The way Forov clicked his tongue disappointedly sent me staring at Rhys for help, but all he had to offer was a weak smile and a shrug.
Best to get on with it, then.
4
ADERYN
Fancy dinners at the palace were usually fun. Not because I loved fancy dinners or dressing up, though I didn’t mind those things.
No, it was because I got to sit near Roland, and Roland was... he was special.
Yes, he was the king, and he dressed in nice clothes and had lots of power, but it wasn’t that at all. I didn’t care especially that Roland could order people around on a whim, and I rather liked that he didn’t do that most of the time.
I didn’t mind his beautiful clothing, but it wasn’t important.
It was Roland, himself. There was something magnetic about him. His beauty, yes. His coppery hair was stunning and shone in the sun, and his eyes were the bluest blue I’d ever seen in my life. Bluer than the sky or the ocean.
Even the bluebird feathers in my hoard fell short of replicating that perfect shade.
Maybe those new peacocks . . .
Rhys cleared his throat, and for a moment I thought I’d been caught woolgathering and everyone was bothered by me. But no. He was staring at Tris, like he was trying to magically send wordsright into his head, but I didn’t think that was possible. Tris also didn’t seem to think it was possible, because he squinted at his father with confusion.
“So,” Rhys said aloud, “what do your people eat at banquets like this, Lord Forov?”
Lord Forov, I’d been told, was the smallish man with the mustache that reminded me of a rat’s whiskers, and the beady little black eyes. They multiplied the effect of the whiskers and made the man seen very much like a rat in human clothing. I half expected his nose to twitch every time I looked at him.
Maybe that was wrong, though, because the man I’d thought was Lord Forov didn’t even glance at Rhys when he spoke, and neither did Rhys look at him. No, he held Tris’s gaze as he spoke, and then for the long, silent moments afterward. Tris looked pained, as though he were hiding a grievous injury underneath the table, but he didn’t say a word.
Was I mistaken, and Lord Forov was not present?
If it was that, then why was Rhys talking to him?
I looked up and down the table for anyone else who might be a foreign lord, but found no one seated at the table I didn’t recognize, other than the rat man and his pinched looking companion, whose lips seemed permanently pursed. She was wearing all black from her neck to her toes—and her dress did cover her toes. It was so long I’d been worried she would trip on it when they’d arrived—and her hair was covered in a piece of black lace as well.
It felt like perhaps they were going to a state funeral.
Had someone died, and I didn’t know about it? I was terrible at politics, and we’d only just arrived, so it wouldn’t have been the greatest shock if I’d missed something important.
Next to me, though, Roland... oh dear. While Roland was excellent at putting on a happy face and not letting anyone see his emotions when they were incorrect for the court setting,I knew him better than I knew anyone else in the world. Sometimes, I thought, better than he knew himself.
Roland was furious.
He was practically vibrating with it, his lips pulled into a tight smile that didn’t even reach them properly, let alone his eyes.
Roland was good at hiding his feelings, but I didn’t think even people who hardly knew him would be fooled by this expression.
“I believe Rhys asked you a question, Lord Forov,” he said, somehow, despite the fact that his jaw was clenched tight. “You remember Rhys. My trusted advisor?”
The rat man turned and smiled at Roland, and the expression was... wrong. It was like when an elder dragon shifted into a two-legged form for the first time in years, and they struggled to use their muscles to make two-legged expressions. Like the muscles he was supposed to use to smile had atrophied.
“I’m afraid I’m not nearly as practiced as Your Majesty at telling the dragons apart,” he said, and his tone took me back to my childhood in the frozen north. It was just like one of the clansmen trying to ingratiate himself to Vidar, when in truth he could barely stand to look at his face.
I cocked my head, looking at the man, because... well, that just didn’t make sense. In our two-legged form, dragons looked exactly like humans, in every detail. Well, some of us had odd mannerisms, like the whole difficulty smiling thing, but we were entirely human-looking until you made us bleed.
“Allow me to understand,” Roland said, turning blazing eyes on the man. Next to me, his legs tensed, as though he wanted to throw himself across the table at the lord. “You can’t tell people apart?”
On the other side of Tristram, Bet Kyston was turned wholly toward Roland in his seat, watching him with amusement onhis face, as though it were a play and Roland the clever main character.
