Soma twirled his spear twice, enjoying the sound of it cutting through the air, and then returned it to the clasps fashioned into the back of his armor.

“I am ever loyal to the empire,” he said. “So tell me where to go, Imperator, and who I am to kill. While the wretched, intolerable children of Vallessau watch, I will give them a glorious and bloody show.”

CHAPTER 20

STASIA

Stasia and Clarissa lay intertwined on the bed, their tangled sheets soaked with sweat. It had been three months between Clarissa’s last visit and Stasia’s return to Vallessau, and they had spent the past week working hard to make up for such lost time. After Cyrus’s first successful mission, Stasia had practically broken down the door to her lover’s two-story home in her eagerness to celebrate. Daylight spilled across them through the slats of the shuttered window, the warmth wonderful on Stasia’s naked skin. The only thing she wore was her word-lace. Given Stasia’s limited knowledge of Thanese and Clarissa’s of the imperial tongue, it kept things simple and clear between them.

“You’ll be staying for a while now, right?” Clarissa asked. “As much fun as your whirlwind weekends are, it’s not exactly the settled-down life I imagined when I was a little girl.”

“Well, what did you imagine?” Stasia asked, sidestepping her initial question. Clarissa rolled onto her back, arms stretching long above her head as she stared at the ceiling. Her red hair splayed out underneath her like a crimson curtain. A tingle shot all the way down Stasia’s spine. Gods, the woman was beautiful.

“Everyone makes fun of it, but I always wanted a traditional Lycaenean wedding on the beach, just like my parents had.”

A little bubble of laughter escaped Stasia’s best attempts to remain silent.

“You mean where you’re wrapped together in ribbons and then have to squirm around to escape, all while people throw paint on you?”

“Like a chrysalis! Lycaena’s chrysalis, now stop laughing, it’s not that weird. You emerge together as a butterfly, colorful and unique and, most importantly, together. And that’s just the fun part at the beginning, when everyone’s getting liquored up for the dancing and singing that follows. You can’t tell me Miquo didn’t have its own weird little traditions.”

“Oh, we had plenty, and all of them involved trees. I suppose that was our thing, trees. Planting them, climbing them, getting married in the shade of the oldest, most tilted, most rotted boughs imaginable as if it would bestow wisdom from its bark. I suppose we could merge the traditions. We’ll be buried together in a hole, then have to dig our way out like a sprout.”

Clarissa’s blushing was almost as red as her hair.

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you. Of course you’d make fun of me.”