They already believed her a victim.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said flatly, not bothering to snap back. Let them think her meek. Easily offended. That was their mistake to make. She always had been a snake in the grass.
Vaasa fled the room through double doors, stumbling into the stone hallway beyond. She didn’t look back at the dining hall. She slammed into a body, stumbling backward, and forced her eyes up.
Vaasa gasped.
Before her stood a phantom. She stared into the face of a boy who had grown into a man—hair that had once been golden but had darkened into a burnt honey, a sparse beard that had filled to frame a sharper, wiser mouth. And though he had grown taller and certainly more handsome than the young soldier she’d known, his eyes remained exactly the same. Like the sharpest edges of a cliff, a brown so layered with yellow it had seared itself into her mind the first time she’d seen him. She had memorized him. There was a time when she could have drawn his every last feature with her eyes closed.
And now those phantom eyes flashed with fear.
“Heiress,” a voice called, and warning bells chimed in her head.
Vaasa spun back toward the ballroom, contorting her features into the overwhelmed, insulted heiress she had just pretended to be. Her heart was still pounding hard in her chest as she looked upon Lord Karev, his handsome face soft and concerned.
Vaasa looked back over her shoulder to find the hallway empty. No one was there where the phantom had been.
“Heiress?” came Karev’s voice again, closer now.
Vaasa pivoted. She lowered her eyes, playing the embarrassed lamb, and pretended to wipe a tear. The moment of covering herface allowed her to contort her expression back into what she needed it to be.
Lord Karev took a few steps toward her but stopped at a healthy distance. “He never should have spoken to you like that.”
“He is impolite,” Vaasa said, her voice cracking just a touch.
Lord Karev stepped closer. “You have not been ruined,” he said. Something conspiratorial marked the way he smiled, the way he lowered his voice to secrets whispered just between them. “I would argue you know more about our enemy than any of them could dare guess. Given the right partner, you could be a brilliant weapon against Icruria.”
Inauthenticity dripped from each of his words, so carefully positioning himself as the natural choice for that partnership. Yet it was the slightest of openings. Despite the way she could never underestimate Lord Karev, he was a far safer choice than Lord Vlacik. So she lifted her eyes to meet his and curved her lips into a small grin.
He tilted his head, peering around to check that they were still alone. It took every ounce of her control to stay focused on Lord Karev. He said, “Would you like to see the little scheme Lord Vlacik thought up while your brother reigned?”
That was all it took to get her full attention. Vaasa’s breath swelled in her chest as she silently nodded.
“Then I’ll send word in a few days. Join me for an evening out.”
“Where will we be going?”
“And here I thought you liked surprises, Heiress.”
She became the vision of rebellious excitement. Just a vapid little heiress who was in over her head. “A surprise it is, then.”
Lord Karev dipped at the waist, sketching a well-practiced bow, and then started back to the doors of the dining room. As he opened them, he looked over his shoulder at her. “I’ll send word,” he promised.
This was precarious. The closer she allowed Karev to get, the more capable he was of turning on her. She was under no illusions that he intended to be her partner in anything; he was the sort of man who took what he wanted, even if he made the exchange feel like a sound deal.
Yet what better choice did she have? At least for now.
“I’ll be waiting,” Vaasa agreed, and Lord Karev gave her a dazzling smile.
Through the pounding of her heart, the doors clicked shut.
Vaasa turned in a full circle, gazing around the empty hallway of the Sanctum, not a soul in sight. Where had the guard gone? Had she hallucinated a ghost?
The door opened again, and this time, it was Ozik.
“Brilliantly done, Vaasalisa,” he cooed, patting her elbow. “I think that’s enough for tonight, don’t you?”
He led her through the Sanctum, and Vaasa didn’t have the wherewithal to argue. She scanned each hall they went down, every turn they took. Even as they plunged into the night air and loaded into a carriage, she searched.
