“Preparing myself,” I said as she stepped aside, “to navigate the web of half-truths you are no doubt preparing to offer me.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, the corners of Lyra’s mouth raised just slightly.
“A meal arrived moments ago. How much do you believe I eat?”
The table was set with thick slices of dark rye bread, toasted and slathered with salted butter. Beside them, a platter of roasted vegetables and dried stoneberries along with a carafe of spiced black tea which steamed gently, flanked by a stronger drink: dark, bitter kova poured into small, hammered-metal cups.
“Gyorians eat well, despite what you may think.”
We sat in the same chairs as the night before, pulling food onto our wooden trenchers. It was something oddly… fitting, despite our mutual distaste for one another.
“What do you believe I think?”
“Of my people?”
“Aye.”
“What all Aetherians believe,” I said. “That we are inferior in every way to your clan.”
She finished chewing a stoneberry. “I don’t believe that.”
My laugh was immediate, and laced with bitterness. “Your first lie of the morn.”
Lyra said nothing but watched me, as she often did. “Do you believe all Aetherians so pretentious?”
I pretended to think on it. “Nay. Though I do find them elitist and condescending.”
The look she gave me proved my point.
“All the same.”
“You would know,” I shot back. “You have the books hied away in your libraries and the minds, the greatest thinkers, to understand such nuances of language. I’ve naught but brute strength to recommend me.”
Not true, of course. But that’s what her people believed.
“Terran,” she said, her voice not the only thing that lowered. “You’ve much more than that to recommend you, and know it well.”
Her perusal of me was as blatant, leaving little to the imagination. Her tone, too, had taken on a flirty edge.
“Do you aim to seduce me, Lyra, into forgetting to ask about your midnight stroll? Or the true reason you’re here?”
“This again?” Her question was tinged with impatience.
For a moment, I could almost believe her compliment was true. But this was an Aetherian who sat across the table from me. And not just any Aetherian but one from a noble line known for their cunning.
Her lips squeezed another berry, inviting an unwanted vision of those very same lips wrapped around me. Would a woman such as she even engage in the act? More likely, she would toss her silvery hair back and demand to be serviced instead.
And service her I would.
“Terran,” she warned.
As if I would heed a warning. Instead, I took a bite of fresh-baked bread and sat back in my chair. “If you’d prefer I pretend to be unaffected by you, then so be it.”
I was certain Lyra was unaccustomed to such directness. Her startled look told me as much.
“Kael said I would have difficulty gaining your trust.”
My hand froze. My body stiffened. If she was attempting to put me off balance, Lyra knew precisely how to do it.
