A bleak spell of loneliness wrapped itself around her like a wet cloak.
“Amron, will you not look at me?” she asked softly.
He sat with the perfect, cold composure of a statue, every lock of his hair held in place by a gold coronet, every crease on his clothes perfectly symmetrical. When she’d imagined him before the wedding, this cold perfection was what she’d seen in her mind. Now it looked unnatural, as if someone had taken the real Amron and replaced him with a hostile stranger.
“Leave it, Melia,” he said.
Someone from the lower tables proposed a toast to the bride and groom at that moment, wishing them a fruitful union, and they all obediently raised their glasses and drank.
“Did I insult you somehow?” she asked.
He shook his head, refusing to answer.
“Amron.” She gathered the courage to touch his arm. “What have I done?”
He inspected his hands, refusing to look at her. “Gods know I don’t ask for much.” His voice was so quiet she barely heard it. “I don’t ask for love or respect or even obedience, but I do expect loyalty from my wife. And this is not loyalty. What your father’s been doing is the opposite of it.”
“I cannot control my father.”
“I know that. But you can control yourself. You can decide whether your loyalties lie with him or with me. And you can tell me what he’s planning to do.”
The music fell into dissonance, the lights dimmed, and Melia’s hands turned very, very cold. With the utmost care, she laid her silver spoon beside her untouched bowl of soup.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“This morning, the scene at the palace gate.”
She almost asked what scene—with all the events of the day, the short disturbance had slipped her mind. Then she remembered Amron hadn’t even been there. What was he talking about?
The soup was taken away and the next dish was brought in: a massive fish baked in salt. Melia hated fish.
“That poor mad girl who threatened your father?” Melia tried to recall the girl’s face, bruised and sprayed with blood, surrounded by wild locks, as the guards dragged her away. Was she important for some reason?
“The girl who brandished a Seragian blade,” Amron said, “and accused your father of attacking me and conspiring to destroythe peace treaty.”
A Seragian blade. Melia looked across the vast hall: Ferisa still sat beside her father. Two dark-haired people bowed over their wine glasses, chatting. They almost looked like a couple.
How many Seragian blades had there been in Abia before the carevna’s arrival? And how many of them belonged to Roderi of Elmar?
“Surely, everybody at court knows that my father is a war hero, the protector of the kingdom.” Her voice came out high-pitched like a child’s. She cleared her throat. “The king himself said so this morning. To think he would conspire with the Seragians is sheer madness.”
“Is that what I am, then? Mad?”
Melia swallowed, her fists balled, hidden among the layers of fabric in her lap.
“Why would you believe some barely coherent street urchin?” she asked.
Amron pressed his lips together, and it suddenly dawned on Melia that he knew the girl. The wine she’d drunk rose to her throat in a sour tide, threatening to spill over her dress, the tablecloth, and his fine velvet. She swallowed it down with effort. Was it the same girl who’d faced the attack with him?
Melia breathed through her nose, too afraid to open her mouth. Ferisa was the one who had the weapons, who was supposed to keep them in her father’s house. What were the chances that some little whore had followed Ferisa, survived the encounter, and managed to bring the blade before the king?
“Who is the girl?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter who she is, but what she said.”
“It matters to me.” The cloying smell of food, candles, and flowers made her dizzy; the alcohol sloshing in her empty stomach loosened her tongue. A lonely, unimportant, unloved wife. “Why do you care for this girl, Amron? Is she yourmistress?”
“No.”
