She wouldn’t, Nina decided. This was another instance of Nina being too trusting, too hopeful. Whatever game Empress Chaska was playing was beyond her experience.
The empress didn’t drink her tea, simply studied Nina and then smiled thinly. It didn’t reach her eyes, but Nina found that it mattered little. The tea had given her a kind of clarity that she hadn’t expected.
“You will learn to function despite external factors,” the empress added. “Master Wara will share our history and guide you through the expectations you will face while here. There is much for you to learn.”
Nina held her eyes but said nothing. She was too busy trying to parse through her words and decipher the underlying meaning.
The empress leaned forward. “Can I tell you a secret?” she asked.
“I imagine you’ll do so regardless of my answer,” Nina said with a shrug.
The empress sat back and smiled, and this time, it looked genuine. “I didn’t come here to be who they wanted me to be. You will find that there is a lot to gain as women in our position. We will not be so foolish as to mistake our true enemy.” Then she rose from her chair and headed toward the door. When she pulled it open, Nina could see the back of a guard standing to the side.
“Kasik,” the empress said. She placed a familiar hand on his shoulder. Nina’s cheeks burned watching the exchange. She caught a glimpse of his face as he turned to her and spoke, the words too quiet for Nina to hear, and then the door was closed, and she was alone again.
This time, the urge to pound and scream at the doors was fleeting, replaced with acceptance and impatience. She wondered if Kasik had been standing outside earlier, listening to her cries yet doing nothing. That seemed to be a theme for him, but she refused to give him, or anyone else, the satisfaction of hearing her beg ever again.
Once she could figure out how to reach her power, it was going to bethembegging for her forgiveness. She just needed time, and as she considered her new home and what was expected of her, she assumed she would have plenty of it.
30
Kasik caught only a glimpse of Nina before the door closed, forcing him to give the empress his full attention. She always looked at him with such disdain, as if the mere sight of him was a damper to an otherwise pleasant day. Like a disappointed mamay, though she couldn’t have been more than a year or two his senior.
“She needs to be escorted to the bathhouse. Do you think you can manage that?”
“Yes, Empress Chaska,” he gritted out. What he wanted to say wasI managed to keep her alive for several days in the depths of the Tuta Kulla, but that would raise too many questions. Instead, he asked, “Do you need an escort to wherever it is you’re going?”
Chaska smiled as if amused, the tips of her pointed head circlet winking in the torchlight. “Emperor Maicu is expecting her at the evening meal. Do not be late.”
She turned away with a flourish, the hem of her gown swishing against the floor as she disappeared around the corner.
Kasik waited until she was completely gone, and then he faced the door and took a fortifying breath.
This was not where he was supposed to be. This was not what he was supposed to be doing. Everything he had been told was a lie—he couldn’t help but wonder if the emperor had lied about Samaq and his men as well. Perhaps to keep him there under his thumb, and Kasik had led him to believe that he was so easily manipulated.
It was becoming more and more evident that he hadalwaysbeenunder the control of someone. Maicu. His tayta. Kasik’s own ridiculous notions of honor and duty. What was loyalty if the men he served were loyal to no one but themselves?
And what did it mean for Nina and the secret of her fate?
Kasik ran a hand down his face. It wasn’t a problem that needed to be solved at that moment. There was plenty of time until Inti Raymi and the sacrifice, and he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to solve problems as large as these. He’d had little sleep last night, and he still had to speak with Master Wara. His teacher would know what to do; he always did.
Steeling himself, he knocked.
There was a moment of silence, and then another. Kasik knocked again, this time louder, though there was nowhere Nina could go where she wouldn’t have heard.
He was just about to throw open the door when it opened on its own.
Nina stood before him, the features of her face shuttered, her thoughts closed to him except for the anger lining her mouth. He had to clear his throat before he spoke. “I have been instructed to escort you to the baths.”
She was silent a moment, and her scrutiny was worse than his own. “Are you sure she didn’t use her power to compel you to escort me to the baths?”
The question was sharp, and ridiculous, because Chaska didn’t have that kind of power.
And neither did Nina, if what she was implying could be believed. Kasik had to admit that it was unlikely. When he had awoken in the tent bound and healed, the achilla had been hanging from his neck as it always was. There would have been plenty of time to remove it and compel him to... what, exactly? Leave her? Love her? Join her?
Whatever there might have been between them was gone, replacedwith apprehension. He couldn’t think too much about all the things he wanted to say for the risk of spilling it all. They needed to come to an understanding first.
Kasik stepped forward, and she stepped backward, a dance of avoidance that made him want to reach out and pull her into him. The emperor’s red matched the warmth blooming in her cheeks as he closed the door behind him and leaned against it. Her hair was a tangled mess, and he was almost certain that was a smudge of dirt on her left cheek. She had faced the empress like that, dirtied and distraught, and he knew she had done it with her head held high, her chin jutted out stubbornly, just as she stood before him when he first laid eyes on her.
