The kitchen looked like an entirely different room now. We had washed the grime off the walls, revealing the pale stone underneath, and exorcised the small piles of sticky debris accumulated in every nook and cranny of the floor. The massive table, smoothed from years of use, was free of food stains and old spills. The morning sun flooded through the open window, giving us a beautiful view of the courtyard and the wine tree.
This morning, I woke up, looked outside my window, and saw Reynald practicing swordsmanship in the yard. He wore a simple loose tunic, pants, and boots, and he spun and moved like a whirlwind, slicing, stabbing, slashing, and thrusting, shifting flawlessly from attack to defense. He held his sword as if he were fused with it. It was just a sword, but in his hand, it became a dozen different weapons. Sometimes it thrust like a rigid spear; at others it seemed to flow, flexible like a whip, slicing though unseen opponents; and then it became an axe, cracking invisible skulls with a single blow.
There was a line inThe Thieves of the NorthI loved. It said, “And the fighters clashed, writing poetry with motion and blade.” That’s what it was. Poetry. The way he moved was oddly beautiful and almost superhuman. Like watching an Olympic gymnast launch into an impossibly high jump, spin through the air, and perfectly stick his landing. It was mesmerizing.
And hot. The books had neglected to mention that part. Ninety-nine percent of the time, Reynald was a study in control—calm, collected, even cold. But you knew there was heat and violence inside, and there it was, burning everything in its path. I’d stood there, just outside of his view, and watched the demon from the basement until he finished.
Now he was sitting across the table, chewing his crêpe, looking perfectly ordinary and relaxed. The scary, menacing Reynald from last night was gone. The graceful, powerful Reynald from this morning was gone, too. You wouldn’t even suspect that he could kill all of us in a blink.
Next to him, Kaiden was on his third helping. We’d fed the younger girls earlier. They were playing in the courtyard now. It would take time to get over Derog’s basement, but right now, their bellies were full, their hair was brushed, and they were having fun chasing each other around the wine tree.
“The food is delicious,” I told Clover. “Thank you.”
She gave me a shy smile. “You’re welcome.”
“Clover, you’re the best.” Kaiden stuffed another chunk of crêpe into his mouth.
That reminded me. “You don’t have to keep using that name,” I said to her gently. “You can go back to what your parents called you, if you would like.”
Clover’s mouth turned into a hard, firm line. I’d guessed right. Clover used to be a maid.
“Clover isn’t your name?” Reynald asked.
“Some noble households in Kair Toren have a custom of renaming their maids,” I told him. “Usually there is a theme. Months of the year, constellations, colors . . .”
“Flowers,” Clover said.
Reynald stopped chewing.
“It’s a way of dehumanizing,” I said. “They erase your past identity by giving you a new name. Whatever you were before doesn’t matter. Now you are Jade, maid of the Hreban Household.”
“It would be Sapphire, not Jade,” Clover corrected. “Lady Hreban names her maids after gems and semiprecious stones, but she doesn’t like the color green.”
“You’re right,” I told her. I had almost forgotten that part.
“Why?” Kaiden asked.
“Green is the primary color of Duke Everard’s crest,” I told him. “When the Sleepless Duke fights on the battlefield, he summons bright green Fatefire that coats his blade. He strides through the battle in his black armor, and his Fatefire burns so hot that it kills everyone around him.”
Reynald rolled his eyes. “It just means he isn’t man enough to trust in his blade.”
Unlike Everard, Reynald had no magic. I sniffed the air. “Is that jealousy I smell?”
He gave me a dark look.
“Why doesn’t she like Everard?” Kaiden asked.
I turned back to Kaiden. “When Lady Hreban was twelve, her father took her to the Duke and Duchess of Selva, the current Sleepless Duke’s parents. He wanted to form an alliance through betrothal. The Duchess talked to the future Lady Hreban for half an hour and announced that she didn’t have the right temperament to be her daughter-in-law.”
“Is she bad tempered?” Kaiden asked.
“She’s mean and arrogant,” I told him. “Her parents are even meaner and more arrogant, so they berated her for weeks over it. She has never gotten over that humiliation. Everard is out of favor because the king is scared of him, but he is still very powerful. She can’t openly hate him, so she chooses to hate the color of his magic instead.”
I went back to eating my food.
“Why is the king scared of Everard?” Kaiden asked.
A loaded question.
