Blood Ties

Chapter 29: Nadia

"I don't see why we have to return to the scrying room," she said after supper, as Declan kept a determined pace, ten steps ahead of her.

"I left my hat there," he said. A breeze ruffled his dark hair.

"I never took you for a dandy." She raised an eyebrow, doing her best to keep up with him. Her slippers nearly caused her to careen into a potted plant, sliding on the slick floors.

"I'm not." He was terse tonight, his shoulders tensing.

"Then what am I to make of your fixation with this accessory, Prince?" she asked.
"It is dear to my heart," he said. "Make of that what you will."

"I thought you didn't have a heart." In front of her, she saw his coiled muscles tighten as though about to strike. What had she said to irritate him so?

"Have I offended you? Prince Declan?"

"Not at all," he said easily, but his body said otherwise. Declan slowed down to allow her to walk by my side. His fingers closed around her wrist when she reached him: a cuff, a fetter, an anchor.

"Well, here we are."

Her stomach clenched. "I hate this room," Nadia blurted out before she could stop herself. She sounded like a petulant child, and hated it.

"You aren't alone in that," he assured her. It was a confession that stopped her in her tracks, remembering how cold he had seemed that morning. Who was he, really?

"Did the Duke lose at cards?" she said, changing the subject.

"He lost a large sum of money but he agreed to play and in fact asked to join me, knowing I was a card shark, Nadia." Declan opened the door, waving her inside.

"My hat, if you please." Declan strolled into the scrying room like he owned it. She was beginning to realize that was how he behaved everywhere, with everything, not just the palace where he was the prince.

Nadia stopped suddenly, nearly crashing into Declan's back. She clutched his bicep to steady herself, her foot an inch from his heel. He barely glanced at her. But they both fixed their gazes on the woman in the middle of the room. Grey hair, crinkled lines by her green eyes, hunched posture, clad in a dark grey robe. She stared straight back at them. Declan's hat sat on the altar, a dark blot amidst the white.

"You," Declan said, as though he recognized the women from somewhere. But Nadia did, too. "You were in the marketplace on that day in Milona! You insulted me to my face and praised my cousin."

Nadia spot back a laugh at how indignant he sounded. But the mirth was mingled with confusion. She knew the woman too, but how? From where?

"You were in the temple! I saw you as the matron... Who said all those things to me, those mysterious warnings..." 

As she took in both their accusations, the woman picked up Declan's hat and lobbed it at him like a weapon before running toward the back of the room. Two perplexed and shocked to follow, they watched as she parted the gossamer curtains and disappeared.

"She's awfully spry for an old woman," Declan noted as he donned his hat.

"That's all you have to say?" she asked. "A comment on her athletic abilities?"

"Well, I was rather offended by how poorly she treated my hat," he said.

"Who is she?" she said. "Did she follow us here from Milona?"

"I don't know," Declan admitted.

"Admitting defeat?" she said. But her teasing tangled with worried and surprised still from seeing the old woman.