“Mm. And you know me so well you can make that assessment more easily?”
“I have eyes.”
He glances to the sleeping chambers, then back to me, but I ignore him as I move toward the large doors cut into the far wall, paned with heavy glass to let in the sunlight. I expect them to be heavy, but they shift open at the slightest touch, and a moment later I’m out on a wide veranda, not unlike the overlook at the First House. “Impressive, for delegates’ chambers,” I comment as I step out onto the stone plaza. There’s a low wall and several carved chairs that gleam with fresh wood polish. “I wouldn’t have thought the Eighth House entertained delegates that often. I don’t think Rihad made it a habit to come this far.”
“The edge of civilization,” Tennet agrees, looking up at the great mountain that rises around us. “Undoubtedly, when the Protectorate was first formed, this would have been a place of great celebration and also great vigilance, holding fast against the dire enemy on the other side of the walls. That threat diminished as the years passed, but the house’s reputation likely only grew. We’ve lost a lot of that history, it seems, all of us becoming more separated as the generations have gone on.” He shrugs. “The privilege of peace.”
His words hit me oddly, and a chill slips along my skin, as light as feathers. “You fear that war is coming? Real war?”
“There’s an unrest I feel, but it’s not war, not exactly,” Tennet says, surprising me. “There’s too much we don’t know, too much that Rihad planned. He wasn’t looking for the Protectorate to fight back, if everything that Caleb has been telling me is true. He was expecting his allies from beyond the western borders to sweep through the Protectorate on their way to the Imperium, barely slowing down to dispatch all of us and our Divhs. What he planned for them to do after that, I can’t guess. Did he expect to overthrow the Imperator himself? To set himself up as the new Imperator? What was his end goal?”
They’re good questions and echo the ones that Fortiss has been demanding without success of the councilors. “Rihad operated according to his own counsel, from everything I can tell,” I say, dropping heavily into a chair. It’s shaped oddly, angled into a position that forces me to half recline. Comfortable, but not conducive to serious conversation. Still, once I sink down into its embrace, I know immediately that I don’t plan on moving again anytime soon. I lean back. “He didn’t bring anyone into his confidence.”
“I didn’t know the man, but I have a hard time believing that. He had to trust someone.” Tennet pulls a nearby stool into place and sits beside me, perching easily and seeming far more alert than I am. His gaze searches the face of the building behind us, then shifts out over the broad vista of the open plains, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. “Rihad got as far as he did, did as much as he did, because people allowed him to. Anyone he came in contact with, from all accounts, simply bowed to the man, allowing him to take complete control. Even Fortiss bowed and scraped to him, by his own admission.”
I bristle at the characterization. “Rihad was the lord protector. He demanded and deserved that level of fealty from his people.”
“Fealty yes. But blind trust? That sort of behavior only makes sense in the midst of a crisis. If we were actually at war, we’d want a leader that would instill in us such loyalty that we would follow him to the ends of the Protectorate and beyond. But we’re not. We haven’t had a major crisis of any sort in the Protectorate other than the seasonal devastation of the storms, the following challenge of drought, and, of course, the endless round of marauders. But these are all issues that we deal with and move on from, year in, year out. Yet here we have Rihad taking a leadership role twenty years ago, then quietly and slowly hatching his plans and building…what? By your own account, he didn’t have a private army that was privy to his plans. The councilors, for the most part, seem like worthless old fools, not even skilled in the one job they have, which is maintaining the history of the Protectorate. No. Rihad has no confidantes and even fewer friends—and here he’s planning a bold campaign to harness the evil of the Western Realms, burn through the Protectorate, and attack the Imperium? All by himself? It just doesn’t make sense.”
I scowl. “We don’t know anything about his internal network. He’s been in some sort of trance since the Tournament of Gold. And lest you forget, that tournament was barely a month ago. It’s not like we’ve had a lot of time to unravel twenty years and more of his machinations.”
“Fair,” Tennet says, the capitulation unexpected as he twists to pull another of the heavy chairs near him. Rather than sink into it properly, though, he keeps his seat on the stool and simply leans his back against the chair’s headrest. He then lifts up a booted heel, and balances it on the edge of my chair, awarrior relaxed but still at the ready. All the while, he stares out over the open plains of the Eighth House lands.
