“What changed?” I asked. My voice growled with frustration when the wizard got that sly look of his and raised a chastising finger as he opened his mouth. “And don’t say everything changes all the time.”
Ambrose closed his mouth again and raised his brows. “Well, everything does change. Change is the one dependable element of the world,” he pointed out, almost primly, then hastily added as he caught the look on my face, “but I’ll address the question I believe you meant to ask, which is why now is the time and not yesterday, or even earlier today. That’s a complicated answer, because there are many factors you won’t understand, even if I had time to explain them all.”
“Ambrose.”
“Patience, Conrí. What I’m saying is that Queen Euthalia has received a message from Anure.”
“It took you this long to tell me that?” I snapped, incredulous. My blood surged hot, but not with anger and frustration as usual. Excitement and bold purpose filled me. Enough of delays and arguing in circles. At last I could embark on the final phase of my mission to destroy Anure, everything he’d built, and everything he cared about. If the Imperial Toad was capable of caring about anything at all.
And the empire falls.
“What did the message say?”
“Oh, I don’t know exactly. But the currents of possibility and probability have shifted. It’s fascinating to see.”
I bit back my impatience. “How have they shifted—have you seen how we can counter Anure’s certain attack?”
A chorus of music blasted from the direction of the palace proper, along with cheers and shouts. I knew that fanfare well enough, as it always heralded the approach of the queen. Her people behaved as if her every appearance was a cause for joyous celebration. Ambrose stood, using the staff to pull himself up, a delighted smile on his face. “Aha! Here comes Queen Euthalia. She’ll be able to tell you what the message says. Then you’ll see.”
“Something you could have told me long since.”
“If you’d bothered to attend court, you’d have known already,” he shot back, dropping all hint of playfulness, his words short and full of disapproval.
I didn’t reply, setting my teeth together with a satisfying bite instead. Lia’s court drove me out of my mind with their fancy dress and pretty posturing. I’d gone to court with Lia that first day, thinking that we’d get actual work done. We did have a war to plan, right? But no—she’d expected me to dress up and then sit there while fancily dressed idiots simpered and offered fake compliments, begging for favors in the guise of offering congratulations on our marriage.
When I lost all patience and suggested—politely, I thought—that we call the Defense Council into session, all hell had broken loose. How was I supposed to know Lia’s Sawehl-cursed Defense Council was a secret? With everyone in an uproar, Lia had adjourned court and accused me of sabotaging her authority and precipitating panic. I’d had to point out that the threat of incipient attack by an overwhelming force should upset people. The argument went downhill from there.
We’d more or less gotten back on friendly, if formal, terms since. But I also hadn’t gone back to court. And she still hadn’t convened the Defense Council.
The music and cheering grew closer, so I stayed where I was. No doubt the purple bees had told Lia where to find me—or however her elemental magic worked. I only knew a few things about her for sure. One was that Lia was as much flower as flesh. She kept her head shaved because if she didn’t, her hair grew out like vines. So she told me—I hadn’t seen that part, though I’d seen the plantlike patterns on her skin, surprisingly erotic.
She possessed magic, too, but I didn’t know how much, or what she could do. Lia had a lifelong habit of concealing her nature, so she didn’t discuss the specifics easily, certainly not in public. And when we were alone … well, we didn’t talk much.
She came around the bend of the garden path, preceded by two spritely children tossing flower petals in the air to flutter down and decorate the rocks before her. Smooth, colorful stones already gleamed throughout the rougher white gravel, so the petals seemed especially redundant. But the Calantheans never saw anything they didn’t try to make even prettier.
Lia led a phalanx of attendants, five ladies-in-waiting instead of her former six—she also refused to discuss replacing Tertulyn, who’d suspiciously disappeared on our wedding day and had yet to be found—along with Lord Dearsley and a few others of her various advisers. Two of my own people, Sondra and Kara, accompanied the entourage, gazes alert for trouble. They were dressed for court, too, though more severely than the extravagant Calanthe styles, so they also stood out as invaders among the blossoms.
I hadn’t seen Lia since I’d vacated the bed we shared, leaving her to dress for the day. A weird Calanthean ritual dictated that the “Morning Glory,” a young virgin, should assist the queen from her bed. Apparently Lia’s father, old King Gul, had also divested the glories of their innocence. When Lia had arched a brow and asked if I’d like to take up that tradition, my answer had been an easy and immediate no.
So, since our marriage, Lia had changed the years-old routine by having Lady Ibolya assist in getting me gone before Lady Calla brought the Glory in and pretended to wake the queen all over again.
After that, the Glory helped Lia’s ladies complete the extended ritual of dressing her for the day, something I was fine with escaping. I preferred my wife—uncanny still to even think those words—without the adornments of her rank. I knew most noble ladies used their clothing and makeup as a kind of armor in their battles with the world, but Lia elevated dressing to a full-scale war. A lot of the costume and makeup served to disguise her nature. She had to shave her head, so she wore elegant wigs to hide that fact. The elaborate gowns and thick paste covered everything else.
One useful aspect of her complicated attire: Though she rarely revealed much emotion otherwise, her choice of dress absolutely announced her mood. Today she was lethal.
She wore a stiff-boned corset, which pushed up her breasts to distracting levels and narrowed her waist to a wisp I could span with my hands. The underpart of the gown exactly matched her skin tone, with an overlay of sheer material with angular black lines of gleaming black beads in spiky patterns. The skirt sleeked over her hips then flowed long and full behind her, a ruff of black at the bottom that scattered the petals as she walked. Even though there was a lot of it, the gown overall gave the impression that she was mostly naked, wearing only thin black lines of tiny beads. In fact, the more I squinted at it, the better I could see that some of the skirt was sheer, giving glimpses of her long, slim legs, made even longer-looking by the sparkling high heels on her feet.
She’d forgone her usual high collar, leaving her shoulders bare, the covering of her breasts more thickly beaded than the rest, though they hardly needed to be any more emphasized. Another ruff of lace coyly feathered over her cleavage. Even though I knew she’d have her exposed skin covered with thick makeup, the sight of her exquisite bosom tantalized me with memories of how she tasted. Gleaming black silk sheaths covered her arms from wrists to shoulders, her fingers tipped with sharp-looking nails, white with gleaming black at the ends, as if she’d dipped them in ink.