Standing over her husband, Roa pressed the flat of the blade to his throat.
Dax’s eyes flew open.
“You’re dead,” she whispered.
He went rigid, squinting in the dim glow of the lantern, then relaxed at the sight of her. “I didn’t expect Death to be quite so beautiful.”
Roa slid the knife away.
“Out,” she said, drawing back the covers. He wore only cotton sleeping trousers.
Dax sat up, his curly hair mussed. “What is this?”
The night I find out the truth.
But she said, “The first of your nightly lessons.”
“Nightly lessons?” He cocked a quizzical brow. A sleepy smile spread across his lips. “Don’t those happeninthe bed?”
Heat rushed through Roa. Standing over him, she pressed the sharpened tip of her sister’s blade to the hollow of his throat.
“Out.”
Dax was unmoved. “Have you forgotten that I took a knife in the shoulder? For you, I might add.”
Of course Roa hadn’t forgotten. But she needed to know, for certain, whether he was deceiving her. The success of theirplan depended on it. So she shrugged and said, “Once my father traveled to the House of Sky and two bandits attacked him on the road. They broke his arm, and hestillfought them off.”
“And that’s why your father will always be a better man than I,” Dax said, turning over and lying back down. As if he intended to fall asleep with an armed girl standing over him.
Roa tried again. “Last year, when Theo was out hunting, a wild boar gored him in the leg. Do you know what we had for dinner that night?”
Dax went very still, listening.
“Wild boar.”
Dax sat up. The look on his face was stormy as he ducked beneath her blade.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said, standing barefoot before her. His chest was bare and his shoulder still bruised, the stitches in his skin ghastly. The sight of them made her feel horribly guilty, but she needed toknow. As soon as she was certain he wasn’t deceiving her, they would stop.
Roa sheathed Essie’s knife and looked to the wall above Dax’s canopy, where two decorative swords crossed each other in an X. Both were straight as needles, their gilt pommels inlaid with jewels. Because they were decorative, the edges were unsharpened.
She needed him to believe this was nothing more than her teaching him how to spar. And these were as close as she was going to get to practice weapons. Roa climbed up onto the bed and took them down, tossing one to Dax. His fingers fumbled the hilt. The blade hit the floor, clattering as it did.
Immediately, a knock came on the door. “My king? Is everything all right?”
“Thank you, Cyrus, everything is fine!” Dax called to his guard as he turned his back to Roa, picking up the fallen weapon.
“Dead again,” she said, smacking the flat of her own blade against his lower back.
He winced, then turned to face her.
She stared at his grip on the hilt, shaking her head.
Dax barely had time to lift the blade before hers came down, knocking the weapon straight out of his hands. It went clattering back to the floor.
Roa narrowed her eyes. Maybe he wasn’t pretending.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
