The secretary swallowed and patted his lips with a napkin. “Her journey to Rose Castle will no doubt be a spectacle. It will take time to arrange.”
Isa’s lips pressed together, and I wondered what she heard under his words. Then I wondered what I’d do if I didn’t break the curse before the princess made her journey. It was one thing to tell everyone that I wanted privacy and would fulfill my duties without an audience. I couldn’t say the same thing to the princess. She would want to see her contract be passed through the node.
But that was a worry for another day. I had more than enough to occupy myself without borrowing trouble.
???
When Isa setdown her fork, having just finished her last bite of the cherry tart I had summoned for dessert, I turned to Marc. “Could I have a word once you finish? I have a few questions about your trip into Leort.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
Isa looked between us, but accepted the unspoken hint that she was not welcome for this conversation. She pushed away from the table. “I should return to my reading.”
I blinked, momentarily distracted. “You don’t have to work every second of the day, you know. You can relax in the evening.”
She raised a brow. “Tell that to the node.”
Damn. I really had made a mess of that contract. But if her father wouldn’t sign an addendum, I wasn’t sure how to fix anything.
I waited until I sensed Isa in the blue salon before turning back to Marc. “I noticed that the contract I sent with you for Edwin Cardh wasn’t in the satchel you delivered this afternoon. What happened?”
Marc folded his napkin neatly into quarters, placing it on the table next to his plate. His movements were unhurried. They weren’t nervous fidgets, but quiet confidence. I felt the fur along my spine rise and hoped the secretary missed my reaction. If he reached the point of overconfidence, he might make a mistake.
I wished I could have kept Isa in the room for this conversation. Marc was keeping secrets, otherwise he would have mentioned the contract when I asked him how his trip had gone. He couldn’t lie outright, but as Isa had proven, there were plenty of ways to work around that limitation. If she were here, she’d hear what type of evasion he employed. She’d know what follow-up questions to ask.
But while I wanted her power, I didn’t want her to witness this conversation. For all I knew, her father had refused to sign the contract because he didn’t give a damn about his daughter. That wasn’t a truth she needed to hear.
I watched Marc carefully, not wanting to miss even the most minuscule expression. In theory, I could pull on the power of the node to make him speak the truth, but I had only done that once by accident, and wasn’t sure how to use the power on command. Even if I managed, it would only force him to answer. It wouldn’t constrain him any more than the truth-telling enchantment already over the entire hillside. Still, I concentrated until I could see the node power drifting through the room, gathering it to myself. It couldn’t hurt to try.
“He didn’t sign the contract.”
Color flared around Marc, a halo of dusky purple.
I gasped, and Marc’s eyes narrowed. “Your Grace?”
Keeping a hold of the node power I had surrounded myself in, I tried to concentrate on the conversation, instead of the impossibility of what I was seeing. “Why didn’t he sign it?”
Marc shrugged. “He didn’t tell me.”
Once more, purple suffused the air around the secretary, the color darker and muddier this time.
“Why didn’t you mention it this afternoon?”
“There’s nothing you can do about it, so I’m not sure why it matters.”
This time the halo of color was a pale grayish-green. I considered the colors, wondering exactly what they meant. Nothing good, I was certain. Marc was lying to me, despite the truth-telling enchantment. Beyond that, though, I didn’t know how to interpret the colors.
The secretary stood up. I had let myself get distracted for too long. He spoke before I could ask another question. “If you’ll excuse me, Your Grace, I’d prefer to retire early this evening.”
Even this comment didn’t earn Marc an aura of the bright blue I knew signaled a simple truth. Everything with the secretary was a misdirection.
I let him leave and released the node power. Wondering why I could use the node to truth-read could wait. It was more important to figure out what the colors I had seen around Marc meant.
My mind shifted to Isa, sensing her presence in the library spire room. I almost went up, wanting to ask her right then to help me decode the colors. Then I remembered what she had told me as she left the dining room. The contract I had trapped her with already didn’t allow her to rest in the evening. Instead of making the pressure worse, I could spend the evening trying to figure out how to fix that flaw without getting her father’s signature.
Tomorrow was soon enough to tackle Marc’s lies.
Sixteen
