Penina hadn’t a response to that.Instead she lowered her eyes to her long cloudy sleeves, one hand brushing at a nonexistent wrinkle.“You left the meeting before hearing its conclusion,” she said.Her light blue eyes lifted, felt like hailstones.“Jorah is no longer your hydromancy teacher.From tomorrow, the warden will teach you.”
A pit formed in her stomach.“No, thank you.”
“It isn’t your decision,” Penina said, frostier.“Your father and I aren’t particularly happy with it, either.”
“Then veto it.”
“We can’t.Neither can you.”
Her mother’s attendants shifted, their eagerness to witness an argument palpable.Ione ignored it, disgusted with them, with everyone who saw her as a spoiled child, an ounce of entertainment.
She was their goddess.And someday, she would bring them all to their knees.
“Ione.”The impatience in her mother’s voice made Ione’s blood run cold.“From tomorrow,” Penina repeated, “the warden – ”
Ione threw her fists down.“The warden is aconman.”
“The warden is ourlastgodsdamned – ” Penina cut herself off, her attention flying to Lina, a witness, half-obscured by the hydrangea vines.“You,” Penina said, her control fast returning.Behind her, the gaggle of attendants tittered.“You’re from Caelos, I gather?”
After a dense moment, “Yes, Lady.”
Penina smiled.There was the quiet, self-satisfied scoff Ione knew so well.“That explains that,” her mother mused.“Leave,Caelosi, if you’re finished loitering around here.”
“I’m not through speaking with her,” Ione broke in, “Just as I’m not through speaking with you about the warden.He already offered his so-called services once and I refused.I refuse again.I will refuse a thousand times.”
Her mother emitted a long-suffering sigh.“Curb the melodramatics, Ione.He is teaching you for free, and – ”
“Oh, forfree, is he!And how convenient that no one’s questioned why.He is cut from the same cloth as his power-hungry family and Saros is too stupid to see that.”
Unbelievably, one of Penina’s attendants felt compelled to share her opinion.“Just try it,” she said, her voice cloying, like she was speaking to an infant.“You never liked Jorah.Maybe you’ll have better luck with someone new.”
“I’dlet him teach me,” one of the others said, pretending to fan herself.
“Quiet, both of you,” Penina hissed behind her.“You,” she said to Lina, “Return to the acolytes’ building before I lose my patience.”And to Ione, “Argue this with the Archpriest, but I won’t hear any more of it.Now, come.”She half-turned, daring Ione to disobey.“I’d like a word with your seleneschals about leaving you without an escort.”
Ione clenched her fists so tightly her arms trembled, humiliation and loathing rising hot and acrid in her throat.To her mother, she had always been such a dire, wretched disappointment.
Something flickered in her periphery, the flutter of a flax-yellow dress.Lina edged forward, half a step in front of Ione, and curtseyed.
“I apologise for the late introduction,” she announced, her voice shaking.“But Io – Lady Ione isn’t without an escort.”Another curtsey, deeper.“I’m her attendant.Lina Morrow.”
One of Penina’s attendants stifled a surprised laugh; and then silence, simmering anger from the high priestess.Ione’s heart pounded in her ears as she waited for her mother’s rebuttal.This was far from the first time they had argued, but it was the first time in recent memory that anyone had spoken up for Ione.
There was a delicious, exhilarating pleasure in having someone stand beside her.
“You cannot,” Penina breathed, “take on a lady-in-waiting, Ione – not without discussions, background checks – ”
Lina tensed at that, but forged on bravely, “Lady Ione, that bakery you wanted to visit will close soon.”
“It will,” Ione said, using every ounce of strength in her to look disinterested as she laid her wrist in Lina’s hand.“And just as well – we’re going nowhere fast, aren’t we, Mother?”
Ice crystals flurried around her mother’s closed fists.“Have your pet,” she said, turning; she had agreed to a stalemate.“And may this distraction be fleeting.Once the warden is through with you, you will become everything you’re meant to be.”
“And may the warden be incredibly susceptible to a knife in the throat.Or at least frostbite.”Smiling through her own disbelief, Ione drew the magic away from her mother and moulded it into a whorl of bitter sleet.She shaped it, sharpened it into the point of a blade.“I’m getting very good at ice recently.”
She sensed Penina’s barely-restrained ire as she bade her attendants to follow her.This wouldn’t be the end of her mother’s anger – both of them hated losing, and so Ione expected dinner to be unpleasant later – but at least for now, Ione had gotten what she wanted.
Even if Saros had, too.
