I caught her keen sideways glance. It was not unkind, but I felt myself flush. No doubt her husband had told her about discovering us. The man probably thought I had lied to him about my bond with Kygo.
“Viktor’s wife is much your size and has supplied her best gown,” she added, drying the length of my wet hair. “It is only cotton, my lady, but the weave is fine and it should fit well. The color will suit you, too.”
I stopped wiping my arms. “You think it will suit me? What color is it?”
“Blue, my lady.” She nodded at a gown hanging from a peg driven into the cave wall. It was indeed a rich indigo.
“Why will that suit me?” I had never given much thought to the color of my clothes. Then again, I had never been the one to choose them, even when I became Dragoneye.
“I am sure you look beautiful in all colors,” she said, bowing.
“No,” I said, stopping her obeisance with a hand on her arm. “No, I mean it. Why does blue suit me? I do not know about these things.” I had spent too many years as a boy to know anything of female arts.
She searched my face. I had done the same myself when asked by a higher rank for an honest opinion; not all such requests were sincere, and the truth often brought a swift slap. “Because you have pale skin, my lady,” she finally said. “The contrast will work well. And the shade will enhance the deep red in your lips and the brightness of your eyes.”
I studied the gown again; all of that from just one color? I traced my top lip with my finger, the soft pressure conjuring the sensation of Kygo’s mouth on mine. He had been surrounded by beautiful things all his life — clothes, art, women. He would understand the language of color and cloth.
“All right,” I said slowly. “I’ll wear it.” Then I remembered the problem with Vida’s gown. “Wait! Is it very low cut?”
“Only sufficiently so,” Madina said, a smile at the edge of her eyes.
I did not have enough lightness in me to laugh, but I did manage a wry lift of my lips. “I am not very good with all of this,” I said gesturing at the gown. “I have no knowledge of beauty or style.” I looked down at my narrow chest. “Nor any pretensions of either.”
“That is not true, my lady,” she said. “It is said there are four seats of beauty.” She touched her hair, her eyes, her mouth, and her throat. “All of us have at least one. Many of us have two. Some have three, and only a handful have all four in true harmony. You, my lady, are blessed with three.”
Which three did she mean? My eyes, perhaps, and my mouth — I had all my teeth. But I could see no elegance of throat, and my hair was too thick and heavy.
I snorted. “I am no beauty.”
She tilted her head, but did not voice what was behind her pursed lips.
“What? Speak your mind,” I prompted.
“It is true that you do not have classic beauty, and yet you draw the eye. You have felt the power of it, yes?”
I felt my skin flush again, but this time with acknowledgment. I had seen Kygo’s gaze follow me, and I had sensed my strange hold on him within it.
Madina patted her dark hair, the intricate braids and twists streaked with gray. “But I think what burns at your core is another kind of power, my lady.”
I looked away. Could she see my desire for Kygo? No, it was impossible. Perhaps she referred to the red dragon. “What power is that?”
“Fearlessness.”
I frowned. Fearlessness wasn’t a power, was it? And I had certainly known fear.
She wrapped my hair in the towel again and squeezed water from its length.
“We could braid your hair into a low coil.” She wound a thick tress around her finger and pressed it against my nape. “It will suit the neckline of the gown.”
I was tempted to take advantage of Madina’s arts, but I could not walk into a military meeting wearing both a gown and a maiden’s braid. It was hard enough to be a female Dragoneye, let alone a female
“I will wear a Dragoneye double queue,” I said, pleased with the compromise. I separated the heavy weight of my wet hair into two hanks. “I will show you how to club it.”
Madina bowed. “As you wish, Lady Dragoneye.”
The sky was streaked with pink dawn light as I climbed a set of shallow steps with two resistance escorts. According to the more talkative of the pair, the small cave ahead had been readied as a strategy room for the emperor. The word had gone out, he said, for the section leaders to gather there at daybreak. Below us, the camp was already stirring. Children carried buckets of water from the stream that crossed the floor of the crater, and women stoked cooking fires. A group of men headed toward the passage we had entered less than four bells ago, their ropes and packs marking them as a search party.
A familiar figure came out to meet us: Ryko, his big body hunched, arms cradling his ribcage. He watched our approach without expression, but I knew the islander well enough to see the tension within him.
“I will take Lady Eona to His Majesty,” he said to my escort.
The two men quickly bowed and backed away. Ryko waited until they were out of earshot, then he bent close and said, “You must intercede on my behalf. Now.”
I pulled away, startled by the fury in his voice.
“About what?”
“His Majesty has forbidden me to join the search parties.”
“He must have a good reason.”
“I do not care about his reasons,” Ryko snapped. “I have to search for Lady Dela. Do you understand?”
“Ryko, you’re injured. And you don’t know the area. You’ll just slow the local men down.”
He glared at me. “Intercede. You owe me.”
“Yes,” he hissed. “It would have had more honor than living like a dog, waiting for your next kick.”
His truth hung between us, heavy and impassable.
He closed his eyes and took a deep, pained breath. “My lady, please.” His touch on my shoulder was a plea. “I had her hand in mine and I let go. The water was too strong. She will think I abandoned her.”
I looked away from the anguish in Ryko’s face. I felt guilt every day, thirty-six times over. Perhaps I could spare him the guilt of failing Dela.
“All right,” I said. “I will ask him.”
I heard Kygo’s voice before we reached the strategy chamber. The cave was made up of three small, linked caverns, and Ryko and I were passing through the second when the emperor’s clear tones reached us.
“Is this a total of our numbers, Viktor? There are no others?”
My heartbeat quickened. For all of my reliving of our kiss and imaginings of his body against mine, I had not considered what might happen the next time I saw him. Would there still be the same heat in his eyes? Should I act as if nothing had happened? We were obviously not going to be alone. A blessing, perhaps, although something akin to disappointment settled deep within me as well.
I smoothed the front of the gown over my chest. As Madina had said, it was not as low-cut as Vida’s dress. Still, its round neckline showed the curve of my breasts, and the clinging waist needed no sash to accentuate my shape. My hands found the tightly clubbed braids that swung from the topknot at my crown. I flicked the two thick braids to the left, but decided it would look contrived and pushed them to the back again. Madina had said the manly style looked well on me, but there had been no mirror, and the reflection in the cave pool was too dark for detail.
“My lady, please wait,” Ryko whispered.
He stepped up to the natural archway that defined the entrance to the third chamber. The first two caverns had been extravagantly lit by oil lamps set only an arm’s width apart — but their glow paled in comparison to what came from the strategy chamber. It was almost like daylight.
