how easily the simple gesture reinforced my deception. I relished the blithe fondness it immediately brought to the king’s face. “Shall I leave you to your thoughts?”
“I did have my doubts about this,” Myron mused, ignoring my question. “But the way Father Peramati disrespected you just now dissolved every one. No one who is prejudiced against elicromancers should wield political power. Your parents’ murders will be the last act of senseless violence committed against elicromancers in my kingdom.”
Hurry.
I reached across the space between our twin thrones to take his hand. “I think I’ll take a sunset walk in the gardens.”
“I’ll send truffles up as a treat upon your return,” Myron replied, patting my hand. “Be sure to wear a cloak.”
His warm attentions had delighted me, but over the course of a week, they’d become cloying. Fortunately, I could already see Nexantius’s power taking hold of Myron’s mind. Myron spent more time gazing into mirrors, succumbing to the little fictions they showed him: that he was stronger, younger, more regal, more virile. The more attached he became to these perceptions, the easier it would be to entangle him in a world of pleasant fantasies, to set him aside without causing him undue harm.
“You are such a dear.” I planted a kiss on his forehead and gathered my skirts. “I will see you when you come to bed.”
“I’ll count the minutes, my darling,” he sang.
My doting smile faded as soon as I showed him my back.
When he could no longer see me, I charted a course from the ground floor to the priest’s lofty quarters. He lived in an apartment beneath the Edifice of the Holies. Every morning at dawn, the old man unlocked the gates at the crest of the edifice staircase and admitted the few staggering worshippers making their pathetic daily pilgrimages to pray for health or wealth or a herd of a sheep.
Tomorrow, he would not.
I reached a sunset-striped landing and caught the priest scurrying out of sight on the third floor. This level held the family’s private corridors, but our guards didn’t bat an eye at his presence. I hurried after him. The eastward path he had taken led only to the princess’s bedchamber, library, and recreation room.
Do not let him speak to Navara, Nexantius warned. He will pass on the sacred knowledge of the apocrypha to her. He will tell her how to destroy us. We must destroy him first.
I moved silently, a wolf in the night, gaining on the old man by covering more ground in one step than he could in three shuffling strides. A belt of lamplight burned bright beneath the door of the princess’s bedchamber. The priest stopped and knocked, half glancing over his shoulder, as though afraid to face the falling darkness.
The door cracked open. A perplexed lady’s maid greeted him. “Father?”
“I must see the princess,” he whispered. “It is most urgent.”
The maid yielded to the princess’s strict tutor, Hesper. “She’s reciting her nightly scriptures, Father. She hasn’t missed a day since her mother died.”
“Father,” I said, “surely you see why it’s inappropriate for you to call upon the young princess at this late hour.”
At the sound of my voice, the priest turned, dark eyes blazing with a premonition of his death.
I thought he might try to shove his way in or ask the tutor to pass a message to Navara. But he had to know that once the secret left his lips, it would endanger others. So he ran.
He tried to sprint but only managed an uneven trot. Wary, the tutor closed the door.
I resumed my pursuit.
Father Peramati stumbled onward, rasping for breath. A smile pulled at the corner of my mouth when he tripped on the staircase leading to the top floor and issued a panicked cry.
Don’t let him reach the edifice.
Why not?
We cannot enter.
He slipped out of sight. The pursuit became more of a hunt than a game, and I quickened my pace. Elaborate columns and skyward windows turned the edifice antechamber into a maze of sanguine sunset light and stretching shadows. Slow as he was, the priest wouldn’t have had time to slip through the oak double doors leading down to the clergy quarters, and he certainly wouldn’t have had time to scale the dozen steps to the edifice. He was hiding from me.
“Oh, Father,” I sighed, circling in place. “It was not my idea to kill you. He insisted. You know who ‘he’ is, don’t you?”
A shadow moved at the far end of the antechamber. The priest