“Oh?” Jason reached out as if to touch the fabric that lay draped over her lap.
Lea snatched it back, not wanting his sweaty fingers all over it. Nyx reinforced the sentiment with a low growl.
Jason raised his hands in surrender, but gave the fabric and jewelry an approving nod. “He pays attention, I see.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s exactly the perfect color for your complexion,” Jason explained. He was an amateur artist in his spare time and understood things like color. “You favor blues and greens. If it were darker, it would blend in too much with your hair. Any lighter would make you look ill. And the jewelry—he didn’t include earrings, did he? He noticed your ears weren’t pierced.”
Lea lifted a hand to her unpierced ears, strangely warm at the inexplicable idea that Kallias had noticed her ears. And her complexion.
“My physician never sends me gifts,” Ferox said with mock offense.
“That’s because you’re not a beautiful woman he wants to tumble,” Jason said with a knowing smirk.
“Jason!” Lea spluttered in outrage. Heat flooded her face at the thought of Kallias and tumbling and his gifts… “He doesn’t—that’s ridiculous!” But was it? On one hand, she had noticed him eyeing her breasts the first time they’d met, after all. And he kept coming back, every few days…Surely that many visits weren’t necessary for one simple wound.
On the other hand, no doubt there were crowds of beautiful, sophisticated women at the palace who’d trip over themselves to share his bed. He could do far better than someone who barely knew what a palla was.
“The gifts are just for the party,” she insisted. “Nothing more.”
Jason raised his eyebrows, glancing once more at the fabric and jewelry. “That’s an I-want-you-in-my-bed gift if I’ve ever seen one. Trust me, I’m a man. I’m only sending a gift like that to a woman I want to sleep with.”
“No,” she protested. “It’s an I’m-forcing-you-to-attend-a-fancy-party-and-you-have-nothing-to-wear gift.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “Perhaps a woman’s opinion is required to settle this.” He waved at Velia, who was chatting with Achilles a little ways away, and called her over.
Velia headed toward them. “What’s all this?” Interest sparked in her eyes when she beheld the finery in Lea’s lap. “Oh, how beautiful!” She reached out to take hold of the edge of the silk, which Lea permitted as Velia’s hands were clean.
“If a man sent you these gifts, what would you think?” Jason asked.
Velia sifted the string of glass beads through her fingers. “A man?” She shot Lea a sidelong glance. “Well, I’d be preparing to lift my skirts at the earliest opportunity.”
Ferox made an outraged choking noise, which caused Velia to burst into a peal of giggles. She slid into his lap, perching her slight frame on his unwounded leg, as if to reassure him he was the only one she’d lift her skirts for.
Lea glowered at them, then focused on folding up the fabric and stowing it back in the wrapping cloth, along with the necklace and bracelet. Thankfully, Jason lost interest in teasing her and returned to his training, and Velia soon followed, called away by her uncle on an errand.
“You weren’t really upset by the teasing, were you?” Ferox asked in his quiet rumble once they werealone. “Only—I know it might not be easy to discuss such things after…” His voice trailed off.
She knew what he was referring to. Ferox was the only person who knew that she’d been sleeping with their late friend Hector, dead for nearly two years now. She and Hector had been friends first, bed-partners second, and their arrangement had been casual in structure, though that didn’t make his death hurt any less.
“It’s not that,” she murmured. She did miss Hector; like her mother, she expected she’d never stop missing him. But in the eight years since her mother’s death, and the two years since Hector’s, the grief of both losses had turned from a dust that choked her with each breath to something that lay over everything in a fine layer—still there, but easier to ignore, only noticeable if something stirred it up.
Sometimes it amused her to think of Hector and her mother together in the afterlife, though they’d never met while alive. She imagined them sitting together, watching her life play out as if it were a performance at the theater.
She bet they couldn’t wait to see how this dinner party was going to go.
Lea passed a hand over the bundle of gifts. Thinking of Hector made her realize how long it had been since she’d been intimate with someone. She was well-accustomed to satisfying her physical urges on her own, but there were limits to her abilities. What she missed most of all was the feeling of being able to trust another person with her body and her mind.
But she knew how much it hurt to lose someone she cared about, so she’d carefully tucked away the part of herself that wanted those things.
Even so, her stomach gave an irritating lurch at the idea of bedding Kallias. He seemed altogether too perfect from the outside—his appearance so elegantly handsome, his manner so cool and assured, with occasional flashes of arrogance. What would it be like to bed someone like that? Did he have an inner well of fierce, unbridled passion that a coupling would expose?
The idea was all too intriguing.
7
Lea’snailsdugintoher palms as she followed Kallias down the grandest hallway she’d ever seen. Intricate mosaics spread beneath her feet, the gleaming tiles forming perfect geometric patterns. To her right, columns with brightly painted capitals bordered an expansive garden dotted with carefully groomed trees and flower bushes in full bloom. Sunlight sparkled on water bubbling from a fountain at its center, the calming sound at odds with the riot of nerves gripping Lea.
