Page 169 of The Eye of the Fifth
She’d picked up that information from her sessions with Mankar. For an action-focused male, he was surprisingly interested in politics, and often relayed to her that which she might have missed in her avoidance of everyone else.
Naal, specifically.
Up this end of the table, however, the depth of conversation was significantly less. Kyra was in the midst of teasing Ruven, (the male in Naal’s inner circle she’d finally learned the name of) about the integrity of the scripture tattoo that ran down the side of his neck.
‘What do you mean?’ Ruven said sharply. He was quite the serious male.
‘I’m just saying, if the ancient akee language is lost, how do you know it says what you think it does?’ Kyra said. It was an enormous effort to keep her face straight with Mankar grinning into his goblet at her side. ‘It could sayI’m an idiotand you’d never know.’
Ruven’s handsome, tattooed face contorted with a frown. ‘It does not say that.’
‘Do you speak the language, then?’
‘No, but-’
With a shrug, Kyra said simply, ‘Well, then, you’d never know.’ She could have sworn there was tinkling laughter from the faeries above her.
Ruven’s expression turned borderline furious, but his pending argument was interrupted by a latecomer to the dinner-hall.
Gedeon.
Kyra’s breath caught at the sight of him. Since the trial, she’d avoided him even more than Naal. She’d forced herself not to even think of him. But his sallow skin, the strange, exhausted depth to his black eyes…
She couldn’t help but stare. His brow gleamed with sweat, and each step he took seemed arduous, as though he were pained by something she couldn’t see. She’d seen him look worse, when he’d been a prisoner.
Butthiswas worse, somehow. He looked… broken.
Pausing at the threshold, his eyes locked on Naal’s as though asking for approval to dine with them. She gave a curt nod, and slowly, conversation returned to some sense of normality, if not tinged now with an air of caution with the Fire Warden in their midst.
Sunsi’s smile was warm as Gedeon settled beside her. Their arms brushed, and they talked with an ease and synchronicity that had Kyra wondering about the history between them.
As though sensing her gaze, Gedeon’s head lifted, and his eyes found hers.
Silver fire blazed in their shadowed depths. Was that real? Or a trick of the light? His lips quirked upwards as though some secret had just passed between them.
There was a secret, though. She hadn’t told a single soul of their connection. Not Kawai. Not Mankar. Not even Naal.
Hastily averting her attention to the potatoes at hand, she inelegantly shoved more into her mouth just for something to do, pretending to listen to Kawai’s rambling so as not to notice Gedeon again.
???
Gedeon.
The Air Warden approached him sometime during the after-dinner merriment, where many of the Eternals lingered in the hall, finishing their wine, laughing and chattering softly whilst lounging on the armchairs and ottomans by a great, flaming hearth.
It was a great deal more tame than the scenes Gedeon had been privy to in the Black Castle, where after dark, the lord and lady nobles indulged in substances that did much more than the buzz of wine, often enjoyed licked or inhaled from the bodies of others. Sekun had, of course, been the centre of attention on those frivolous (to say theleast) nights. Even with Ysabell, his faithful wife, watching from the sidelines.
Gedeon had joined them occasionally in his younger years, when he had been too impressionable and arrogant to think for himself. Often when under the influence of those powdered roots did he find himself in the arms of females he ordinarily despised, thoughtlessly sharing his body in a hazy chase for pleasure.
He’d already made his way through half the nobles in his mother’s court before deciding that life was not for him.
Naal Westerra filled his goblet with wine before occupying the space next to him. ‘I have been stubborn and entitled enough to believe that I may understand the Empress’ plans by myself. Alas, I admit, I cannot.’
Gedeon took a sip of wine. ‘You are unwilling to trust me, as is your prerogative to do so. Yet you forget I cannot betray you.’
‘Yes, well. Old habits die hard.’ She watched him carefully, as though marking every move, every micro-expression. ‘But your being here lends a certain advantage I could not have foreseen.’
‘What do you need to know?’
