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“Oh, I thought of all kinds of creative ways to describe the smell,” Epodos said. “Foul saliva anointed her hands! The beast’s fur clung to her velvets like dew upon the grass of the lands of bloodshed, a testament to the prejudices of her ancestors, and left in her wake the fetid musk of barbarity!”
His Grace wiped her eyes, shaking with laughter. Konstantina hid her mouth behind a silk-gloved hand. Was she, too, laughing at the upstart weed wreaking havoc of her carefully cultivated garden?
Cassia kept watching. She had heard it all before. She had been here so many times before, sitting on the edge of the festival, enduring every little nick and cut from those around her. She must remember how not to bleed.
“This is beneath you,” said Baltasar.
Epodos did not know when to stop. “Well, I couldn’t write it to the standards of Blood Kitharos, could I? A Tenebran bumpkin wouldn’t be able to understand it.”
Cassia’s heart pounded in the most alarming way. She must not allow her throat to ache like this.
“You underestimate her,” Konstantina said.
“Ambition ill becomes the naïve and maladroit,” Epodos waxed on. “These presumptuous young things, making a mess of millennia of politics like calves in the glass cabinet. What is Orthros coming to?”
His Grace shook her head. “I can scarcely believe it’s been allowed to get so out of hand. Thank the Goddess for your leadership, Konstantina. I cannot bear to imagine how much worse matters would be if you did not stand between us and disaster.”
“We have a responsibility to lead by example,” the princess replied. “The young people need elders of character to look up to.”
“Perhaps I should write an instructional hymn instead,” Epodos drawled. “Shall I start by teaching her the alphabet? Or the basics of hygiene?”
Cassia got to her feet.
“My lady?” Perita asked.
“Knight is restless again.”
Baltasar rapped Epodos on the shoulder. Kia’s brother glanced right in Cassia’s direction. Before Cassia made it to the arcade, Epodos followed Baltasar’s gaze.
Oh, no, no, no. That godsforsaken poet had seen the first tears escape her.
Cassia fled into the shadows of the arcade and kept going, with Knight fretful at her heels. Would they follow her across the ballroom? Hadn’t they done enough? When she stumbled upon an open archway that led out of the grand hall, she seized upon it, then upon the next escape, then the next.
She found herself in deserted side corridors lit only at distant intervals with mellow spell lights. She leaned against the wall, pressing a hand to her mouth, while Knight nuzzled her. She must be silent, lest every Hesperine in the building hear her.
The fragrance of moonflowers and sandalwood enveloped her. A gentle hand lifted a handkerchief to her face. Lio put his arm around her shoulders and held her close. The next thing she knew, he was leading her through a door into a small chamber with a thick carpet and heavy tapestries on the walls.
“There now, my rose.” He sat down in a chair and pulled her onto his lap. “These practice rooms are bespelled against all sound. No one will cross the veil.”
The most humiliating sobs erupted out of her. They simply wouldn’t stop. She covered her face in his handkerchief and hid her tears upon his shoulder.
“You read Epodos’s lips?” Lio asked.
Cassia nodded.
“That will teach him to insult your aptitude for Divine. Cassia, I am so sorry. Nodora and I were planning the next song, and I didn’t hear his conversation until it was too late.”
“What’s wrong with me? I know better than this. I am immune.”
“None of us are immune.”
“I never—let it—hurt me. I’ve heard such nonsense all my life.”
“From Tenebrans,” he said gently, “from whom life has taught you to expect cruelty. Not from Hesperines, who have, against all odds, taught you to expect kindness. Epodos broke that precious trust. He has shamed our people.”
“Cassia?”
At the sound of Nodora’s soft voice, Cassia only wanted to keep her face hidden. But the kindness in that voice made her look up.
