Back in Kassian’s quarters, Ollan was waiting with Dog at his side. Relief flooded his features at the sight of me.
“There you are,” he exclaimed as Dog loped forward to greet me. “I’ve been looking all over for—”
Kassian entered after me, and Ollan caught sight of him and bowed immediately. “Sir. Welcome home. I did not know you were together—”
“Excuse me,” I said, needing a break from the tension to breathe. “I need to find the toilet to, ah, wash my hands.”
Kassian pointed in the direction of the bathroom, and I fled to the tiled room with Dog at my heels. Once inside, I turned on a spout of running water and crept back to the door to listen to their conversation while my heart rate returned to normal and the flush faded from my cheeks. Through the crack, I could see them, and faintly hear their words even with the water running behind me.
They must think I was busy washing, for they spoke.
“I found her in one of the empty levels with Jeremiah Kur,” Kassian said to Ollan. His voice was clipped. He glanced toward the bathroom door, and I thought I was discovered, but then he looked away as if satisfied that I wasn’t eavesdropping.
“Well,” Ollan said, with the tone of one making a counterpoint. “She is bound to run into all kinds of people while exploring the house. It doesn’t mean—”
He broke off with a shrug.
Kassian’s eyes narrowed, and a look passed between them that I couldn’t decipher.
I didn’t understand. Who was Jeremiah Kur, that they had such a reaction to my speaking to him?
“We have more immediate concerns,” Kassian said then. “Her seed. She’s lost the one she had before. Did you know about this?”
Why did he say it as if he thought I’d done it on purpose?
“No, sir,” Ollan said. “It must still be in the room.”
I thought of when Kassian had touched my neck in the hall. He must have been able to sense its absence. All the Sworn could. Jeremiah was human and wouldn’t have noticed.
Did they think I’d wrenched the thing off myself to keep them from tracking me?
Ollan reached into his pocket and produced a packet.
“I have obtained a few extra seeds,” he said. “We won’t be without even if she does lose it again.”
“She will,” Kassian said.
I seethed at his presumption.
Dog whimpered, and I stroked the top of her head to calm her.
“It will be expected that she has the seed injected,” Kassian was saying to Ollan. “How are we planning to work around that?”
Ollan produced another object from his pockets. A ball of what looked like clay.
“Putty,” he said proudly. “It will match her skin, and hold the seed in place, and when covered by her veils or a high-necked dress. No one will know.”
“It’s perfect,” Kassian said. “Good work.”
I chose this moment to turn off the water and exit the bathroom.
They weren’t whispering about things I wanted to know anymore, at least not things they wouldn’t tell me if I asked.
Kassian and Ollan turned toward me together.
I looked at the packet in Ollan’s hand.
“Oh, seeds,” I said, keeping my tone light. “Mine fell off last night in my sleep. I’m so relieved you have more. I haven’t been able to find the other one. I meant to tell you, Ollan, but I forgot.”
Kassian’s eyelashes flicked. Did he believe me? He reached out a hand for the packet, and Ollan handed it to him.
“We should put one on now,” he said.
“Yes,” I agreed readily.
I turned and lifted the hair on the nape of my neck, exposing the skin underneath. I felt oddly vulnerable.
Kassian took one of the seeds and the lump of putty. He pressed the seed inside a small piece of the putty and pressed it against my neck. Shivers once again cascaded down my spine as his fingers brushed my neck. I pushed his hand away and fixed the putty in place.
“There,” Kassian said. “It won’t be noticeable under the veils. Just be sure to take it off before you go to sleep.”
His eyes slid to mine, and he held my gaze as if he were daring me to spin a falsehood for him.
Why did he think I was lying? Did he still think I was a spy for the Order of the Crimson?
A pang of concern touched me, a whisper of foreboding. The Order of the Crimson wanted me to be the very thing he believed me to be. The thing that meant he didn’t trust me. The thing I had been insisting I was not since the day we’d met again. If I took their offer, and he discovered it, he would never believe me again.
But if I didn’t take their offer…
How would we get out of the city?
I swallowed and lifted my chin, meeting Kassian’s sharp gaze and returning it without flinching. “I won’t lose it again.”
He arched a coolly skeptical brow at me.
“Now, sir, about the tattoos marking her as your mate,” Ollan began. “The ceremony should have already taken place.”
Kassian’s fingers slid down my arm and tugged up the edge of my sleeve to reveal the marks that the mark-maker had made earlier to outline where the tattoo would go. I turned my head; I didn’t want to see.
The pressure of Kassian’s hand on my arm made my heart beat fast.
He lowered my sleeve again and removed his hand. He turned to Ollan, but I knew his attention was still focused on my reaction. Could he sense my spike in terror at the mention of the ceremony?
“Sir?”
“A few more days won’t matter,” Kassian said after a pause.
“What exactly happens during this ceremony?” I asked, tugging at my sleeve to fully cover the markings again.
Kassian moved to the window. He braced one arm against the frame and gazed out. Sunlight highlighted his nose, his lips. “You will be adorned with tattoos marking you as my mate. Witnesses will observe the marking, and then, we will speak an oath to each other.” He hesitated, then turned his face toward me. The light framed his dark hair like a halo, turning the edges to fire. “The oath is sealed with a kiss.”
A kiss.
His eyes darkened, and his gaze dropped to my lips and then away. He’d practically vowed he was not going to kiss me again.
I turned away so he wouldn’t see that I was blushing. I pretended to brush a nonexistent piece of dirt from Dog’s fur. My pulse thudded in my throat.
“My lady has expressed concern about the permanence of the markings,” Ollan said to Kassian. “She wants to find an alternative.”
“We have to,” I said. “I can’t be running around in human-held territory with my limbs covered in marks of the Sworn. I’ll be killed on sight. Remember what happened when we left my village?”
Kassian was silent behind me.
“I remember,” he said finally.
Perhaps, I thought, that was why the Sworn insisted upon the tattoos in the first place. They marked up their women so they were trapped forever. Pariahs outside of the cities where they were treated like queens. Decorated in beautiful chains that they could never, ever break.
“We can mark them in temporary ink instead,” Kassian said. “They will look real. But they won’t last forever. The ink will fade with time, and have to be replaced if you remain here to maintain the deception. When you’re gone, eventually your arm will be bare again.”