The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [34]
He had the satisfaction of seeing her flinch. Then she uncoiled from the couch like an asp, and her eyes sparkled bright as Iskari amber. Demon eyes. “I learned from the best, didn’t I? And none of us were ever innocent. Isn’t that what you told yourself—what Mathiros told himself? That I had brought it on myself? Temptress, harlot, witch.”
Rusty orange skirts swirled around her ankles like a forest fire as she advanced on him, gilt thread flashing. Her perfume burned too, cinnamon and orange and bitter almonds, crawling into his nose. But her hand was cold when it closed on his jaw—no hearth was warm enough to chase the death-chill from her flesh.
“I never called you those things,” he said mildly, controlling his pulse when it wanted to leap. She could break his jaw without effort, and her magic was at least a match for his own—more so in his weakened state. If anyone deserved to take his life, it was Phaedra, but he had no intention of giving it to her.
“No.” Her touch melted from steel to silk, fingertips trailing down his neck, nails rasping against his beard. “No, not you. Do I tempt you now, Kirilos?”
“I have no taste for dead kisses.”
She leaned in, breasts cold and yielding against his chest. “I won’t be dead forever. I’ll be warm again. I can make you young and strong again, too.”
It was not the first time she’d offered; the prospect intrigued and repulsed him. He stepped away, carefully plucking her cold brown hand off his shirt collar. “Not if your schemes are blown before Mathiros returns. We must retrieve what was stolen. Before anyone else is hurt.”
Her mouth curled. “Why aren’t you with your apprentice now, if her health concerns you so?”
“She has others to tend to her.”
She circled him, slow and predatory, running her fingers down his spine. “Poor Kiril. I don’t understand this celibacy of yours.”
“I can’t imagine you often worry about sparing others pain.” Or sparing herself pain, for that matter.
A knock at the door downstairs and the accompanying chime of wards spared them both. Kiril recognized the inquisitive touch of magic and released the lock with a thought, sealing it again after the door had shut.
Varis appeared a moment later, framing himself in the doorway for a beat before stepping into the room. He had always been good with entrances, Kiril thought wryly, and even better with exits. Today he wore a coat of claret velvet with silver embroidery thick on the sleeves and dove grey trousers and high boots. Restrained for him, but it was also much earlier than he usually came visiting. When he moved closer, Kiril saw fatigue shadows beneath his maquillage.
Varis cocked one penciled brow, looking pointedly from Kiril to Phaedra and back again. Garnets glittered in his ears, and white lace rose from beneath his high velvet collar to frame the line of his jaw. “This is a fraught little tableau. Am I interrupting something?”
“Nothing,” Kiril said with a sigh, sinking into the chair on top of his crumpled cloak, “except the litany of our sins.”
A flick of Varis’s slender wrist dismissed those. His rings flashed, pigeon’s blood ruby and orange sapphire, lesser emeralds and topazes, but no diamonds; Varis was one of the cleverest mages Kiril knew, but never a vinculator. “I hear sins and litanies every night, darling. Surely you have something more interesting.”
Not for the first time, Kiril wished that it hadn’t been Varis who’d brought Phaedra to him. If she could only have snared someone else in her schemes, someone he wouldn’t miss if forced to kill. But Varis had always been fascinated by her, and just as fascinated by secrets and clever sorcery and flaunting rules. And he had his own reasons to despise the Alexioi.
Kiril recounted again everything Isyllt had told him about the investigation. He didn’t mention Phaedra’s involvement in the prostitute’s death, though he wasn’t sure exactly why—it wasn’t as though Varis had innocence to preserve. He