Dryly, he quipped, “Shall I jump on the bed while you wait, to add to the illusion?”
Her attention snapped back his way at once, her gaze sharp, her nostrils flaring. “Do not be crude with me, Aldric Hargrave. I do not appreciate it.”
He supposed he deserved that. It had been a long while since he’d last spent any time at all with a lady. And now he had nearly spent an entire day with one.
A lady he was married to, no less.
Sighing through his nose, he eased himself off the stool and made his way across the room to the desk. Pulling out the chair, he gestured to it. “You might as well sit down.”
She did so slowly, as if she expected him to kick the chair out from under her before her rear could ever hit the seat. When finally she settled, her brow furrowed.
There was no other chair within the room that he could claim. His kirei had surely given him the smallest quarters she could when he arrived in Goldreach, a room just big enough to hold a bed, a desk, and a dresser.
Not that he needed much space.
He contented himself with dragging the stool closer and plopped himself upon it, his arms resting on his legs, his fingers threading together. His left thigh ached something fierce. Maybe he had popped a stitch.
He’d have to get Kyn to look at it later.
Delicately clearing her throat, his pretty wife broke the silence first. “I suppose I should see you moved to a nicer room. It will be expected, now that we are married.”
He grunted. He’d be leaving for Arlund the moment the reinforcements from Coreto and Wellane arrived. What did it matter?
Silence descended between them again. He watched the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of her slippered foot against the floor. Was she counting the seconds?
Out of nowhere, she broke the silence between them again to ask, “Should I call for something to drink?” She sounded stiff, like she was reading from an etiquette primer.
A humorless smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You would be a little too preoccupied to call for something to drink,” he dully reminded her.
“Oh. Right.”
Chewing on the inside of his cheek, he considered asking her about what had happened at the cathedral. There was the business with her burning him. And she had mentioned a voice. But he didn’t know how to bring it up without potentially offending her—something he seemed rather good at doing. He didn’t have a silver tongue like her peacock, Crestley. Blunt was the way he always did things.
Drawing in a deep breath, he settled on being blunt yet again.
“You burned me at the cathedral,” he quietly informed her without preamble. “When we kissed. It felt like the time your Shepherd Truth-Read me in the throne room.”
He carefully studied her reaction, drinking in her confusion. Her indignation. Her denial.
She looked at him as if he had gone mad. “What? You must be mistaken. That is…“ She frowned. “Impossible.”
Sera was a terrible liar. He knew that much about her. This time, she wasn’t lying.
His eyebrows knitted together. Rather than getting answers, he was merely collecting more questions. He might as well gather a few more.
Throwing caution to the wind, he leaned forward and played his hand for his kirei to see. The truth. Letting her know that he knew all about her great secret. “And what about these visions you’ve been having?” he asked, causing his wife to choke on thin air with her next breath. “Now that we’re married, it’s probably time you started telling me about them.”
Chapter sixteen
Aldric
All the color drained from her face in the wake of his words. “How do you know about that?” she whispered, sitting back in her chair, distancing herself from him further.
He shrugged. “I hear things.”
His kirei visibly swallowed. A muscle in her jaw ticked. Still, her foot tapped against the floor, marking out the time. “Well, I would prefer if you forgot that you had heard ‘things.’ I don’t want anyone else to know.”
He frowned at her, fighting hard against the wave of irritation welling up inside him. “Who do you think I’m going to tell, Sera?” He hadn’t talked about it with anyone, not even Calix.
