He wore the barest hint of a smile and shrugged, almost boyishly, as though embarrassed. But that was impossible. I didn't think he was even capable of such a self-effacing emotion.
He led me through the foyer, a stunning room of dark, gleaming wood and marble. Beautiful ancient looking furniture with wildly scrolling feet and inlaid flourishes, under paintings of seascapes and fishes and night skies with colorful auroras.
I turned in a circle as my eyes took in the beautiful house around us. I had never seen anything like it. The palace I was accustomed to was gilded opulence and grandeur, but the manor house was striking in its boldness, warmth, and style.
A sweeping marble staircase with near-ebony wood banisters led to the second floor, where a circular balcony ran around the entire room under a domed roof of colored glass.
A massive cut-crystal chandelier hung from the center of the dome. Its light cast colorful prisms across the white walls.
There were little pieces of art everywhere. A statue of a satyr dancing to the tune of a realistic siren playing the lute. Another that looked like some kind of metallic crystals growing from an obsidian plinth. A glass case of delicate-looking silver moonflower vines coiled into the shape of a snake. A tall, gracefully flowing blown glass vase of the most enchanting shade of blue—
I nearly gasped as I realized what I was looking at. "Withian glass?" I asked, not taking my eyes from the vase. It nearly glowed, as though lit from within by some internal magic. Beneath the glass lay a myriad of whorls and eddies, like smoke in arrested motion just below the surface.
"It is," Io said, stepping from behind me to pick it up.
"Be careful!" I gasped, reaching out as though to catch it in case he dropped it.
He chuckled. "It's only Withian glass." But he gingerly set the slender vase back on the table, scooting it back from the edge after another dark look from me.
"OnlyWithian glass?" I said, aghast. It was rare and priceless, absolutely irreplaceable. My uncle had broken the last collection of it that was known to exist in Windemere while in a rage over the Artaxian's refusal to sell him a horse.
"Fair point, but I only meant it’s not fragile. It takes a lot of force to break," he added.
"I know," I said, thinking of all that delicate powdery glass that had lined the hall after Markus picked up my mother’s vases, one by one, and smashed them onto the tiles of the floor.
I stood there, shaking with rage after the first. I ran through the glass to stop him after the second. And I watched him smash the third while on my hands and knees with blood pouring from my nose.
That had been the moment some creature of rage woke within me. I still remembered sitting in my chair at dinner that night with those colorful little shards of glass embedded in my fingertips. Every time I wanted to cry about my mother's vases, I would push against those shards and punish myself for the weakness.
And I prayed, for in those days, I had not yet come to realize that the gods were dead. But I prayed that night to the Dagda, that I would find a wayto shove those shards of glass into Markus' eyes and blind him. So that I could peel his skin from his body while he lay writhing in the darkness.
I had only been eleven.
"Do you mean to imply that you've broken Withian glass, Sera?" Io asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
I realized I had been pressing my thumb down onto my index finger hard in the place where you could sometimes see a hint of those tiny shards—blue and red—still embedded in my fingertips. "No. But I have seen it shattered."
I realized too late the implications of that statement. When would a common born woman ever have the opportunity to see Withian glass shattered?
"I find it difficult to discern who you actually are, and that is not a situation I generally find myself in."
I smiled wanly. "I do try to maintain an air of mystery about me. I find it keeps people on their toes."
He laughed. "You might be onto something there."
I followed him as he motioned me to a door.
"You are not any more discernible, you know," I said as he led me into an elegant dining room with a long table set with silver cloches and plates. Wine glasses and cutlery were laid out in front of two chairs, one at the head of the table and the closest one to the right.
He pulled out the chair at the head of the table, and I thought he would sit, but then he surprised me by holding it out for me. After I was seated, he took the chair to my right.
"Why are you frowning, Sera? Are you not hungry? I did ask you to have dinner with me."
"No, I mean, yes. I am hungry." I hesitated to explain why I had been frowning, as though the admission would somehow make me look weak. "I've just...well, I've never seen a man who would allow a woman to take the head of the table while he sits on the side."
His face showed something like revulsion in response. "You must be joking?" he said, his dark eyes boring into me intently, as though trying for some of that discernment he mentioned.
"Not at all. Women are...lesser in all ways to the men of Windemere, Athelen, and Castering."
