The thing sitting across from me shifted, and its skin twitched, flashing green light in my eyes. I realized what I was seeing: feathers. They were mostly tiny, no bigger than a ladybug. The bumpiness on the arms came from an edging of larger ones.

The green man glanced at me. I realized I’d been staring and looked down, abruptly scared. Kara had warned me not to stare. Idiot.

“My Lord, why does it accompany you if it is not yet trained?”

“My apologies, Ambassador. She will be disciplined.”

Cordus spoke in a cool, offhanded tone, as though my future punishment was almost too obvious and uninteresting to mention. I felt goose bumps run up my arms.

Cordus and the green man returned to a discussion of events in “the Float of Charms,” whatever that was. I kept my eyes trained firmly on my hands, which I’d locked together in my lap so they wouldn’t shake. I tried not to think about how Cordus might “discipline” me.

After about twenty more minutes, during which the green man moved on and several other Seconds came over to pay their respects, an expectant pause swept over the room. I looked up and saw Limu coming toward us. Several individuals I hadn’t seen before trailed behind him — his honor guard, maybe.

Cordus and the woman he was speaking to rose, so I did as well. Limu stopped a few feet from the furniture grouping and greeted Cordus by name. He sounded distracted and annoyed. I thought he left out one of the names, actually. Nevertheless, Cordus nodded cordially and greeted Limu by what had to be his full name. I swear it had twenty words.

By the end of it, Limu was practically jigging with impatience. I wondered if Cordus had added some titles, under cover of good manners, just to tick him off.

The woman who’d been sitting with us excused herself. As Limu sat down in her place, my initial impulse was to scramble back: surely the couch would ignite. Of course, it didn’t — he’d been walking across the carpet a moment before, hadn’t he? It wasn’t like that’d gone up in flames.

He looked different than he had when I’d seen him before — less rocky, more metallic. His surface was a glowing orange-red, crusted here and there with craggy, blackened material and ash. In the center of his torso, the color shaded toward blazing yellow. When his mouth opened, I saw white fire inside.

His eyes burned with that fire. They were far too bright to look at directly, but I could tell they were focused on me. He was staring at me even more intensely than Innin had. It was deeply disconcerting. Innin had looked acquisitive. Limu looked vengeful. There was no doubt that he recognized me.