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“Come here,” Kadou murmured into his mouth. “Oh, come here,” and so Evemer wound his arm around Kadou’s waist and pulled himself closer, pulled Kadou closer. He felt Kadou’s fingers curling around the back of his neck, tracing his hairline until he shivered.
“Careful,” Evemer whispered. He pulled Kadou’s hand to him, clutching it to his heart.
“Yes. Yes, careful. Just this.”
It was nothing like the kiss in the wine cellar—so much warmer, so much sweeter and slower. It was all piercingly beautiful, and most beautiful of all was the fact that Kadou was right here, safe and whole and lying all disarrayed in Evemer’s bed, sighing and melting in his arms.
Far, far too soon, Evemer broke the kiss, every nerve in his body singing like the plucked string of a musical instrument. “We should stop,” he said, wanting to do anything but that. He wanted to kiss Kadou for another hour or three. He wanted to . . . touch him properly. To push Kadou’s clothes off his shoulders and taste the silk-smooth skin of his throat and shoulder, to trace slow fingertips down the tender dip of his spine. Unable to force himself to pull away yet, Evemer rested his forehead against Kadou’s and whispered, “I was ordered to lie down and sleep.”
“Who told you that?” Kadou demanded, sounding woozy, almost drunk.Evemerhad done that. Just with kissing, he’d made Kadou sound like that—it felt like mastering a new verse of sword-forms, but a thousand, thousand times better. “Who was the idiot who told you that? I’m going to have words with him. Don’t you have the privilege of disobedience so you can ignore things like that?”
Evemer snorted, kissed him once more, and then forced himself to pull away, rolling onto his back. It was, without a doubt, the single most difficult thing he had ever done in his life. “Good-night, my lord.” A moment later, he felt Kadou’s hand sneak back into his, lacing their fingers together. Evemer didn’t sleep for a long time.
Kadou woke again at dawn, his head aching from insufficient sleep and his nerves already jangling—he shouldn’t have let them talk him into going to bed. He should have insisted, should have dragged Tenzin up to the palace immediately.
He also probably shouldn’t have asked Evemer to share the bed, though a quiet whisper in the back of his mind disagreed.
Kadou had to gingerly climb over him to get out of bed and go downstairs.
The morning light was grey, the air cool and soft. Tadek still sat at the kitchen table, rolling a cup between his hands and gazing dully at the front door. “Melek didn’t come back,” he said, in lieu of any other greeting. “I waited up for çem, but . . .”
Kadou’s jangling nerves sharpened into a thousand tiny shards of glass. He’d abandoned one of his kahyalar to fend for çemself just so that he could get a few hours of sleep. He gritted his teeth and tried to push the thought away—they wouldn’t have any hope of finding Melek without a search party, and they couldn’t make up a search party until they took Tenzin up to the palace . . . His head ached, his nerves already scoured raw. What a lovely day this was going to be. “Anything from Zeliha?”
“About an hour after you went to bed. Instructions were to stay here until dawn. Horses and kahyalar who have been confirmed loyal will be waiting for you at the bottom of the Palace Road,” Tadek said. “She couldn’t send them here without drawing attention, and we still have to hide the princess until it’s over. You’ll have to go on foot. How did you know Evemer was secretly a Highness?”
“Magic. Is there coffee?”
The enormous arch of the Copper Gate loomed above them as they turned the last switchback of the Palace Road—not at all in high style as Tadek had claimed the night before. Kadou was exhausted, unwashed, in days-old clothes, and dying for at least two more cups of coffee.
They rode through the huge expanse of the Copper Court, past crowds of servants, cadets, and kahyalar. The ones who had been sent to guard and escort them were arranged in a ring around them, weapons drawn, looking at their fellows in the crowds with wary, suspicious eyes.
Kadou could never remember the Copper Court being this silent, or the general air so tense and tightly wound. The Silver Court, when they passed into it, was even more so—dead silent, almost deserted. It set Kadou’s teeth on edge. Everything was wrong, and there were no problems that he could touch. All he could do was keep leading Tenzin onward.
Zeliha met them at the Gold Gate, accompanied by a handful of ministers and a double handful of kahyalar. She strode up and flung her arms around Kadou as he slid off his horse.
Surprised, he hugged her back. “I brought you a satyota,” he said, muffled into her hair, and pulled back to introduce them.
Tenzin nodded politely, as if Zeliha were a new acquaintance she’d met on the street. “I hear you’ve got something for me to do. Where would you like me to start, Your Majesty?” Tenzin said.
“Find out how many traitors I have in my kahyalar corps,” Zeliha said. “Sift out the corrupt, anyone who has taken bribes, and anyone who can’t truthfully say they’re loyal to the crown. Minister Selim, I’ll leave this to you. The first priority is Siranos and his sister.” She looked to Kadou. “Do you have anything?”
“I can confirm they were working together with Azuta Melachrinos. I know where we were held captive. I don’t know if Siranos is still there. And—and Lieutenant Melek Murad went missing sometime last night. Can we—if there are enough people—”
“Could Siranos have captured çem too? Did çe track you?”
“Maybe? It’s . . . possible.”
Zeliha nodded firmly. “Is that enough to start with?” she asked Selim, who bowed and assented. She turned back to Tenzin. “Second priority is filling out the staff and guards of the Gold Court so that I can send for my daughter and Commander Eozena. Oh—and as for the issue of payment, rest assured that you will be generously compensated.”
Tenzin smiled. “True,” she said. “And I appreciate you saying so.”
“How long will it take to get one or two dozen together?”
“If each one takes me, oh, five minutes apiece, perhaps an hour and a half. That should be enough for a surface-deep check, though if you want me to really dig into them it’ll take longer—an hour or so each.”
“Quick will be fine for now, especially for the cadets and the fringe-guard. The core-guard and ministers might require a deeper look.”
Tenzin gave her a lazy salute. “Show me who I’m interrogating, then,” she said to Selim, who bowed again to Zeliha and led Tenzin away.
