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“To talk to you, actually,” he says.
That gives me pause. And no small amount of suspicion.
“About what?” I ask.
“About Zaina. I thought you might share some things about her with me, and I got the feeling your... stepmother would prefer not to be confronted by the painful memories.”
I nearly snort. Either Mother played her part very well or Einar is being extremely gracious.
“Why do you want to hear about her?” I raise an eyebrow.
“I did care about her. She was my wife.” There’s an edge to his voice, but what it means, I can’t decipher.
“Consort,” I correct.
He looks to the ceiling as though it holds answers. “Worry not. She already gave me hell for that one.”
There is affection in his tone now, and I am close to believing it, but…
“I’ll tell you something then, if you answer a question of mine first.”
I don’t imagine the rueful grin that passes over his face.
“It’s easy to see you were sisters,” he mutters.
I suck in a breath. No one has ever compared me to Zai in a positive way.
Not just that, but he didn’t say, “she considered you sisters.” He said, “you were sisters.” What exactly did she tell him? What does he know?
And was that a slip, or a deliberately leading comment?
He gestures for me to go on, but I’m still taken aback enough that instead of thinking about what I really want to know, I blurt out the first question that comes to mind.
“Did you bury her?”
“What?” All traces of amusement vanish from his features, and he misses a step in the dance.
“Her body,” I whisper. “Did you bury it?”
“I — no.” He belatedly recovers himself. “The ground in Jokith is too hard, too frozen. We burn our dead.”
I blink furiously, digesting this new information. In Corentin, only criminals and plague carriers are burned. Even the bodies in the slums get the honor of a proper burial.
“So, let me get this straight.” I try to remain calm even though my blood is thundering in my veins. “She was set on fire by a dragon while she was alive, and then you took her body, and you... burned what was left of it?”
Something feels off about this, for someone who claims to have almost loved her, even if it was the custom. Or maybe it’s only that I can’t bear the idea thatthatwas her fate, my beautiful sister, to be burned twice.
I examine Einar closely, homing in on his split second of hesitation.
“There was a pyre at her funeral.”
“That isn’t what I asked.” I’m not sure why this matters to me or why I’m pushing. All I know is that something is not making sense. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you fail to answer questions. Don’t think I will be the only one who notices.”
The warning pops out unbidden, but I am beginning to suspect that he’s covering something up for Zaina’s sake. Maybe I was right, and she went in that cave to die. Maybe he knows that, too, and is preserving her memory by hiding it.
For that matter, maybe there was nothing left of her to bury, and he doesn’t want to admit it.
Either way, if I notice a discrepancy, my mother sure as stars will, too.
