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“It is the only wise answer. I’m not fool enough to believe your pretty invitations and wait for you to betray me.”
“I’ve been extraordinarily patient with you. I even gave you a second chance. You just ruined it. You are out of chances.”
Cassia broke free of the Dexion and clapped, laughing. “What do you think you can do to me in front of all these people?”
“Frighten you.” Chrysanthos dragged her into the next turn with a shake the dance disguised.
The Dexion was an exquisitely graceful dancer, the way the most skilled of swordsmen was an exquisitely graceful killer.
Cassia willed Lio not to intervene and hoped he would heed her thoughts, rather than act on her pounding heart and the sweat breaking out between her shoulder blades. If she could keep Chrysanthos blustering, he might let something else informative slip in his eagerness to intimidate her.
“You remind me of someone,” she told him.
He leapt back. “I beg your pardon?”
“Someone my mother used to know.”
He swept around her and turned his back. “I assure you, I have no connections with the sort of men your mother knew before the king elevated her.”
“I know all about men like you, who use your bodies as weapons to make yourselves feel powerful.” Cassia faced him. “I am not afraid of you.”
“Then you are even more foolish than I thought.”
“I am clever enough to see through you. You are too angry to be subtle and too driven to be careful. You are blundering through the game on brute strength while still believing you are a strategist, and everyone can tell these tactics do not suit you.”
“You know nothing about me. You are playing at matters that are far above your head.”
“I am in my element.”
“Do you think the fact that you are female will keep you safe from me? Do you think your father will lift a finger to protect you if my Order turns on you?”
“As I said, I am not foolish.”
Comprehension flashed in his eyes. “Who are you working for?”
He had to ask? That meant he didn’t know. He had no inkling.
He was dancing with the so-called Hesperite sorceress and still befuddled over why the king’s bastard was playing at politics.
“I already told you who I serve,” Cassia answered. “Tenebra.”
The Dexion gripped her waist painfully tight. “Who is protecting you?”
“I am.”
Instead of trying to evade him as he expected, she kicked up her heels, leaving him to support her. Thrown off balance, he stumbled backwards, while murmurs erupted everywhere, the Hesperines’ concerned, the Tenebrans’ scandalized. Cassia landed on her feet without missing a step.
“You know…” For the first time, Chrysanthos sounded out of breath. “…at first I believed you were as simple as most women. Cleverer than average, perhaps, but ignorant—a combination that leads a female to ruin.”
“I have heard Master Gorgos’s sermons. Do spare me.”
“I assumed you took this embassy to mean the king actually wanted peace with Orthros. I thought you insensible of the complexity of the situation. I considered the possibility that you were making your own clumsy, but well-meaning attempts to support your father’s efforts and earn his favor.”
“Do you always analyze your own thought processes this thoroughly? I’m sure it’s fascinating to your apprentices, but you are outside the temple in the real world now. I’ll give you a hint. A man who likes to hear himself talk is doomed to embarrass himself.”
“Yes, you know all about the real world, don’t you? You know that the quickest way to earn your father’s favor is to earn mine. So that must not be what you want.”
She need only keep him guessing and keep him talking. “It must be such a struggle for you to understand the desires of others, when you are so self-absorbed.”
