Burning Glass (11 page)

My quarter hour at breakfast with Pia helped me wake up every morning, helped me finally fall asleep, knowing I would see her the following day. She was sunlight. Clean air. Unbridled joy. I soon discovered why: she was in love.

Her eyes followed a palace guard with flaxen hair—a guard often assigned to me. Sometimes he was stationed outside my rooms when it was time to escort me to the emperor. Whenever he so much as smiled at Pia, she glided across my floor as if skating across a frozen pond, her giddiness making me me twirl along with her. The day I made her confess her feelings for him out loud, she laughed. “I was wondering when you’d guess! I thought you’d sense it in me the first day we met.”

“I knew you were elated.” I smiled. “I just didn’t know his name was Yuri.”

A pretty flush rose to her cheeks, and she held up a
bandaged finger. “Whenever he speaks to me, I end up burning my hands in the kitchens.”

“Does he come to you there?”

“Oh, no, he would never! Cook would rake him over the coals. I just get so muddle-headed, recalling every word of our conversations, every look he ever gives me.”

I threw a pillow at her. “You’re hopeless.”

She giggled and clutched the pillow to her breast. “At least I admit to my madness. You won’t even talk to me about Anton.”

I rolled my eyes. She was still fixated on the idea that there was something between the prince and me, when the truth was we weren’t even on speaking terms. Whenever I rounded a corner and happened upon him—even if he was at the far end of a spacious room—he stiffened and found some excuse to leave promptly. It didn’t matter. I’d have done the same if he hadn’t beaten me to it. I ignored the way my stomach tightened with anxiety upon our fleeting encounters. The sensation couldn’t possibly be coming from him. How could I make him nervous when he scarcely even noticed me?

The worst was when Valko required his brother’s presence. I’d learned Anton held the office of viceroy over Perkov. The southwest province bordered the Bayacs, the mountain range separating Riaznin from Estengarde. Although Anton was viceroy, the title was stripped of any ruling power. He served as more of a councilor for that small but important area. I’d guessed Valko had bequeathed him the position as a public show of goodwill, for I never sensed any true sentiment
within the emperor for Anton.

Sometimes the brothers had to meet and discuss the border wars, disturbances with the peasants, or concerns over the long famine and what could be done to help the people. I would sit with them, coiled tight like a spring ready to burst from faulty clockwork. The tension was palpable, though I could never determine its origin—if the discord I felt was between them or between me and Anton. Every time our shoulders brushed, he’d flinch. My body flushed with heat until Anton cleared his throat, breathed deeply, and scooted his chair another inch away. Twice his hand wandered to the left pocket of his kaftan, as if he guarded something valuable from me.

I remembered the letter from our journey, the letter regarding Morva’s Eve that he had passed to the piercingly blue-eyed man named Feliks in the city. The occasion was a few weeks away in the early spring on the night before the festival celebrating the goddess of fertility.

What were Anton and Feliks planning? Would the nobleman with the amethyst ring join them, or was he only the first messenger of the letter? Did the emperor know about it? Based on Anton’s covertness and how he’d tried to hide the letter from me, I doubted he wanted his brother involved. But wasn’t it my duty to relay any suspicious behavior to the emperor?

My gaze drifted to Anton. We were obliged to suffer through another long council meeting, but his aura was nothing like bored. His intentness and fervent energy awoke me from my tedium. He had his arm stretched over a map on the table,
his brows drawn together in earnest as he named the villages near the Bayac Mountains that had experienced the most hardship from famine and the Black Death that took Emperor Izia’s life years ago—the villages that had also lost many of their able men to the border wars. Anton proposed we send a portion of Torchev’s excess regiments to reinforce the lines against Estengarde and start up a ministry of agriculture to consult with the peasants over which crops could be cultivated in harsher conditions, how to combat the pests that surfaced in abundance once the snows melted, and the best way to rotate plots of soil so the earth could renew its nutrients.

As I listened to Anton, I wondered . . . could I betray him to his brother? He seemed to care far more for Riaznin than Valko, who had spent most of the meeting tracing and retracing the Jinshan River designating the border between his empire and Shengli, our eastern neighbor, rich in jade and emeralds. As the emperor’s eyes lingered on that river, his melancholy of the last few weeks lifted. Now his aura made my stomach groan with a sensation close to hunger.

