“Well, Just Remira.” When he smiles, his teeth are perfectly straight. It irks me. “I’d like to get to know you better.”
I’m flooded with heat. Kaidren thinks I’ll lower my guard because he has a handsome face, eerily perfect smile, and eyes that look like laughter.
He expects I’ll be a fool. I expect he’ll be sorely disappointed.
“How perfect.” I keep up my fake smile. “I think I’d like to get to know you too.”
“Youthink?” His words are light and teasing.
“We’ve only just met.” I match his tone. “How should I know if you’re worth it?”
He throws his head back and laughs. “It’s a relief to finally meet someone so . . .friendlyhere.”
No one in their right mind has ever called me friendly. I keep smiling.
“I haven’t quite found my footing. I feel like I’m doing everything wrong.” His head lowers with his voice, as though we’re conspirators in some joint scheme. “What I really want, more than anything, is a friend.”
Another rush of heat with another obvious lie. No one comes to Widow’s Hall looking for friendship.
I keep on smiling.
“Especially a friend who knows how this place operates.” There’s a huskiness coloring his tone. “I fear I blundered today. Apparently, I accidentally breached a rule of decorum.”
Actually, he broke three.
I keep smiling.
“Perhaps we could help each other? I need help navigating these halls and its rules, and you—well, this doesn’t seem like the sort of place that’s kind to the help.”
The help?
My false smile slips. There he goes, dismissing me again. “Is that what I am?”
“Aren’t you?” Kaidren’s eyes drop to my wrist.
Instinctively, I tug down my sleeve, hiding the sun tattoo. The most rancid kind of bitterness settles within me.
Of course.
We’re both Opheran, buthegets to be an Honorate, andImust be the help. If he knew anything about Widow’s Hall, he’d know that Opherans don’t work here. The Honorate often hire them to work in their private homes, but here, in the center ofVirdeian politics, I am one of a kind. I’m not here asthe help. I’m here as the Praeceptor’s sister. Kaidren Vale sees none of that. He just sees the tattoo.
Kaidren’s smile softens. He can sense he’s offended me, but grossly misreads how. He bends, so that I can more clearly read his pity, and more easily picture what it would feel like to throttle him. “Would you like to know something?” he says. “I’m Opheran too. I never got a tattoo, though. Wish I had. Yours is stunning.”
Heat. He’s lying again. Either about wishing he got a tattoo or about liking mine. Probably both.
He means to position himself as my ally. Align himself with me, the poor little Opheran girl, against the rest of Widow’s Hall.
Anger swirls painfully within me, but I don’t have the luxury of unleashing it. I paint my smile back on. It feels sloppy. More obviously fake. Not that he notices. His eyes are fixed on my face, but he’s not seeing me. All he sees is a means to an end. “You’re Opheran?” I will myself to sound shocked, not hollow. “Wow. And now you’re an Honorate.”
“I hope my new position is a win for people like us.”
What a fascinating and meaningless phrase. There is no “us.” We have nothing in common.
Kaidren’s father claimed him willingly. My father reluctantly took me in as an irksome pet. Kaidren gets to sit on the council of the most powerful men in the Republic. I will never have any more power than I do now as Luc’s shadow—barely seen, never heard.
Kaidren doesn’t even have a damned tattoo. He can float through life pretending to be whatever he wants. He can toss around that part of himself when it suits him—like when he’s making the acquaintance of pitiful Opheran girls skulking in the shadows of Widow’s Hall.
“What do you plan to do for”—I have to pause, swallowing my indignation, before choking the words out—“people like us?”
