Her black hair had been styled in ringlets by the servants at the very last minute. It was the fashion, but her hair was not suited to it. Already it was losing its curl, her locks fighting their way toward their natural poker-straight state. Lydia glared at a limp curl in frustration, but there was no time to do anything about it.
The thud of sandals against tile filled the air, and Lydia’s father entered the room with one hand behind his back. He looked healthier than he had earlier, no longer dripping with sweat from the pain of his illness. Even still, Lydia gestured to the servant with the fan to put more vigor into his motions, the crimson plumage sending gusts of air across the room.
“I trust the jeweler I had dispatched to the house departed with fewer wares,” her father said, perching on the couch next to her, arm still behind his back. “It was the least I could do after what you endured today.”
Lydia’s jaw tightened at mention of the tragedy in the Forum. “I’m afraid I was a disappointment to them.”
“I sent you the finest jeweler in Celendrial, yet within his chests you were unable to find a single hair ornament you liked?”
“Not one worthy of Teriana’s hair. It needs to be something special.”
She expected her father to make some jest about her grasping for an excuse to have her accounts increased, but instead he sighed, his gaze fixed on the floor. “Perhaps you might consider spending more time with your other friends.”
He meant the daughters of his fellow senators, though it had been years since Lydia had thought of any of them as friends. When they’d all been children, no one had cared much about her questionable heritage. That had changed when her friends began to heed the deeply classist nature of patrician society, where friendship had little to do with affection and everything to do with the advantages the relationship might bring. And while a relationship with her father’s name was of enormous value to anyone in the Empire, Lydia’s less than perfect pedigree ensured that she’d marry far below her current station, if she married at all. And none of her friends saw any advantage in fostering a relationship with the future wife of a wealthy plebian, and even less a spinster. “I prefer Teriana’s company.”
“It is improper how much you favor her.”
Lydia sat up straight with such violence that the wine in her glass sloshed over the rim. “How so? She is my friend.”
“A friendship that is itself improper. The daughters of senators don’t fraternize with the lower classes. It looks ill.”
“Lower classes?” Lydia stared at him, horrified to hear such words coming from his mouth. “You speak as though she were some pleb sweeping the streets. Her mother is both captain and owner of her own ship—one of the most influential Maarin ships there is.” Never mind that Teriana and her family were richer and more educated than half the Senate.
“Don’t play the fool, Lydia. You know well what I mean.”
“I do not.” A lie, because she did. But if he intended to espouse these views, then Lydia would be damned if she’d let him hide behind innuendo. “Explain yourself.”
Her father gestured angrily at the musicians and servants, all of them promptly exiting the room, leaving him and Lydia alone. Then he rounded on her. “As you like. Teriana is not patrician. And she is not Cel.”
Rising to her full height, Lydia stared him down. “Neither. Am. I.”
And no amount of pretense would make it otherwise. Not when every blasted person in Celendrial knew Senator Valerius had found her clutched in her dead mother’s arms outside the gates to this very home. Had taken her in and, being the man he was, had given her not just a home but his home, adopting her as his daughter.
His eyes clouded. “It’s different.”
“How?” Lydia was shaking, barely in control of her anger. “How is it different?”
“Because I make it so! My name! My power! My influence!” her father shouted. “And when I am gone, you will lose all of it unless you are wed to someone willing to provide the same. Because rest assured, Vibius will not allow you to remain in this house.”
Lydia knew that her father’s nephew despised her, though she didn’t understand the intensity of his hate. She was careful never to cross him, yet Vibius’s animosity toward her had grown with an alarming ferocity over the last year to the point Lydia was afraid to be alone with him. “It’s uncharacteristic of you to speak this way, Father. I don’t care for it.”
Tension thickened the space between them, not vanquished until her father conceded with an exhaled breath of defeat.
“I’m sorry, my dear girl.” He rested his elbows on his knees, head in his hands, an unfamiliar fruit, which was what he’d been hiding behind his back, now abandoned on a cushion. “My fear makes me speak to you in a way I should not. Please sit.”
Lydia didn’t move.
“Lydia, you are nearly eighteen years old and it was past time you were wed. For there to be a chance of a man with a good name taking you for a wife, you must perform the part of a patrician girl to perfection, which is perhaps something I should’ve been training you to do all along.” He sighed. “Instead, I raised you within the framework of my own beliefs and notions, which are not shared by most. Created an unsustainable world for you, never thinking that there would be a moment in which you’d have to step outside of it. And yet that moment is now staring me in the face. The moment when I’ll no longer be able to protect you.”
Terminal. The physicians’ prognosis echoed through her thoughts. Terminal. “Yet you wish me to cut ties with the only other person in the world who cares for me?”
Her father was silent for a long moment, as though he was considering his words. Then he spoke. “I know Teriana is like a sister to you, but know also that her mother is not warm to your friendship. Why else does the Quincense avoid the most profitable harbor on Reath like it is infested with plague? The Maarin keep to themselves, for reasons they keep to themselves, and to have a girl of Teriana’s importance doing otherwise looks ill upon her. It may be the case that she has come to realize that fact, which is why you’ve not heard from her in so long.”
It had been six months since she’d seen Teriana. A whole half a year without so much as a letter. Was it possible that Teriana, too, had decided Lydia not worth her time and trouble?
“I have some prospects in mind for you, Lydia, but it would help if you made an effort to increase your desirability. Foster relationships with other patrician girls, for if they look upon you with favor, so shall their fathers and brothers and husbands. Which will make you an asset.”
An asset—as though she were a commodity to be used rather than a person with her own thoughts and hopes and dreams …
“Why can’t you just arrange for me to leave Celendrial? Surely Vibius would be happy enough to see the back of me and would leave me to my own devices?”
Silence fell across the room, making the overheated air feel thick and unbreathable.
“Perhaps he might have,” her father finally answered, staring at the tiles. “But I’m afraid I erred in my ambition for your future.”
“How so?” This was the first she’d heard of it.
“A little over a year ago, I began to make discreet inquiries into whether Cel law might be changed in your favor. Whether there was a chance of creating a circumstance where you could be freed from my name upon my death and for you to inherit a portion of the Valerius fortune. Not the majority of it, of course, but enough to set you up for life.”