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“You’re lowborn, then. The plot thickens,” Camille said. “Cheating isn’t the same as not being monogamous, you know. The highborn cheat on their lovers when they do not disclose one to the others.”
“Workborn cheat in other ways. They lie. They make promises and declarations while their thoughts stray to another. Ones they don’t speak about. None of what they say is real.”
“Geesh, someone did a number on you.” Camille screwed on the lid to her thermos. “Lila, you’re still the same person now that you were before your ex. Don’t think yourself smaller. People don’t shrink.”
Lila cocked her head to the side. “That’s oddly helpful, Camille. Cecily really is lucky to have such a good friend.”
“I try. I love her.”
Lila noticed a speck of bitterness in her tone. “You’ve been friends for a while now?”
“Best friends. I care for her dearly.”
She noted the downgrade. From love to care. “Who do you like here?”
Camille blushed. “You do ask so many personal questions. You and Blair would make great friends.”
Lila sipped her tea. “I guess you can’t tell Cecily about it, since she’s still upset over Achille, but she’ll feel better soon.”
“I just want to see her smile again. You haven’t seen her smile yet. It lights up her whole face. It can brighten a whole room.”
Care. Love. Bitterness. Guilt. Longing. The change of mood made more sense now, as did Kenna’s suspicion. The young woman was hiding something.
Camille was in love with Cecily.
She and Pax had an awful lot in common.
Dixon finally slipped his palm into his pocket, and Lila excused herself, washing up her mug in the back of the room.
She’d update Dixon on the way to dinner.
Chapter 18
Lila paced back and forth in the parlor, the oracle stone filling her peripheral vision with every pass across the rug. Dinner had been delayed, for Mòr and Kenna had only just returned from the temple and wished to change out of their robes. In the meantime, Connell had sent Dixon on an errand. Blair hadn’t just skipped evening training. She’d not yet come out of her room for anything, which usually meant she’d fallen into a mood. Connell believed she might be tempted out with the right sort of encouragement, and a crisis might be averted.
Dixon had happily gone to fetch her.
Connell had retreated into the house to find Mòr.
In their absence, Lila had run her snoop programs over the entire parlor. She’d found a bug behind the shelves, a bug just like the one in her cabin. Unsure how Connell and Mòr would want to handle it, she left it alone, then typed a message to the purplecoat.
One thought kept her from hitting send: the mole could have bugged Connell’s palm.
Lila slipped her palm into her pocket. She tugged a bookmark from one of Mòr’s travel books, then fished in a drawer for a pencil and scribbled a note.
After she’d finished and begun pacing anew, Nico poked his head through the doorway. He’d changed out of his uniform, dressing in navy wool trousers and a forest-green sweater. He held glasses of red wine in each hand. “You’re a pacer,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting in amusement.
“What?”
“I can hear your boots every time they leave the rug and pivot.” He extended a glass toward her. “A toast?”
Lila took the glass, her mouth watering at the scent of blackberries. She wondered if he’d chosen her favorite wine by accident, or if he’d interrogated Dixon at some point, just as he’d interrogated Camille.
A mole could have figured out the information easily enough.
Nico clinked his glass against hers. “To new friends.”
Lila raised her glass but didn’t sip.
