“I’ll be just a moment,” Talia said, then glanced back at me. “Thank you,” she said, then nodded at the guard and pushed open the throne room door. I slipped inside, moving through the dappled light of candelabras and trying very hard not to tip over the wine jar. Even with a thief’s hands, it wasn’t easy.
The throne was empty, so I walked to the workroom’s threshold. He stood behind his table, his gaze on an unrolled parchment. He’d discarded his formal jacket and wore a loose linen shirt over trousers and boots. His hair was furrowed into waves, as if he’d been running his fingers through it.
He looked more pirate than prince, at least as far as the pictures in the storybooks went. And I didn’t like the effect that had on my heartbeat—or the warmth it put in my cheeks. Had his thighs always looked so…formidable?
His gaze shot up. He looked at me, then the tray. “Fox?”
“I had some questions, and I found Talia hurrying around outside. I told her I’d bring in the tray.” I glanced down at the table.
“Right,” he said, and pushed aside papers. I put the tray into the space he’d made, relieved when it was finally out of my hands.
“She said you were working.” I peered over the table at the top paper on one of the stacks. “On irrigation?”
“And crop forecasts and reports from our connections in Vhrania and requests for assistance with flooding and drought. A new bridge to cross the river. Repair work at the pass. And so on.”
My lip curled involuntarily. “Is this what princes do?”
“Other than dallying with servants and ignoring the plight of strongholders?”
“You wouldn’t need to be a different kind of prince if the others weren’t like that.”
“I don’t like that you have a point. The problem, Fox, is that time, workers, and coin are limited. Need is not. Unfortunately, instead of trying to prioritize and allocate funds, the former princes apparently decided to do nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, they spent plenty of coin, just not on the things that needed repair.”
I leaned in. “Do you need me to steal coin for you?”
I was actually half-serious, but he burst into loud and joyous laughter that echoed across the throne room like music. I liked the sound of it a little too much. “Let’s try diplomacy and good planning before we get to thievery.”
“Your loss.”
“You said you had questions?”
“Aetheric curate,” I said, and watched him carefully.
“Aetheric curate,” he repeated. His expression looked completely—and honestly—blank. “What is that?”
“A minister appointed by the Emperor Eternal to monitor Aetheric activity and practitioners. And to oversee the development of an Aetheric weapon.”
Something flashed in his eyes. Not just confusion now, but anger. “Who told you this?”
“The Emperor Eternal’s scribe.” I pulled from my pocket the report I’d carefully extracted from the archive, handed it to him. “Shortly before the god disappeared.”
He took it and read through it. And when he was done, he read it again. “There’s more to this?”
“Maybe in prior reports, but I haven’t found any yet.”
“We’ll leave aside the fact that you aren’t supposed to take pages out of an official archive.”
“I wasn’t going to cram an entire book down my dress,” I murmured.
He looked up at me. “Fox, I didn’t know about any of this. If I had, I’d have told you. I promise you that.”
“How would you not know?”
“I would have been young when this was written. There were no Aetheric practitioners in the palaces where I was raised—where I was secluded. I knew there were people with what they called ‘peasant magic,’ but that wasn’t part of my world. By the time I was old enough to pay attention, the god had disappeared and the practitioners along with him. As to my father”—he looked down at the report again—“he parceled out information and opportunities because he didn’t want any one of us to know too much, to be too skilled. The less we knew, the safer he felt. I had a few well-placed friends in the imperial palace, and I’d get information occasionally. But never any of this. It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
