The King(46)

“I do,” she heard herself say.

And this would not be a duty. No, in this quiet, dim space between them, she wanted him—at her neck, not at her wrist—

Madness, an inner voice warned. That was not appropriate, and not just because it blurred the lines of the work she did here in this house.

Closing her eyes, she hated the fact that, by all that was reasonable, she should turn and walk out of the room right now. This male, this resplendent male who was capable of melting even her stiff limbs, was not her future. Not any more than the Primale was—or any male, for that matter.

Her future had been determined even before she had been swaddled in her first robing as a Chosen.

After a long moment, he shook his head. “No. But thank you.”

The rejection made her nauseous. Mayhap he sensed the inappropriate desires on her part? And yet … she could have sworn he felt similarly. He had stopped her by the stairs that one time, and she had been so sure he had wanted …

Well, at least then she’d been in her right mind enough to try to warn him off.

After they’d parted awkwardly, however, the way he’d looked at her had lingered, and that was when she’d begun to watch him from the shadows.

He was not staring at her like that now, though.

And it had all changed for him with her offer. Why?

“You’d better go.” He nodded to the door. “I just need to eat something and I’ll be fine.”

“Have I offended you?”

“Oh, God, no.” He shut his eyes and shook his head. “I just don’t want to…”

She couldn’t catch the rest of whatever he said, because he rubbed his face and muffled the words.

Abruptly, Selena thought about the books she had read in the Sanctuary’s sacred library. So many details of lives lived down here on Earth. So rich and surprising, the nights and days. So vivid the histories, until it had seemed as though she could reach out and touch this other plane of existence. She’d been hungry for this other side, developing an addiction to its stories in all their glory and their sadness: Unlike many of her sisters, who merely recorded what they were shown in the seeing bowls, she had been voracious in her free time, studying the modern world, the words used, the manner in which people conducted themselves.

She had always had the conception that that was as close as she would ever get to having freedom of choice and any kind of destiny.

And that was still true, even after Phury’s liberation.

“Goddamn, female, don’t look at me like that,” Trez groaned.

“Like what?”

He seemed to roll his hips, and when he mumbled something she also couldn’t catch, she breathed deep—and, dearest Virgin Scribe, the scent that was poured of him was nothing short of ambrosia in the nose.

“Selena, you gotta go, girl. Please.”

He arched back into the pillows, his magnificent chest tightening, the veins in his neck standing out. “Please.”

Obviously he was in pain—and she was somehow the cause.

Selena fumbled with her robing to keep it in place as she got to her feet. With an awkward bow, she dropped her head. “But of course.”

She didn’t remember leaving the room or closing the door, but she must have: She ended up out in the hall, standing halfway between the locked vault that led into the First Family’s private quarters and the stairwell that would take her back down to the second floor …

Next thing she knew, she was up in the Sanctuary.

Bit of a surprise, actually. Usually, when she was done with any duty upon the Earth, she would wend her way north to Rehvenge’s Great Camp. She enjoyed the library there—its fictions and biographies were just as gripping, and somehow less intrusive, than the volumes up above in the Sanctuary.

But something in her had taken her to her former home.

How different it was, she thought as she looked around. No longer a bastion of monochromatics—now only the buildings, constructed of pristine marble, were white. Everything else glowed with colors, from the emerald of the grass to the yellow and pink and purple of the tulips to the rushing pale blue of the baths. But the layout was the same. The Primale’s private temple remained close to both the scribing cloisters and the enormous marble library as well as the locked entrance into the Scribe Virgin’s private quarters. Off farther in the distance, the dormitories where the Chosen had had both their repose and their meals were adjacent to the baths and the reflecting pool. And then opposite all of that was the vast treasury with its objects, oddities, and bins of precious stones.

Oh, the irony, though. Now that there was color to please the eye? Everything was empty of life, the Chosen having flown the coop and spread their wings.