“Consort of the night?”
His lips curled. “Surely your ruler has consorts.”
“Our king has a queen, if that’s what you mean.”
He gestured for me to sit in the chair he’d pulled out. “I’m referring to the women whodon’twear the crown.”
I ignored his gesture and came to the chair opposite him at the balcony-end of the table, setting my fingers on the back. I liked a little distance between us. My eyes traveled over the expanse of table; there was no food set out.
No doubt Dorian caught my snub, but he sat without comment in the chair he’d pulled out. He noticed my gaze roaming over the place settings. “Someone will be out once you sit.”
I met his gaze, beginning to understand something about this place and these people. I remembered the young woman I had seen on her knees yesterday. “All of you are nobles.”
He flicked out a brown linen piece of cloth over his lap. “Not during a solstice moon.” When I didn’t react, he glanced up at me. “That was a joke. Sit.”
I pulled out the chair, struggling with its size and weight. It dragged loudly over the floor. When I sat down, I felt undersized in it—out of place. All the more when footsteps sounded behind me. That same young woman’s sharp-eyed face appeared, no towel or bucket this time, but two wooden cups on a tray.
She set the cups before each of us. Steam curled from the liquid inside. Her eyes, somehow greener in this light, fixed on Dorian. She waited.
“The usual, with boar,” he said. “The flank, not the shoulder.”
She gave a nod, then turned to me. I waited for some recognition in her eyes, but she gave none. It was as though I was an honored guest.
“I…” What food did they eat here besides boar? Maybe that was all they ate, but I’d never so much as smelled it. Only royalty ate boar. “Bread?”
She blinked, waited.
“I’ll have bread,” I said.
“What kind?” Dorian said, slow and emphatic.
“Wheaten,” I said. “Wheaten bread.”
The young woman’s lip twitched, but she didn’t speak.
“Regular wheaten bread,” Dorian said to her. “A loaf, with blackberry jam and butter. And eggs—two of them, poached.”
She nodded and left us, the drinks’ steam still rising from the table between us. The scent was different—thick and dark, curling through the air like smoke from charred wood and something sweeter beneath.
I peered into the cup, then up at him. “Blackberry jam and butter and eggs?”
“Simple fare, but?—”
“I’ve never had jam,” I said. “Or butter, or eggs.” I’d never even fantasized about them; fantasies like that were pointless when you knew you’d never taste such a thing.
His eyebrows rose. “Not once?”
“Of course not. Do you know the rarity of keeping a single hen in my kingdom? Not in the Dip, of course. The inner districts only. And of course the egg-laying ones are even rarer.”
He took up the cup in his hand, clearly bemused. “And what about coffee?”
I gazed at my own cup. Coffee—it was said in the southern district that the king and queen drank coffee every morning, but that was all rumors. And here it was, steaming on the table before me. All for me.
I wrapped both hands around the cup and brought it close to my face. The scent enveloped me, sweet and nutty and spicy all at once. My eyes closed on their own. It was hard to think of these people as bastards when I was sitting here like royalty. Here, with all these smells, I could feel myself being swept into this strange dream of an existence.
Feelings swirled through me: curiosity, resentment, embarrassment, anger. But all were tamped down by the smell of the coffee. I raised the cup to my lips and tilted it. The liquid was hot and bitter. I choked, the bitterness biting the back of my throat, and set the cup down hard enough to slosh the dark liquid over its rim. I coughed hard and loud and long.
Coffee tasted like shit.
