Eliana opened her eyes to see a young woman glaring down at her.
Clad in the square-shouldered black uniform worn by palace guards, the woman’s skin was a honeyed brown, her cheeks sprayed with freckles. Her long braid was a rich, bright scarlet.
Jessamyn.
The memory came quickly: the smooth warmth of Jessamyn’s skin as they kissed in that shed outside the city of Karlaine. The relief of her touch, and the peace that came after—until the attack, not an hour later, that had nearly claimed Remy’s life.
Eliana recovered quickly. “The last time I saw you,” she said, sitting up, “you were punching me. We were on the pier in Festival.”
“I remember,” said Jessamyn, every word clipped. “Get up.”
“Why are you here?”
“The Emperor has assigned me to your escort,” came the flat reply. Jessamyn gripped Eliana’s wrist, yanked her hard toward the edge of the bed. “He has commanded your attendance at tonight’s concert.”
So, this Jessamyn was just as relentless as the one Eliana had known.
Two of her adatrox attendants led her into the bathing room. They were exquisitely lovely women, both of them gray-eyed and mute, one with smooth brown skin, the other eerily pale. Their white robes fluttered at their ankles, and around their necks gleamed gilded collars.
As they combed and styled the loose curls that now fell to her shoulders, Eliana watched Jessamyn closely. Though she stood at the door to the bathing room, stationed as any guard would be, Jessamyn seemed restless, unsettled. One finger tapped against her thigh. She held her jaw tightly.
A thought came to Eliana’s tired mind. She knew little of the mechanics of time, but still she wondered: Was it possible for anything of her Jessamyn to exist inside this one? Some commonality she could find and use, if she only knew where to look?
Eliana needed to keep her talking. She glanced at the gown waiting on its hook. “So, another concert tonight, then. Orchestra? Choir? A soloist, perhaps?”
“I am not privy to the Emperor’s plans,” said Jessamyn, “and if I were, I would not share them with you.”
“Why did he assign you to my guard?”
“I do not ask the Emperor to explain his orders. I merely follow them.”
Eliana’s attendants helped her rise, then dried her with soft white towels and began strapping her into an elaborate undergarment that cinched her waist.
“Aren’t you curious?” Eliana insisted.
Jessamyn glanced at her, impassive. “No.”
Her attendants wrapped her in a plunging red velvet gown. Diamonds spangled its sheer sleeves, and its skirt sparkled with an overlay of gold organza.
“I would be, if I were you,” Eliana said. “You’re an Invictus trainee, aren’t you? You should be out in the world somewhere, carrying out missions. Tending my clothes, escorting me to concerts—you don’t find that a little insulting?”
Jessamyn shot her a thin look. “‘He has chosen me to guard His works. He has chosen me to receive His glory. I am the blade that cuts at night. I am the guardian of His story.’”
A chill seized Eliana at the reverence in Jessamyn’s voice. She cloaked it with a shrug. “If you say so.”
There was jewelry to match the gown—two heavy gold rings crowned with flat bouquets of stars. The attendants bent to slide them on and then flinched away from her hands, where the gold chains of her castings glinted. Their smooth brows furrowed slightly. One opened her mouth and let out a muted cry of fear.
“Let me,” came Jessamyn’s brusque command. She dismissed the attendants and put the rings on Eliana’s fingers herself.
“I knew you once,” Eliana said, watching Jessamyn’s face for any sign of the woman she had known. “You were kind to me then. You kiss as well as you fight.”
Jessamyn stepped back to inspect her, frowning. “They forgot your earrings.”
Eliana swallowed against a pang of disappointment and lowered her gaze to the floor. If Jessamyn felt any curiosity about such strange remarks, she betrayed none of it, her stony face hardly more familiar than a stranger’s, and only at that moment, with a swift ache of despair, did Eliana realize what she had been hoping.
That if the Jessamyn she had known could be reached, then maybe Simon could be too.
“Tell me,” she whispered, her voice thick. “How long have I been here?”
Jessamyn retrieved glittering earrings from a cushion on the floor. “Two months.”
A moment passed before Eliana could speak again. Two months was longer than she had guessed. Eight weeks she had spent in nightmares of Corien’s design, and still she could not be sure if