Anton moved next to the topic of serfdom and leaned his knuckled hands on the table. A lock of hair fell over his eye, reminding me of his tousled look on our journey. I had slept in the same room as this man. And while I’d dozed off in the troika, he’d laid his mother’s blanket over me.

Would it be treason if I
didn’t
betray him?

I examined the prince as I had done that day in the troika, when he helped me overcome the auras of the commoners in
the city square. My gaze followed the slope of his nose in profile. The faint crinkles around his eyes, proof he sometimes smiled. The small mole alongside the upper bridge of his nose, his only imperfection, my favorite part of his face. Somehow that little flaw made him appear younger, more like the boy he was underneath the political roles his life had thrust upon him.

An ember sparked in my belly and curled warmth throughout me, from toes to fingertips to ears. The sun cut through the clouds outside, illuminating the prince in a rainbow of color from the stained-glass window. Dust floated around him like gold.

“Riaznin has enslaved a portion of our peasants as serfs for over five centuries,” Anton said. “In the last fifty years, that number has multiplied to a quarter of our population. Not only is serfdom inhumane, it is a danger to us. There is talk of revolt.” Anton seemed to lose his trail of thought when he caught me gazing at him, my brows lifted, my spine straight as an arrow. The warmth inside me expanded with a tumble of escalating emotion, too rapid-fire to decipher. A little frown tugged at his lips, and he cleared his throat, hazarding a glance at Valko.

I looked at the emperor and froze to find his eyes soft on mine, his finger removed from the river of Shengli. I swallowed.

“What is your name again?” he asked. Across the table, his councilors turned their heads to me, as if just noticing I was in the room.

My hands slid under my thighs. “Sonya Petrova.”

“Do you like it here, Sonya?”

I blinked. The sunlight was in my eyes. “Sometimes.”

He laughed, his boredom breaking up like a glacier sliding off a mountain.

In response, a smile flickered to my mouth before I could push his sudden mirth away. “I worry for those I left behind at the convent,” I said, taking advantage of this, our first conversation together. “The peasants in the surrounding villages are unhappy, too. Perhaps . . .” I looked briefly to Anton. “Perhaps you could discuss that, as well.”

Valko laughed again. His grin lingered like I’d said the most amusing thing. “Yes, yes. By all means, let’s discuss it.” He scooted forward and put his elbows on the table.

I pressed my lips together, torn between emotions. Was he making fun of me? Or had I just awakened him from a deep slumber? Did he truly care about Ormina?

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Anton said. He folded the map into hard creases.

“What do you mean?” Anger lodged in my breast. I shifted out of the sunlight to see him better. “You promised—”

“The convent has been fortified and food rations sent weeks ago to tide the peasants over until spring.” His voice was low and clipped, his jaw muscle tight. He sat down and scooped together his papers, stuffing them into a portfolio. As he bent down to set it on the floor, he muttered for my ears only, “I told you I would see it done.” His meaning was clear—
Not now, Sonya.

Valko’s gaze flickered between us. “I have no memory of
this. Was it arranged without my consent?”

Anton busied himself with a loose button on his kaftan. “I didn’t see any reason to trouble you.”

“Ormina is not part of your province,” Valko said.

“You sent me to bring back an Auraseer,” Anton snapped, and released a heavy breath. “While I was there, I could not help but see the state of things. As you are tasked with much, I was only trying to alleviate you by helping with a simple matter I could manage myself.”

“
My
Auraseers are not a simple matter.”

“They are not yours.” Anton clenched his teeth. “At least they should not be.” A breadth of three fingers separated our legs. The space bubbled with energy.

At the prince’s heated declaration, the room fell silent. The councilors’ eyes collectively shifted from Anton to Valko. A shadowy swirl of tension mounted inside me. My muscles went stiff with it. My hands trembled beneath my legs. The tension twisted into something deeper, uglier. The sun through the stained-glass window, which had made Anton appear so gilded and beautiful, had an equally mesmerizing, though much darker, effect upon Valko as his face caught in a patch of unsettling crimson.

