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My mouth parted, ready to retort.
“I apologize,” he said. “I suppose I’m used to being alone in my perception of humans. I’ve made my own game of it.”
“Do you toy with them?”
“Not as much as I’d like to. But I’ll tell you a secret.” Caedryn leaned toward me. “Humans can’t guess your emotions if you don’t show them. You don’t have to let them in. No one needs to read your innermost feelings. You can keep them private.”
“Is that what you believe? You believe someone couldn’t possibly fathom what goes on in your head if they can’t see the expression on your face?” Kelyn’s words scraped over my conscience. When you’re heated or impassioned or worried, every sign is revealed in your posture, your step, your intonation. You hide behind sharp words. Caedryn was in error.
“You tell me. What do you see now, without discerning?”
I huffed. I shook my head. Flustered—I was flustered. An idiot could know how I was feeling. I’m so dumb. I stiffened. Too many times I reacted with unrestrained emotions. The way I flared at Aneirin. The way I mooned about after my heartbreak. Owein guessed at my feelings. Kelyn saw me. Kenrik bubbled my emotions to the surface. I was behaving human—had been behaving human.
“Niawen?”
I was no different. By rebelling against my father, by fighting with him and the ways of our people, I was acting human. No wonder he’d exiled me.
And Caedryn wanted me to look at just him, not inside him. Could I be as observant as Kelyn? Could I observe like a mortal and lay aside my gifts and read the inflection in Caedryn’s voice, note the nuances in his posture and in his movements?
It’s what he wants me to do.
Because he has secrets. He’s been around mortals for “far too long,” and they’re full of secrets—full of corruption.
I smiled. Caedryn was saying, Don’t read me because I’m hiding something. And by doing so, he was starting a game.
A human game of deception.
His eyebrows quirked. He squeezed the handle of his butter knife. Being expressionless wasn’t possible, not with all his flickers of muscle activity. He’d fail at his own game. What did his subtle movements show me? Anxiety? Irritation? No. Impatience, definitely. His eyes were bright.
Triumph, because I was looking at him and only him. Not in him.
“I can’t read a thing on your face,” I said.
One of his cheeks rounded into a lopsided smile. “Nothing?”
“Nothing. You’re more emrys than you thought.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“There are two sides to the emrys coin. We sense everything, but we reveal nothing in our expressions. My father was good at that. He wore his cold, hard mask well.”
“Ah, but his cold, hard mask did show who he was, didn’t it?”
Curses. I didn’t know whom to be more frustrated at, my father for always displaying his stern unrelenting exterior or Caedryn for antagonizing me with his words. “I’ll concede if you’ll agree it’s impossible to hide emotion. Something is always evident.”
“So you did see something in my face.”
“Perhaps.”
“So which is it, Niawen? Are we looking at each other or in each other?”
“Why don’t you want me to discern you?” What are you hiding?
“We don’t have to know everything about each other all at once.”
I blew a hair out of my eye. “You’re making this request on purpose, to frustrate me.”
He laughed. “Frustrate you? I couldn’t tell.”
