Sterling (11 page)

“Repeat the three rules.”

“No snubbing, no speaking, no touching.”

“Good,” he said. “Good.”

Erich walked with me to his tailor’s and ordered three new dresses and a set of fine undergarments, much prettier than any I’d ever had as Sterling Ricknagel. He let me pick my own fabrics and colors, unlike my mother. He also selected a ready-made gown to be sent to the house, “For tonight.” Then he took me to the goldsmith.

“Get anything you want,” he said carelessly. “I’ll let you keep it at the end if you never break the rules.”

I leaned over the goldsmith’s samples and searched them carefully. I’d never been permitted to select my own jewelry before, and I wanted to pick the most expensive item to spite Erich.

The Avani goldsmith’s work was excellent. House Ricknagel had huge resources in gold and silver mines in the north of our province, and Papa and I had often discussed quality in gems and jewelry. Thinking about home made my heart twist. Was Costas Galatien requisitioning all my property at this very moment? Would I have to hide forever?

“These.” I selected a pair of yellow-gold earrings, curved, leaf-shaped baubles of perfect workmanship. I could not have found anything better in Shankar. The classic pieces would hold their value through generations.

The goldsmith laughed. “She’s picked the most expensive item in the shop, my lord. That’s what you get when you leave the choice to a lady.”

Erich didn’t seem to mind. He carried the jewel box in his pocket. “How did you know to pick those?” he asked as we settled in the chariot. “How did you know they were the best he had?”

“I liked them,” I hedged.

Erich drove us home silently. I worried over what thoughts might be tumbling through his head, but his face was as unreadable as marble.

“You’ll stay in Alira’s room now,” Erich said as we stepped up the stairs of the townhouse.

Orgin opened the front door for us without expression. Erich followed me up to Alira’s room. His unrelenting attention distressed me.

I brushed down the walking dress to make sure it hung smoothly as I sat down in the vanity chair.

“You’re so careful,” Erich said. “You pick your jewelry carefully, you treat your clothes carefully, you speak carefully. What else do you do carefully?”

I folded my hands in my lap, but I raised my eyebrows. He was teasing me, but I didn’t get the joke.

Erich said, “I need you to look grand tonight.”

“What will we be doing?”

“Going to the theatre. If Alira and her lover remain in Avani, they’ll likely be there, displaying themselves.”

My face fell. I didn’t want to go back to that place. If Erich noticed, he made no reaction. “She didn’t collect her dresses,” I mused. They’d been sitting in a forlorn pile in the street as we arrived back from our outing. “It seems a shame to let them get ruined.”

“Let them rot out there.”

“Did you love her very much?” I whispered.

“Love her?” Erich scoffed. “Of course not. I paid her well to follow the rules, and she broke them. I do not like her flaunting her affair. People will talk, and they already speak of me in ways I cannot control and do not like. That’s why I need you, so everyone will believe I threw her over.”

“Why?” Did it matter? As a son of the Ten Houses he could do what he liked. No one would chastise him.

“I will not have it said that another woman has left me,” Erich ground out.

“How many have there been?”

“Enough,” he said sullenly. “One left me publicly and made unsavory accusations. The one just before Alira made a huge scene in Talat City. Then there was the widow who said I could only offer pain, no pleasure. And there was one—” He broke off, looking harried.

“Unsavory accusations?”

“It’s none of your affair. You know who I am, don’t you?” Erich’s voice had returned to its clipped tones.

“Of course,” I said. “Lord Erich, the heir to House Talata.”

“And surely you’ve heard of me? About my ... predilections?”

I’d never heard details. Erich had the reputation of a scandalous rake, but no one had seen fit to actually describe my future husband’s antics. I knew only what he’d told me, and that he had a distressing propensity for tying up his women, though I thought that must be to prevent them from touching him, given his rules. “I lived in relative isolation in Shankar,” I explained, forgetting that Sera the chambermaid would not use such words.

Erich didn’t seem to notice. He went to the door. “You should get ready for tonight.”

He had not revealed the exact nature of the unsavoriness that had made all his mistresses go running.

I
did
my best to reproduce Alira’s skilled work on my face and then donned the yellow gown Erich had bought me. I wore my new gold earrings, the white satin gloves, and the new slippers Erich had selected at the tailor. My face itched. A rebellious sliver of my soul did not like my transformation. Sterling Ricknagel, the girl with a marred face, had grown accustomed to her disadvantage. At least with my disfigurement, I knew if people truly liked me, making it easy to distinguish genuine friends from false—not that there were many of either. My mark had shaped me. I felt lost without it.

I awaited Erich downstairs, smoothing my dress, wishing it were not such a loud shade of yellow. But Erich wanted me to be noticed; he wanted everyone to think he had a new lover.

I slipped my hand into the gown’s secret pocket, where I had stashed the Emerald Ophira along with Papa’s signet ring. I kept both objects on my person at all times, in case a good opportunity to flee presented itself. As always, touching the stone gave me calm strength and pushed my anxieties away.

