Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [92]
I brought honeycakes, the first time. The second, I usurped her voice.
It was a bargain we had struck, the goddess and I.
And I had come with Ysandre, who had the right to order me because she was my Queen; and I had come, last of all, with Joscelin, as I came now, amid the priestesses of the Elect, with their whispering blue robes and the veils of silver net that hid their faces, glass beadsshimmering like wire-strung tears, bare feet moving soundlessly over the floor.
"I will wait," Joscelin said to me, making a formal Cassiline bow, his hands clenched into fists beneath the steel mesh gauntlets of his vambraces. Amid the murmurous presence of the priestesses, the fierce soft pride of the Temple eunuchs with their ceremonial spears, he seemed an alien thing, hard-edged and masculine.
"I will return," I promised. He thought me a fool; I know he thought me a fool for my compassion. Was I? I didn't know. I followed the Elect priestess down the winding corridors, wondering. What do you owe Melisande, that you must deliver this news yourself? So Ysandre had asked me, and rightfully so. She was my liege and my sovereign, Ysandre de la Courcel; she had believed, when any other would have doubted. She had raised me up and given me every honor, given me the Companion's Star to wear at my breast, called me her near-cousin. When I thought of courage, when I thought of loyalty, it wore Ysandre's face as I had seen it on our return from La Serenissima, when she had parted the troops of Percy de Somerville's army and ridden without faltering to the very walls of the City of Elua.
And when I thought of love, it wore Joscelin's face.
Phèdre!
But there was Melisande's voice in my memory too, unstrung with shock, her beautiful eyes wide with fear after I had cracked open my skull against my cell in La Dolorosa. I had seen it, as I slumped to the floor.
A kiss, one kiss. It took all that I had to resist it.
She had only touched me once, since. And that with the point of a dagger. Joscelin's dagger. I'd have let her kill me, if she could. She couldn't.
It was the same, all the same. The gilt-hinged door, the priestess of the Elect giving the double knock and announcing my name in the soft, slurring Caerdicci dialect they use in that city. It was the same room, filled with slanting sunlight and the soft splashing of an unseen fountain. The sound of the door closing, leaving us alone, was the same. Even the fragrance was the same; a little deeper, in summer, of water and sun-warmed marble and flowering shrubs, and the scent, the faint, musky spice I would have known anywhere, could have picked blindfolded out of a crowd, the unique fragrance of Melisande, who stood waiting.
And the wave, the wave of emotion was the same, hatred and love and desire, cracking my heart to bits and grinding the fragments. Only this time, I saw the fear in her eyes. And this time, I knelt.
TWENTY-EIGHT
"TELL ME."
Melisande's eyes closed, lids dusky with blue veins, shuttered against the pain. I have done such a thing myself. I have seen it in others. I had never seen it in Melisande. I had been right to come alone. Her lashes curled like ebony wave-crests. I am D'Angeline. I cannot fail to notice such things.
"There was," I said, searching for words, "no conspiracy."
Her eyes opened. "What, then?"
I told her.
What I had expected, I cannot say. She bore it; she bore it well. I do not think anyone who knew her less than I—and who that may be, I do not