Chapter 1
“What in thefive hells are you doing?”
Reyn stopped at the base of the stairwell. The man in the front parlor, where she was supposed to meet her friend Selona, was angry enough to make her wary.
Selona did not have the same reaction. “And a good day to you, too, Vel.”
In the few days since Reyn had arrived in Lhanaperi, she had learned that Selona was sarcastic as a matter of course and unimpressed by anger. It was interesting to see how different she was to the image Reyn had built up in her mind after years of correspondence. And how similar. Whether writing to women in a distant kingdom or speaking to a man in the same room, Selona was always blunt.
“What are you yelling at me about now?”
Reyn shuffled forward. Neither Selona nor her visitor was yelling, and though the door to the parlor was open, getting closer would ensure Reyn missed nothing. She might have felt guilty eavesdropping, if she didn’t know Selona would tell her all about it afterward, anyway. Besides, she was curious.
“I’m talking about the fact that you have been out shopping every day this week.” Even angry, the man’s voice had that wonderful Lhanaperan drawl, precluding the clipped words Reyn associated with the emotion. “You aren’t a girl in your first season anymore, Selona. You have more important things to do.”
Reyn hurried to the door, glad she had eavesdropped instead of granting Selona privacy. She could admit her own culpability in the week’s shopping and save her friend from taking the blame.
“It’s my fault,” she said, taking a single step into the room. She looked up through her lashes at the man berating Selona. He’d forget about being mad at Selona within moments if he was anything like the other men Reyn had used that look on. “I only just arrived in Tryn, and I needed to update my wardrobe to match Lhanaperan fashions before I make public appearances. Selona has been so kind to show me to all the best shops.”
The man scowled. He actually scowled at her.
With his dark hair and eyes, the forbidding expression was rather attractive, giving him a sinister air that Reyn rather liked. Most men fell over themselves to smile at her. She needed that reaction now, for Selona’s sake.
Reyn summoned her brightest smile, rolled her shoulders back a little more, and giggled.
The look he gave her could have frozen the Mladin Ocean. “Selona has a job to do.”
“Selona,” the woman in question said with a roll of her eyes, “is doing her job. I said I’d have the report to you by the end of the week. It isn’t the end of the week yet, Vel.”
“Don’t be late.”
He tried to stalk out of the room, but Reyn still blocked the doorway. It had to be the novelty of a man so clearly unimpressed by her that had Reyn shifting only slightly to let him pass. She wondered what it would take to charm him. Or maybe she simply wanted to make him press close as he exited the room. He was exceedingly handsome.
He muttered something under his breath and squeezed past by scraping against the doorframe so that his trousers barely brushed against the edges of her skirt. He did not deign to acknowledge her existence.
Reyn watched him go. Shock, annoyance, and bemusement battled for predominance. She knew what she looked like, and she knew how men responded to her, especially when she smiled. Or giggled. A nearly fifty-year-old prince had chased her around for weeks back in Daalj. But Vel, whoever he was, couldn’t get out of her presence fast enough. Of course, the attractive man in his mid-twenties was the one unaffected by her. Reyn had that sort of luck with men.
“Who was that?” she asked Selona once the front door slammed behind the man.
“My annoying, thinks-he-knows-everything cousin. Also known as Velario.” Selona grabbed her reticule. “Come on. Today I want to show you my favorite bookstore. Then we’re meeting Lisca at a charming tea shop.”
Reyn followed Selona back out to the foyer, where they donned their mantelets before setting out into the chilly streets of Tryn. She nodded along as Selona told why she loved this particular bookshop, but her attention remained on the events from the front parlor and Velario. She should have realized who he was when Selona called him Vel. Lord Velario Ferrini, Selona’s cousin and the son of King Stavo. Oh, and the heir to Family Ferrini. She couldn’t forget that. Not in Lhanaperi, where being heir to one of their Forty Families meant more than being the son of their king.
That’s why Lord Velario wasn’t a prince. Lhanaperi didn’t have princes. Five Families elected their new king when the old stepped down. Of course, Family Ferrini was one of the Electors, so Lord Velario could still well be the next king, even if he wasn’t a prince.
Reyn sighed, the cold air clouding up in front of her mouth. Perhaps it was for the best that she had yet to figure out how to control the magic that made her so popular. She might have been tempted to use it on Velario for petty reasons. But really, was it too much to ask that her power attract the tall, not-quite-a-prince only a few years older than her, instead of the overweight prince her father’s age back in Daalj?
“Do you not want to visit the bookstore?” Selona asked, frowning at Reyn. “I know it wasn’t on the list of places you mentioned, but it is truly a wonderful shop.”
Reyn cared little about bookstores, but she did not mind visiting one with Selona. And she was excited to see Lisca Geratisi afterward. Lisca—and Lisca’s incubus husband—was the main reason Reyn had worked so hard to convince her parents to send her to Lhanaperi. She suspected she had succubus blood in her own heritage, though it had to be far less than Khiran, whose mother was a full-blooded succubus. Between his power and Lisca’s empathy, she hoped to confirm why she had the effect she did on people. And figure out how to control it.
“Your Family doesn’t have any empaths, does it?” Reyn asked, so caught up in her worries that she forgot to reassure Selona that she looked forward to seeing the bookstore.
“Empaths?” The other woman cocked her head to the side. “No, that’s Family Geratisi. Why do you ask?”
“I was just thinking about Lisca. I heard she is immune to her husband’s lure, and I wondered if your Family had a similar immunity. I have a theory that most powerful human families have had magical races in their bloodline at some point.” Empathy in the Family Ferrini line could have explained Velario’s contempt. Except Selona had already denied the possibility.
“That makes sense. So long as the ancestor was distant enough that the purists didn’t realize the bloodlines were ‘tainted’ back when they were pushing the magical races out of human settlements, a trace of magic could have given people the advantages needed to become nobility. I think there might have been a fire sprite in Family Ferrini at some long distant point, but no empaths.”