I needed to return to Shankar. Costas Galatien couldn’t hold my father’s actions entirely against me—could he? I winced. Papa had kidnapped him, humiliated him, convinced a lienbound magitrix to betray him, and then had him magicked into a mageglass prison cell. I revised my thought: Costas could hold it against me, and he would. What he would do with me if I were to reveal myself? But what other choice was there? Remain a chambermaid forever?

Erich woke me from my dark thoughts. “Come. The carriage is waiting.” He stood in the doorway, looking elegant in his black evening suit.

Once we were secluded inside the carriage, Erich instructed me, “Keep close to me at the theatre. Unaccompanied women are likely to be accosted.” I nodded. I recalled the scene from the night before. “And try to sit up straight,” he continued. “You have a tendency to slouch.”

He sounded like my mother. I adjusted my posture.

“That’s better.” Erich leaned back in the seat, studying me far too closely. “The color of your hair is so pretty. But next time there’s no need to wear it pulled back so tightly. You’re not a chambermaid anymore.”

I flushed. No one had ever called anything about me
pretty
before.

On the opera house steps, the milling crowd closed around us, and I panicked. It had been a long time since I’d had an attack—but I’d never done well if I felt trapped amongst people. My breath froze. My heart raced. My vision darkened at the edges.

Before I hit the ground, strong arms caught me, sending enlivening sparks through my whole body, as though magelight itself coursed in my veins.

“Damned Amatos,” Erich hissed.

I stared up at his jaw. He swept me up and carried me through the crowd. I was vaguely aware of people hooting and whistling as he mounted the stairs inside the opera house.

“Can you walk now?” He set me on my feet at the top of the stairs, steadying me as I wavered. More hot sparks ran over my skin.

“With—with assistance.” I held fast to his arm, fearing he would let go.

Erich looked pained, but he kept hold of me as we walked slowly down the hall.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Sometimes crowds make me faint.”

To my surprise, he squeezed my wrist. “It’s all right. We’re almost there.” He pushed past the red velvet curtain to the same box where Alira and I had sat before. There he deposited me in a chair, but as soon as he released me, my vision blackened again, and I fell forward. The spark of his touch had given me vital energy.

“Amatos!” He set me upright against the back of the chair, taking my hands in his.

“I’m sorry. I know the rules, but—this doesn’t count against me, does it? I haven’t lost the earrings?” I tried to pull my hands from his grip.

He did not let me go. “You know my secret; I trust you to remember the second rule.”

“No talking, of course,” I murmured. “But what is it? The sparks when you touch me, I mean.” I gazed at his gloved hands, struck by a sudden longing to feel the contact of his bare fingers once more.

“I do not discuss it.” He tried to free himself from my hold, but I clung fast. The sparks grew less sharp the longer we remained in contact, becoming a pleasant warmth that permeated everywhere we touched.

“Does it hurt you?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then why don’t you like it?”

He stared at me in the box’s dim light. “You are unwell.” He tried to break free again.

“But I feel better when you touch me. The faintness, it fades.” My faced flamed, but I didn’t care.

“
What?
”

“Your touch makes me feel better.”

He wrestled free and lifted my chair—with me in it—to set it near the railing so that everyone in the opera house could see me. He pulled his own chair close.

After he sat, he glared at me, arms crossed over his chest.

“If it doesn’t pain you, why don’t you like it?” I persisted.

“My reaction isn’t important,” Erich said. “It’s yours that concerns me.”

“Oh! You worry that your touch pains me? But it doesn’t. It truly doesn’t, Erich. It made my panic go away.” I bit my tongue. I should not have used his name so casually.

A deeply perplexed look crossed his face. “Let’s try something.” He grabbed my hand and lifted it, interlacing his gloved fingers with mine. “Are you telling me that this doesn’t hurt you?”

Glittering fire coursed up my arm. “It’s not pain. It’s like touching a magelight bulb. Don’t you feel it, too?”

“I feel it,” he said grimly. “But most people recoil from my touch quite strongly.”

“Most people?”

“Everyone except—Sera, this changes everything.”

He lifted my hand and brought it to his lips, kissing each of my gloved fingertips as he stared into my eyes searchingly. I blushed. Had I been less flustered, I might have seen the terrible tactical error I’d just made. I tried to snatch my hand back, but his grip tightened. He kissed my hand again and then caught one of my fingers between his teeth.

I yelped.

He brought me towards him, putting his mouth beneath my ear. “Are you going to earn these earrings or are you going to sit there bleating like a scared lamb?”

“What do you want me to do?” My mouth was a finger’s breadth from his ear. Anyone who saw us from afar would think we whispered lovers’ words.

“How sweet you are—Sera.” Erich brushed his lips along my neck, sending a shiver of sharp sensation through me. Touching skin to skin with Erich Talata felt like playing with fire. “I want you to kiss me,” he murmured.

“What about the rules—”

“Fuck the cursed rules.”

My stomach melted and drizzled into my feet. He didn’t wait for my permission—he put his mouth to mine. I remembered kissing him in Engashta—gods, if I hadn’t had so much else on my mind it would have been all I’d thought of since it happened.

