’m a complex person. If you’re not going to leave the room, then close your eyes.”
Still clutching the nightshade under my cloak, I crossed to the wardrobe. I cast a quick look back at Sourial to make sure he was closing his eyes, and found him looking in the other direction, languidly sipping from his flask. I pulled open the wardrobe and dropped the nightshade in the bottom.
Then, I took off my cloak, wondering if Sourial was watching me. A quick look over my shoulder told me he was still looking away, so I pulled off my gray dress.
My mind kept going back to the fact that most of the servants had been killed. Most. Alice could have been one of them, assuming she worked here.
As I hung up the dress, I asked. “Sourial? Do you know about any servants here who were murdered?”
“How did you know that?” he asked sharply.
I felt my blood running colder, and dark anger slid through my bones. “Who murdered them?” I pulled on a fresh, simple gown of black. They hadn’t given me any underwear, so I’d just go without for now.
“Why are you so interested in servants? And how did you find out this bit of information?”
“I had a friend who might have worked here. Her name was Alice. I wanted to know what happened to her.”
When I turned to look at him again, I found that he was staring at me, shadows pooling in his eyes.
“They were massacred in the Tower of Bones.” Instead of lounging casually on the chair, his entire body had gone tense, leaning forward. “I don’t know what happened to them, or why. Someone killed them. I thought it was perhaps one of their own. Someone who lost her mind. Your kind is … prone to madness. We were never able to find out exactly what happened, but it wasn’t our soldiers.”
I felt myself sinking. “Did any survive?”
“The bodies had been thrown into the river, so it’s hard to know. Perhaps.”
By now, Sourial seemed to have composed himself a little, his eyes faded to hazel. As he sipped from his flask, his rings sparkled in the candlelight.
But the sense of fear, of loss, was rising higher in me. Since Alice had gone missing, the logical part of my mind assumed she was dead. Otherwise, I would have heard from her at some point. A letter or a visit. Yet I just didn’t feel it. Easy to live in denial when you don’t have facts confronting you.
Breathing deeply, I reminded myself that I didn’t even know for certain that she’d been working here. She’d just disappeared, and all I had to go on was that Finn once saw her carrying cloth to the castle gates.
I crossed back to the table, pulled out a chair at a respectable distance from him, and poured myself a glass of wine. I wanted to get this all over with fast, so I could begin searching for clues. Tonight would be reserved for skulking in the shadows.
Sourial pulled a small book from the stack and opened it. Its yellowed pages gave it an ancient look, and each page had a single, hand-drawn letter on it. Clearly, the book had been made for children, but I supposed I had to walk before I could run.
I peered at the first page—a drawing of a faded red apple, the next a ball, then a cat.
“Do you know the alphabet?” He asked.
I cleared my throat. “Of course I know the alphabet.” Sort of.
“Can you name the letters?”
I wasn’t actually sure that I could, but I pulled the book into my lap, and started trying to name each one.
But half my mind was on the mystery of the murdered servants. As I tried to focus, I knew I was getting some of the letters wrong, and Sourial’s corrections only made me more flustered. We went through it again, and I tried to name the letters and sounds that went with them, but it wasn’t always intuitive.
Sourial had me go through it again, and again, until I started to memorize the letters and the sounds they made. Valuable as it would be to read, this wasn’t my priority right now.
I closed the book. “That’s it for tonight.” I rubbed my eyes. “It’s hard to imagine going from this to reading actual books with meaning.
He shrugged. “It’s not even ten yet.”
“Too late for me. And what is all this for?”
“For the job Count Saklas has in mind for you. You will need to seem closer to being his equal than you are now.”
“Hmmm. I don’t think there will ever be anything equal about us.” He was, after all, an evil being who belonged in Hell, and I preferred to think a bit more highly of myself.
My gaze flicked to the door. I wanted to ask where to find the Tower of Bones, but that would definitely arouse suspicion. So I stretched my arms above my head and pretended to yawn.
“Excuse me, Sourial. I’m falling asleep.”
He started to cross to the door. My blood was pounding as I thought of sneaking out.
But as he stood in the doorway, he turned to me. “Do take care not to let your curiosity get the better of you. You’re in a world you can hardly begin to understand. You are here because of the count’s dreams. You have some little role to play, to help him get what he wants. You will be playing a part; that’s all. But do not trespass on things you were never meant to see. You will only lose your mind.”
I wasn’t going to continue with the charade anymore. “I know what you are. Most people in Dovren know what you are. You’re a fallen angel. I can see that your eyes turn dark, and Samael’s turn to flames. Maybe you were never meant to mix with mortals.”
His gaze was piercing right through me, and he went inhumanly still. “Well, Zahra. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time I heard that opinion.”
“Do you all live forever?”
“I don’t give away that sort of information without a price.”