Page 79 of Storm of Shadows
They want me to know that they are in control, and I am not.
At least I’m not locked in the kitchen this time. The feast is severely tempting but I’m too stubborn to eat it. Instead, I decide I’ll go off and do a little snooping. It’s a form of entertainment after all and as they haven’t even left me with a book, a fair one.
I start on the lower floor. I’m already intimately familiar with the kitchen so I head into the other room. It’s a large lounge – large enough for a party and it is set out with armchairs around a roaring fire. The fireplace itself hosts a carved marble mantelpiece and on top of it rests several objects. I pick each one up and hold it in my hands. A carriage clock. A bust. A stuffedraven. Each is heavy and expertly crafted. Objects that must be worth hundreds of coin.
I place them back carefully and turn my attention to the far wall. Several great landscapes hang in heavy frames, old oil paintings that show the four quarters of the realms as well as the academy and the empress’s palace. I interrogate them all, sniffing at the one of Slate Quarter because they’ve made it look a million times nicer than it is. No slag heaps, smog-filled skies, or ravaged forests. The scene is almost idyllic – workers out on the streets on market day, their baskets piled high with food. Yeah, right!
Next, I climb the set of stairs. They aren’t narrow or worn like the staircase in our towers. There’s an actual banister, carved from oak and each step is polished smooth.
On the first floor I find a bathroom, a study and a bedroom.
The study has barely been used. There are no books, no pens, no ink, no paper. I doubt its owner has even set foot inside.
The bathroom is a little more interesting. I sniff the fancy bottles of soaps – the scents masculine and toe curling, a scent that engulfs me as I step inside the bedroom. A giant bed lies in the center, its frame solid and carved from oak like the banister. There’s a wardrobe carved from oak, a chest of drawers, a low chair, two mirrors hanging on the walls and one large full-length mirror standing in the corner.
The man who owns this room obviously loves his reflection. He’s also messy as hell. Clare told me they had staff to clean and tidy after them, but there’s no sign of that here. Clothes lie abandoned across the floor, over the chair and screwed up on the bed, and more clothes are trying to escape the wardrobe and the drawers. The bed is unmade, the silk covers trailing onto the floor – a floor made from polished floorboards and covered in a woven rug.
I can guess who the owner is but I go and peer at the framed photos on top of the chest of drawers anyway. There are several. An older couple, the man big and burly with snow-white hair. A group of boys, grinning at the camera, their arms slung around each other’s shoulders. And the room’s owner – Dray Eros, smiling in that manic manner he does and staring off into the distance, like he couldn’t sit still long enough just to look at the camera.
The final frame doesn’t contain a photo, instead it holds a family crest. Three words printed in the old tongue beneath it. I rack my memory, trying to remember what the words mean.
Pack. Power. Prosperity.
The next floor is laid out in exactly the same fashion: a study, a bathroom and a bedroom. This time the study has been used, although its contents – textbooks, a globe and thick encyclopedia volumes, tell me very little about the occupier. The bathroom has a lot less fancy soaps and the bedroom is almost the exact opposite to the one directly below. In fact, it’s so neat, all the objects laid out alongside one another in regimental rows and lines, that I conclude the room belongs to an obsessive. The bed is made so tightly, there isn’t a crease on the plain cotton sheets and even the pillows have been carefully placed.
Like the study, the objects tell me nothing about the person they belong to, and maybe I wouldn’t know at all if it wasn’t for the three pairs of leather gloves lying out alongside one another on top of the chest of drawers.
I hesitate, straining my ears. The Princes won’t be back for hours. It’s a Saturday night. They’ve gone out partying. Even still, I do not want to be caught snooping.
The tower’s pipes groan and the wind buffets against the walls, but there are no sounds of footsteps or doors opening.
I pick up one of the gloves, intrigued. I’ve never seen Thorne Cadieux without them. He is always wearing them. I’vesuspected he may even wear them to bed, probably in the shower too. They’re made from a thick, durable leather – certainly not cow hide – and they are lined with several different layers of material. I slide my hand inside the glove and it engulfs my hand completely. The man is huge, it stands to reason his hands would be too. The gloves are even heavier to wear and make my arms ache in a couple of seconds.
I slide my hand back out and carefully lay the glove alongside its twin, lining it up like the others.
There are no photos in this room. No family crests. It is soulless. Rather like the man, I think, picturing those bottomless dark eyes of his.
I climb the stairs to the next floor – halting halfway up, my heart hammering in my chest, because, for just one moment, I swear I hear a sound below me. I peer back down the way I’ve come, straining to hear again.
Nothing. I’m imagining things.
This floor, I assume, belongs to Beaufort. However, to my surprise, the staircase does not end here. I peer upwards finding there are still several more floors above me.
Once again there’s a bedroom, a bathroom and a study.
I step inside his bedroom first. The room is tidy but not obsessively so. His uniform is flung over a chair, a book rests open on the bed. I turn it over and read the spine. A novel.
Above the chest of drawers hang two oil paintings similar to the ones from downstairs – another landscape of the palace plus a portrait of the empress. I spend several minutes peering up at her face. She was more beautiful in the flesh, more intimidating and intriguing. She stares back at me and the effect is so damn lifelike it makes me shiver.
Not enough to prevent me from drawing my eyes back down to the chest of drawers. I don’t know what possesses me, but I can’t help but take ahold of the handle and slide the first draweropen. Inside, neatly folded are his clothes, freshly laundered and freshly pressed (probably by that housekeeper). There are a collection of shirts, plus his underthings.
I stare at them, and, before I know what I’m doing, I reach out and touch the soft-looking material with my fingertips.
It has a memory flitting through my mind. My hands braced against his chest, the soft material of his clothing brushing against my skin, his heart pounding under my palms, his scent strong and masculine, his magic sparking in the air.
My skin warms. So does my blood.
I shouldn’t be thinking about him like that. He shouldn’t have that effect on me.