My lips tingled as though I’d eaten the hot spices from Lysandra—my favorites—that burned on the tongue.

He pulled away and leaned back, eyes closed. He kept one hand on my nape, his gloved fingers digging into its tension.

The stage performance featured the bawdy dancing that devolved into a free-for-all. Erich sat unperturbed, never letting go of my neck. He watched the show almost as little as Alira had, instead scanning the audience, I assumed for his former mistress and her new paramour.

“He didn’t have a box,” I told him as he stared at our neighbors.

“What are you talking about? Come and sit with me, Sera.”

I’d misjudged the path of his thoughts. “I am sitting with you.”

Erich patted his leg. “Here.”

“What?”
He wanted me to sit in his lap like one of those dancers?

“Don’t make me ask twice,” Erich scolded. “You agreed to this.”

“The third rule—”

“I don’t want to hear about that rule ever again. No rules. We’ve rescinded them. Permanently.”

I smoothed my skirts and gingerly took a seat on his leg.

He snaked his arm around my waist, pulling me against his body. I fell into him. He kissed me again, this time as if he would
eat
my mouth and tongue. Stars exploded everywhere. Whatever oddity was in Erich’s flesh, there was no pain for me. It was more like unbearable pleasure.

His mouth traveled down my neck, and he caught my skin between his teeth. I writhed in his lap as he drew back.

“We have stayed long enough,” he rasped. “Let’s go home.”

I stood as if stung by a bee, flushing from my ears to my toes. This false courtship was a game to him. I couldn’t let myself
feel
anything.

I did not look at Erich as we left the box, instead walking in front of him, the better to ignore him.

He caught up with me at the bottom of the theatre stairs, tucking me under his arm as we walked through the lobby.

For the first time, he helped me into his carriage, but I retreated to the corner. Erich slumped in his seat and laughed. “Never been kissed?” he asked as the carriage pulled from the curb.

He looked so smug; it annoyed me. “I have so been kissed.”

“I don’t think so. You’re too flustered. But I can’t imagine what’s wrong with the boys around here. They must have wanted to kiss you for ages.”

I stared out the window. “Nobody wants to kiss me.”

Erich laughed. “You’re still a child. If you had a woman’s mind, you know that
everyone
wants to kiss you. You could have anyone you wanted.”

I shook my head. Erich rested his hand on my thigh. We both stared at it. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ve never kissed anyone like that, either.”

I snapped my gaze away from him. He lied; he played with me still. He’d kissed Sterling Ricknagel.

“This is a pretense,” I said coldly. “I’m
pretending
to be your mistress. You needn’t try to seduce me when there’s no one to see.”

“It is no longer a pretense. You will be my mistress in truth. This matter of the touching changes the rules. You must see that.”

“I won’t be anyone’s mistress, and certainly not yours.”

Erich’s brows lowered over his beautiful eyes. “You said it didn’t hurt,” he fumed, grabbing my wrist as the carriage stopped. He pulled me onto the curb in front of the townhouse while gauging my reaction to his touch. “Did you lie to me?”

I bunched my hands into fists and shook my head. “No—”

“Listen to me.” Erich hauled me into the house and up the stairs to his bedchamber. Only once he’d closed the door did he continue. “I have power. I have money. I can give you gowns, perfumes, good food, every comfort you could imagine.” He flicked a finger against my gold earrings, and I flinched. He paced around me in a circle. “I can buy you a new bauble every sennight. If you did not lie, if this—” he palmed my cheek “—doesn’t give you pain, you have no good reason to refuse me.”

“I don’t lie,” I clipped.
Except for when my life is in danger.
I refused to meet his piercing gaze. “I don’t want your jhass or gems. I don’t need them.” I thought about the properties and investments I had inherited as Sterling Ricknagel. If I reclaimed my position, I’d be as rich as Erich Talata.
Richer.

Erich moved to the bedchamber window. “I don’t understand you!”

“I don’t understand you, either.”

He laughed—a wry, unhappy sound. “No one understands me.”

The moonlight slanting through the window showed a momentary flash of emotion across his face. He looked so wounded, so upset. I caught my breath; I’d hurt him. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared impassively out the window.

I twisted my hands together in front of me. I knew about his world. The heir to one of the Ten Houses had no easy life. Oh, he had access to any material comfort, of course, but it could be lonely, surrounded by empty glamour and wealth. You never knew who your friends were. The gossip could be killing—I knew that from experience. Sometimes the rumors became the entirety of who you were.
Sterling Ricknagel had an ugly birthmark; she’d never make a good marriage. She was worthless. Erich Talata was a perverted rake, he played sick games with his lovers, he was a useless wastrel—
is that what he believed about himself, too?

I stepped to his side, peering out the window to see what he studied so intently. Nothing stirred on the street. I raised my hand to smooth his tousled hair, to stroke him as I did Papa’s hunting greyhounds in Shankar. He reminded me of them: touchy and beautiful and proud.

He jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”

My hand dropped like a bird shot out of the sky. “I’m sorry.”

“Go away.” His face looked so anguished, but he wouldn’t allow me to comfort him, so I left.