All the warnings Anton gave me about his brother came back with full force. The prince had drawn out the emperor as a volatile, heartless creature, though I’d yet to sense those things in him. The subtle Valko of the past few weeks had been
tiresome, but at least stable and safe. I could stay alive as sovereign Auraseer with such an emperor. But not with this beast rising within him.

What had Anton unleashed? What had I?

I bit down on my tongue and shrank back. My body shook with the emperor’s fury.

“And why, pray tell,” Valko began calmly, “should they not be my Auraseers?”

Anton’s gaze traveled to my shoulder, not quite arriving at my eyes. “I only meant to say they should be a given a choice to serve you. Most would do it gladly.” He spoke carefully, clearly realizing he was now treading on thin ice.

“A choice?” Valko laughed. “Why would any woman—any
girl
”—he flitted a hand at me—“want for more than the life she is given at my side? Why must a
choice
come into play for such a privilege?”

The prince looked down and folded his hands on the table. Pressure crackled inside me like dry lightning as he fought not to speak.

“Sonya,” Valko addressed me with the same falsely collected tone. His gray eyes shone like a wolf’s. “If you had a choice, would you serve me?”

My heart thumped out of rhythm. How should I answer? His temper, roiling inside me, begged me to lash out at him, to declare I would be far away, to the south with the Romska for the winter, or perhaps with a mother I had scarcely known. A
father. A brother. My muscles tensed with fury over everything I’d been denied.

I drew a sharp breath, ready to attack Valko with my account of how unfairly Auraseers were treated, and then I checked myself. Tola and Dasha’s innocent faces seemed to watch me from afar. I didn’t want to be the weight that broke the branch. In the past and under the influence of others’ auras, I had made rash decisions that caused great harm. I’d vowed to restrain myself for Tola’s and Dasha’s sakes. If Valko’s anger fell on me, would it be enough to sentence me to death? I didn’t want to test him, to find out if he could be that cruel. Unshed tears clouded my vision as I strained to muzzle myself, to not say anything that would condemn me, but the emperor’s aura tangled me with rage.

“Leave her out of this,” Anton said.

Valko’s mouth stretched wide into a satisfied grin. He’d found some kind of proof in Anton then—what, I didn’t understand.

“Perhaps, brother,” Valko said, “you wish they were
your
Auraseers.” Anton shook his head, but Valko pressed on. “Perhaps you think
you
should be emperor.”

I cringed. This was it. The moment Anton had warned me about. The moment Valko would snap. I gripped the seat of my chair and braced myself for the blow.

“Is that what this is?” Valko stood in a rush. His chair skidded back and toppled over. He flung his hand out to point at
the table, as if Anton’s map and documents still lay upon it. “Was this a great show of your competence? Were you seeking to impress my councilors? Show them what you would do if you had my power? I am sorry if you were coddled to believe you were entitled to a different life, but
I am the emperor by birthright!
” Spittle flew from his mouth as he shouted. “The eldest son of Emperor Izia.
I
alone was born to rule!” He jabbed a finger to his chest. “And
I
lived!
”

Nobody in the room dared move or speak. Anton’s nostrils flared. His gaze was fastened to the table.

“Are you scheming to take my place?” Valko prodded him. “Was it you who killed our mother, hoping to kill me?”

That was enough for Anton. He sprang to his feet to meet his brother’s accusation.

“Stop!” I jumped up between them, unable to control my emotions with both of them so enraged. “Prince Anton did not harm the empress.”

Valko’s teeth were bared. He was determined to make Anton confess to a crime he didn’t commit. I feared he would somehow find false evidence and have him executed.

“You must believe me!” I said, and pushed the emperor back when he tried to seize his brother. His anger fluctuated with amazement. He surely wasn’t accustomed to anyone touching him so freely. “I can prove it.”

He huffed. “Impossible.”

“On the journey from Ormina to Torchev, Anton brought with him a blanket belonging to the dowager empress. Mossy
green with embroidered flowers. Do you know the one?”

Valko nodded. “She had it on her when she choked to death from poison.” His gaze hardened and moved past me to Anton, as if this were damnable proof of his involvement.