Eona - Alison Goodman [123]
“If I do, it will be a nightmare,” I said sharply.
He laughed, amber eyes at their most wolfish. I turned to meet Yuso’s bristling arrival by my side.
“Lady Eona!” The captain’s voice was icily courteous. “I have given explicit orders regarding Lord Ido. Please do not interfere.”
“Lord Ido is here to train me, captain,” I said, just as icily. “He is of no use to me if he is starving and exhausted. Do not deny him food and rest. Do you understand?”
Yuso glared at me.
“Do you understand, captain?” I snapped.
“As you wish, Lady Eona.” He bent his neck in a stiff bow.
“Is that what obedience looks like, captain?” Ido asked blandly, but his eyes met mine in lightning amusement.
I quickly turned and walked away. It would do me no good if either man saw my smothered smile.
One of the new faces—a young man with the flatter features of the high plains people—bowed as Vida poured me a cup of water under the trees. I sipped the tepid liquid, then poured a little into my cupped palm and patted its wet relief onto the nape of my neck. I was glad to be out of the sun, and just as glad to be away from the keen mind of Ido: he played us all as if we were the Revered Strategy Game.
Nearby, Dela sat on the grass, the red folio open and her brow creased with concentration as she traced the ancient script with her fingertips. She did not even look up when Ryko brought her a cup of water. The big man placed it beside her, then sat a few lengths away, a silent sentinel guarding her back as she worked.
I found myself watching Ido again, as if he were a lodestone drawing my attention. Jun had finally escorted him to the shade of a tree a good distance from the rest of us. The Dragoneye sat hunched at its base, his bound hands held awkwardly before him. He looked in my direction; the angle of his dark head held a strange intimacy.
“My lady,” the young plainsman at my side said. “His Majesty wishes to see you now.”
With a start, I turned to face Kygo’s level gaze, my skin prickling as if I had been caught doing something wrong. He was seated on a fallen log that had been rolled under the shade of a large tree and covered with a blanket: the throne of a usurped emperor. Even at rest, there was a coiled vigilance in the trained grace of his body.
He pulled the long braid of his imperial queue over his shoulder, and smoothed his hand along its length; something he did, I realized, when he was perturbed. I smiled, and was relieved to see the immediate answer in his face. After Ido’s game-playing, the warmth in Kygo’s smile was like a sweet balm. Holding back the absurd desire to run to him, I crossed the grass with as much stately poise as I could muster.
“Your Majesty,” I said, and bowed.
“Lady Eona,” he said, just as formally.
For a moment we both hesitated, still caught in the hours spent apart. Then he took my hands and pressed his lips against my fingers. In that quick, hard gesture I felt the distance between us close. And I felt something new: possession.
“I could not give you a proper welcome before,” he said, glancing across at Ido. “I underestimated my dislike of the man.”
“Did you order Yuso to punish him, Your Majesty?”
He blinked at the sudden question. I had not meant to ask so abruptly, but the needling disquiet had forced its way out.
“You mean the Blessing? No, I did not order it.”
“Then Yuso is acting alone?”
“Yuso knows how important the black folio is to us. But perhaps I did not make it clear that Ido is to be left alone. For now, anyway.” He lifted my hand. “Come, sit by me.”
The honor of the invitation and the soft lilt in his voice overwhelmed my lingering unease. I rose from my knees. As I settled on to the log, the draw of his fingers guided me close to him, until our thighs almost touched. He rested our interlocked hands across the sliver of space between us. A bridge across our bodies.
Dela looked up from her study of the red folio with a frown. For a moment, I thought she disapproved of my position beside the emperor, but then I realized she was staring past us in thought. She must