Diana blinked several times, her eyes going hazy and then refocusing on Cyara. As if she had forgotten that she had an audience, when it had taken every bit of the last two hours for Cyara to entice her to the table.
She lifted the towel to her lips, licking them thoroughly before wiping away anything she had missed. Her fingers werefilthy—she had not bothered with a fork or knife. But she sucked each of them clean rather than use the towel.
“You have never been held prisoner,” Diana finally said, smacking her lips.
Cyara shook her head slowly, her braid swishing softly against the simple pale-blue dressing gown she wore.
Across the table, Diana started in on a second round. “Serving yourself. Choosing what to eat because you want it, not because you do not know when food will be offered again… it means something.”
The thought had never even entered Cyara’s mind. Some might have considered her constrained by a life of service, but she was well-born. She had never wanted for necessities, never had simple choices taken away from her. She dressed how she wanted, ate as she wanted, and had her pick of esteemed positions within the goldstone palace.
She was not foolish enough to think herself immune to the influence of those privileges. But her usefulness to Veyka and the Round Table had been predicated on her ability to observe, to see what others missed and string those observations together into coherent supposition.
Yet when she invited Diana to the table, she had thought only of the impact of removing the shackles. Not of the food and act of eating itself.
Cyara’s pride wobbled in time with the twitch of her wings. Maybe she was not as observant as she thought.
Diana’s eyes tracked the movement. They tracked everything, darting rapidly around the room in constant search of threats. When she found none, they came back to Cyara. “You are a harpy.”
“Yes.”
“It’s unusual, yes? To be both a shifter and a fire wielder?”
Somehow, she had ended up answering questions, rather than asking them. But she responded, for the goodwill it might win her. “I am not a true shifter. Not like the terrestrials here. The harpy is something different.”
Diana seemed to accept that, digging back into her food. A thin line of brown gravy trickled down her chin, gleaming against her deep red-brown skin.
Cyara took a slow, silent breath in. Now or never.
She kept her voice carefully even, no aggression or threat to be found in the perfectly enunciated syllables. “The doors are locked. I am armed, and you are not. If you try to escape, the harpy will bring you back. She will not be kind or gentle about it.”
Diana’s chewing slowed.
“You are going to ask me questions,” she said around a mouthful of food. Her eyes had blown wide, the dark brown turning glassy.
Cyara shook her head. “Do not fall apart.”
“I can’t help—”
“Do not fall apart,” she commanded softly.Or a worse fate awaits you.
Diana closed her mouth and chewed slowly, her eyes still round. But no tears fell, and when she swallowed she did not look away from the force of Cyara’s turquoise gaze.
Now or never.
“Percival said you have a gift for prophecies. How were you useful to Gorlois?” Veyka could not say that monster’s name, but Cyara could. Diana flinched, pressing back into her chair. But she did not melt into a pile of tears. Nor did she reach for more food.
She did not fight the answer the way that her brother did. “He used me to make the rifts.”
Cyara did not give her a pause to think or fall apart. “How?”
Diana was slower to answer this time, but Cyara got the sense that she was trying to decide the best way to explain, rather than avoiding the question. The corner of her wide mouth twitched, a sigh so soft that Cyara almost did not mark it.
“What are prophecies if not the mind traveling to another time and space?” Diana finally said.
Only years of training in the elemental court kept the surprise from Cyara’s face. The power of prophecy… some distant vestige of Veyka’s void power? Akin to the similarities between water and ice powers among the elementals, perhaps. But the implications of that… Cyara kept her hands loose as they rested on the table, not allowing them to clench into fists.
“He used ancient spells, stolen from the witches generations ago, before they were terminated. Combined with my witch blood and my power for the sight, he was able to travel through the void. Short distances, fixed points. Not like your Queen.”
