Page 71 of Sharpest Court

“Need a hand?” Keil’s deep voice rumbled from behind me. My stomach swooped as his torso grazed my back. He set one hand on the counter beside my hip and reached above me with the other, his bicep contracting in my periphery. His warmth enveloped me as he gathered two apples in his broad palm and drew his arm back down.

I turned, heart fluttering, caged against the counter, and found his chest still bare. I was about to ask whether we should put out missing posters for his shirt when he smirked and said, “We have tall shelves in Ansora.”

Because of specters, I realized now. I just wasn’t accustomed to using mine for such ordinary movements. But Keil was.

“You could’ve used your power,” I said, the challenge at odds with my breathlessness.

Keil’s smirk grew more wicked, his eyes heavier with teasing as they dipped over me.

“I could’ve,” he admitted, clearly enjoying the fact that my own gaze kept darting to his abdomen. He brought both apples toward his mouth, and as he bit into one, his lips naturally brushed against the glossy red skin of the other. My cheeks flamed as he set the whole skin-kissed apple in my palm and asked, “But where’s the fun in that?”

He sauntered away while I was still staring at the apple, unwilling to take it between my teeth despite feeling suddenly ravenous.

The final day of preparations came upon me too quickly, leaving me anxious as I trudged to the morning room, where I’d recently become fascinated with the marigold-embedded dayglass window. Keil had said that embedding an object within dayglass weakened its structure. And while I had no intention of breaking the window, my jeweler’s eye had compelled me to try and locate the discoloration that would indicate its weakness.

As I went, I grabbed the plate of lemon muffins Dashiel had started setting aside for me each morning since he’d noticed how much I liked them. I was grateful, because they tasted almost exactly like Verenian lemon cakes.

If you look for a piece of home wherever you go, you’ll never feel too far away.

Father’s words were producing that usual gut-wrenching sensation in me when I entered the morning room and paused. Valeria was sitting under the rainbow light, salve glistening on her scar. A man stood over a medical tray, his back toward me.

Not wanting to intrude, I began backtracking when Valeria smiled at me and said, “Winker was just asking about you.”

Winker. Or as I knew him from my notes: W.

The man turned, holding a pair of spectacles. With tufted white hair and a tweed suit, he appeared to be in his mid-fifties. Yet there was something youthful about his features, contradicting the wrinkles webbing from his warm smile.

“Lady Alissa.” He cleaned his spectacles with a floral handkerchief, then propped them back onto his nose. The smile lines around his watery blue eyes deepened. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

I frowned, trying to place his voice into what felt like a fever dream.

“I should hope not,” Valeria said. “She looked like death the last time you saw her.”

I straightened, suddenly realizing why he sounded familiar.

“Alissa,” Valeria continued, “this is—”

“I know who he is,” I interrupted as the memories flashed through my mind: a cool band of power holding me still, a nightmilk-prick at my nape, a clinical voice hovering above me.

“His name is Stian,” I said, blood thrumming with warning. “He works with Arun.”

19

Valeria stood, her voice gentle over my thundering heartbeat. “It’s all right, Alissa. Stian Winkerham is the Imperial Healer. We’ve known him for a long time.”

“He’s the physician who treated me at the palace,” I said.

Stian cleared his throat. “I prefer the term healer. It’s far less clinical.”

“Do your other patients appreciate that term?” I asked sharply. “You fix the people Arun breaks, correct?”

Stian pulled on his collar as though my accusation had wrapped around his neck. But I remembered how he’d spoken to Arun, as though they were intimate acquaintances.

He raised his palms, his mouth pressed into a grim line. “The minister and I do often work in tandem. But I don’t hurt people, my lady. I heal them.”

I was assessing him, still doubtful, when Valeria said quietly, “He healed me.”

I glanced toward her scar. The scar whose raised edges might have appeared more prominent if treated incorrectly.