“A man has to have friends,” he murmurs. “That type of person thrives on the glory of secret cabals. They mock the average person while celebrating their superiority with fawning sycophants who have their own perceived power.”
“Perceived,” I echo, following his train of thought. “A group of men, and they’d mostly be men with Rihad, if not all of them, who think that they have some measure of control, some place of value in his power structure. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But chances are, they have nowhere near the power they think they have even in the best of circumstances.”
“Exactly. But he miscalculated.” Tennet lifts a hand to rub it against his jaw. “Fortiss was a miscalculation. He didn’t bring him into his confidence, because he felt like he didn’t need to. He felt like he had him so firmly under his control that he could flip him at a moment’s notice. That he simply had to crook his finger and Fortiss would come running. He miscalculated there. Or he didn’t, and the situation merely changed through outside forces that he couldn’t predict.”
He glances over at me. “That would be you, in this scenario. You certainly didn’t figure into Rihad’s plans, for sure. And your arrival had the unanticipated effect of undermining his control not only over Fortiss but, again, if Caleb’s accounting is accurate, over several of the other house warriors as well.”
I grimace. “You and Caleb seem to have had a great deal of time to get acquainted.”
“He likes to talk, and I like to listen, especially when it’s someone whose accounting is both fresh and unvarnished. But you’re the important piece here. You turned into more of an enemy of Rihad than everyone before you, combined. And even when he knew the danger you represented, he didn’t finish you off. He should have. I would have.”
“You’d make the same mistake,” I mumble, my eyelids suddenly heavy. “You dismiss me at every turn.”
“Not every one,” he corrects me, and his voice is suddenly closer, not louder, but?—
I blink my eyes open, to realize Tennet is barely a breath away from my face, his blue eyes startling with their intensity as he leans close. “You play a dangerous game, Lady Talia, more dangerous by far because you don’t realize you’re playing it. I would protect you from all who would seek to destroy you, and I’d protect you from your own misjudgment.”
I smirk at him, most of his words running off me like rainwater off a roof. But I still can’t resist getting in a jab of my own. “But who would protect me from you?”
Somehow from the place where the words formed deep in my mind to how they sound as they slip past my tongue, the tone and intention of my dig changes dramatically. The question comes out too intimate, too intense, and when Tennet’s gaze locks with mine, my heart thuds roughly against my ribcage, so loud he can’t help but hear it.
His lips curl into a teasing smile. “No one,” he says simply, and leans forward, capturing my mouth with his.
The heat of Tennet’s kiss drives straight through me, eliminating every trace of fatigue and languor in an instant. Everything inside me leaps to total attention—fear, excitement, desire, and curiosity fusing together with the abrupt sensation of being plunged into an icy lake on a miserably hot and clammy day. I am suddenly and unutterablyaliveonce more, and my hand comes up without any conscious direction of my own, flailing at Tennet’s tunic.
I don’t know if I’m trying to pull him closer or push him away, but he has no such hesitation. His own hands come up to cradle my face, his large fingers tangling in my still too short hair as he leans down over me, pressing me into the trap ofmy reclining chair. His tongue snakes out and, finding my lips parted, dips into my mouth, hungrily seeking, tasting…as if he’s trying to take anything that I might give, to conquer any part of me I’m willing to cede. I reach up and wrap my fingers around the broad palm of his right hand, peeling it away from my face so I can shift, I can breathe.
The movement seems to recall him to himself, and he leans back from me, but only the barest inch. “You and I were promised to each other, Lady Talia,” he murmurs to me, his words like a blade between us. “And I am a man who believes in keeping his promises.”
I draw in an unsteady breath, feeling the danger here, but for once, not wanting to run away from it. “That promise wasn’t made between us; it was made between our fathers. Maybe yours involved you in the discussion, but mine didn’t.”
“Not all traditions are bad,” he murmurs, and somehow he’s leaning forward again, drawing his lips across mine in a move so much more devastating because it is gentle. He traces a soft and intimate trail across my cheek, up my jaw, resting softly at my ear. “We might have been brought together by decree, but we could stay together by choice and be stronger for it.”
His teeth scrape against globe of my ear, the pressure sending whirls of sensation shooting through my belly, my blood, compromising both my resolve and my wits at once. Then his fingers are twining through my hair again, the soft pressure tugging my lips toward his once more.
