“Did you like him?” Thaan asked, ignoring her. I felt her tense beside me. Thaan usually directed questions to Selena. I was the link between them. The weight that kept her close. My opinion was invalid. But Thaan watched me now, patient for an answer.
“Why would it matter?” I finally said. “You plan to kill him.”
Thaan’s lips twitched. “Would you invite him to your bed?”
The tone of my voice dropped. “I believe I don’t have a choice.”
“You don’t.” Thaan snapped his fingers, and Deimos served me a thin notebook. I took it from him slowly, gaze narrowed and determined to avoid his lupine eyes.
It wasn’t that I blamed Deimos for my transition. Thaan owned him just as he owned me. But that didn’t stop the need to flex my shoulders and neck whenever he loomed nearby. The same shudder you loosed when you realized a spider sat over your shoulder or when your mind saw shapes in the dark.
“I’ve identified the intelligence we need in the margins,” Thaan drawled, watching me turn the leather-bound book in my hands. Much the same information Aegir had asked for. “Fill it in tonight. I expect it will take you several hours. Give it to the new secretary assistant. Freisa hired her yesterday.”
The new secretary.Selena’s eyes met mine, and we quickly glanced away. Freisa was the human seneschal in charge of hiring for the palace offices. Easilyincanted—which was how so many Naiads worked within Thaan’s administration.
Vouri had made it in.
Thaan connected his fingertips again. “When will he expect you back?”
“Tomorrow,” Selena supplied. “He thinks we’re sending word toGarieh Kon.”
“Is he…intriguedby your offer?” Thaan asked, glancing back at me.
Their gazes followed, and the room settled into silence.
I lifted my chin, sending ice through the air as I answered him. “Yes.”
12
Selena
Constructed almost entirely of glass, the palace solarium hung over the sea, built out from the cliffs. It boasted thick crystal walls on the eastern, southern, and western sides of the large room, catching the moon’s trajectory in the sky. Vines and stalks hung over the aisles, forcing us to duck and lean.
“I’ve charted the administrative exits,” Vouri said, flipping through the pages of her parchment to show her notes to Cebrinne then me. Some of them were sketched by her hand, but I recognized a few ledgers taken from the offices as well.
“Thaan might not notice these are missing, but Madam Freisa might. I’d suggest returning them tonight,” I said. We’d met long after dusk. High over our heads, the glass ceiling magnified the rays of the moon. The potted plants surrounding us seemed to breathe, green and alive, a thin mist hovering over our knees, the condensation so thick it filmed across the bottom of the walls.
Vouri pursed her mouth. “That’s all right. I was just grabbing what I could, but these aren’t helpful anyway. Are there routes inside the office I’ve missed?”
I studied her hasty sketch, laying a fingertip against the corner. “You’ve left off the balconies.”
Vouri tilted her head. “These towers are massive. You think he might climb down to escape?”
“He can fly.”
The Venusian rocked back over her heels, blinking as she absorbed the words. “The stories are true, then?”
“Not only that,” I sighed. “He could take the shape of one of us.”
Vouri’s lashes shuttered over wide eyes. Cebrinne nodded. “We should invent a code. Something Thaan wouldn’t think of. In case we suspect he’s among us.”
Finger tapping her notes, Vouri frowned. “How do you know I’m not him now?”
Selena smiled. “Thaan is too arrogant to believe some secretary off the street is any threat to him. He wouldn’t investigate you on your first day.”
Leaning away from a vine, Vouri’s mouth curved. “Maybe we should flood the administrative office with more Naiads, then. Plant Venusia here, right under Thaan’s nose.”
“How much blood would Aegir be willing to spare?”
