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He carefully lifted it with both hands before asking, “Do you know how to play?”
Arianna let a wide smile spread across her face. “Not in the slightest, but I’m willing to learn.”
A game. Her mate liked a game.
He crossed the room and placed the board on the table, moving his seat across from hers. “It’s a game of strategy with the singular goal of trapping the opponent’s king.”
She shrugged. “How hard can it be?”
***
Hard. So impossibly hard. Rion explained the pieces and their movements and after a few practice games she understood a majority of the rules. But for the life of her, she couldn’t predict anything Rion did. She’d move one piece, thinking herself clever, then he’d claim one of her own. Or outright win because she left her king vulnerable.
“It’s not about taking your opponent’s pieces as much as it is forcing the king to surrender.”
She huffed and propped her head up with one hand. “Don’t you do that by eliminating players?”
“You do that,” he clarified, “by making as few moves as possible to accomplish your goal.”
Arianna furrowed her brow and studied the board again. She didn’t know how long they’d sat there, but her bottom hurt from the wooden chair and her stomach rumbled, reminding her they’d missed lunch.
Arianna looked up through the glass ceiling, trying to read the way the sun sat in the sky before giving up and searching the area in their immediate vicinity.
“Why don’t they have a clock in here?”
Rion tilted his head to one side. “They do, it’s just down the hall.”
The doors downstairs flew open, as they’d done at least a dozen times since the two had seated themselves in the corner, but when Arianna scented Ellie, she was on her feet.
Ellie huffed upon seeing her, threw up her hands, and spoke in an angry whisper. “I’ve had a least a dozen people stop me in the last ten minutes with the demand that I come see you.”
“Where have you been?” Arianna asked.
“I was busy. What do you need?”
It had taken the servants hours to find her. Hours. She knew those in the manor would do anything to please her and if it’d taken them that long to locate her—Arianna shook her head. She didn’t want to imagine what the word “busy” meant to her sister.
Without inquiring further, Arianna said, “We need dancing lessons.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Arianna
“Two weeks is not nearly enough time to get you ready,” Ellie said, exasperated. Dark bags hung beneath her sister’s eyes as they rushed through the dimly lit halls in the early morning light. Niall, or rather, his assistant, had informed Ellie about the ball.
“Did you get any sleep?” Arianna asked her little sister.
“Sleep is for the weak. I have too much to do.”
“Like what?” She still hadn’t asked what had kept her so busy yesterday. Whatever it was seemed to be keeping her up at night, too. Were they working her too hard? Did the council have unrealistic expectations of a sixteen-year-old?
Ellie shooed her away. “Don’t worry about it, there’s enough for you to focus on without adding my problems to the mix.”
“Problems?”
Ellie sighed. “You know what I mean. It’s too early for all your questions. I haven’t even had coffee.”
“You drink coffee?”
