Clever woman.
“Then I assume everyone else should make peace with their priorities.”
The candle flames were suddenly the loudest thing at the table. Yuki’s eyes settled on me, briefly. I put my water glass down before I could tighten my hand around it.
Mara laughed. Brief. Rough. Genuine. “Well,” she said. “At least State sent one with a spine.”
Cordero’s expression stayed mild. “I believe the last one without one was eaten.”
The press secretary choked on his wine.
My dragon, which had been making an extensive list of things at the table it disliked, paused. Then, against all sense and discipline, it settled. Pleased.
Unacceptable.
I sat through the rest of dinner with my hands relaxed on either side of my plate and my attention divided between three doors, seven potential threats, one impossible woman, and the ancient thing inside my ribs that had started to preen because she had made an elder laugh.
I barely made it through dessert.
When the meal ended, Cordero stood with the rest of the table. I was at her side before the ambassador’s assistant could offer to walk her back.
That was, strictly speaking, unnecessary. I did it anyway.
“Efficient,” she said.
I had reached her chair before Leland managed to finish pushing his own back from the table. His hand was still half-lifted, his mouth arranged around an offer he would no longer be making.
Cordero had noticed.
“Yes,” I said.
She looked at Leland, then at me. “Do you ever get tired of appearing exactly where people are about to step?”
“No.”
She took a breath shorter than the last one. “That sounds exhausting.”
“Not for me.”
We left the dining room. For the first two corridors, she behaved. On the third, she did not.
The guest wing turned right. The left corridor led to the gardens and the lower exterior doors which were locked at night and monitored. A human would not know that from looking.
Cordero looked anyway. She did not turn her head. She did not slow. Her gaze touched the reflection in the glass panel beside a wall sconce and used it to measure the corridor behind us. Then she took the left.
I let her have three steps. “Ms.Cordero.”
She stopped. “Yes?”
“Your quarters are this way.”
She looked down the corridor she had chosen. “Are they?” The question was mild. The interest under it was not.
I let my gaze move to the darkened corridor behind her. Garden access. Lower exterior doors. Two cameras, three locks, pressure grid under the third row of stone. She had chosen well.
“Yes.”
“Big place.”
