Page 69 of A Veil of Gods and Kings

She crossed her arms. “Let’s find out what you’re here for, and then we’ll see.”

Valerian smirked, but then he reached out, taking his mother’s hand gently, like he grasped a flower rather than a person. The skin along one of her hands rippled, the flesh a bright red. He frowned. “When did this happen?”

She snatched her hand back. “Ack. I dropped another pot of hot water yesterday. You know how my wrists have been.”

I held back a gasp. She’d injured herself working. She labored for my sake, to put meals on my table. And she was hurt because of it. I suppose I’d never really considered that other people may have more freedoms than me in some ways, but it came with its own price.

Valerian’s expression deepened, his eyebrows drawing together, but his mother waved him off. “Stop distracting me.” She snapped the dish towel in our direction. “Who are they and what do you actually need?”

“You’ll have staff leaving on the hour to go into town, won’t you?”

Her eyes tightened. “Why?”

He shrugged, tossing his head to the side. “Maybe I have a few friends that would like to slip out without notice.”

Valerian’s mother frowned, deep lines on her face darkening. She walked over to us, still scowling. “For what reason do you two—” She gasped and took a step back, bobbing. “Forgive me, Your Highness. I didn’t recognize you.” She jerked her head up to her son. “Valerian, I wish to speak with you for a moment… alone.”

They ambled off into a corner where furious whispering trailed to us. Oh gods, I’d probably caused a riff between Valerian and his mother just so I could have a day of frivolity. She was at work, and he should be too. But here I was, running away with my wishes and desires, potentially putting both of them in harm's way. Gods, I was selfish. No wonder his mother looked at me the way she had.

“Well, she hates me,” I said.

“Nah.” Temi shrugged. “She just worries about her son.”

“How can you say that so confidently?”

Temi tossed her head. “I’m usually a decent judge of what people are thinking.”

I sucked in a breath. That seemed to be the case. In fact, she appeared to be naturally good at everything. I studied her for a moment, her smooth skin and perfect posture. It was hard not to wonder if she was a deity like her brother. She had an uncanny ability with anything she put her hand to, and she had the almost ethereal appearance of the gods. She could have donned a veil like Apollo. But, then again, she never shimmered as he often did, and I didn’t think she’d lie to me about it. Either way, it only made me feel minimally better about Valerian’s mother.

I bit my lip and kept my gaze trained on the corner they’d disappeared to until Valerian popped back out, his shoulders pulled tight though his eyes sparkled. “All right, the group leaves in twenty minutes, and my mother is going to unhappily look the other way for us.”

A bad feeling swirled in my gut. All these women in the kitchen were working, and we were here bothering them and causing issues for Valerian as well. But Temi grinned. “Perfect.”

23

Apollo

There was something about Hyacinth, the way he leaned over paperwork at his desk, his ink-smudged fingers grazing his temple, occasionally brushing over the short edges of his hair. He chewed the end of the reed in his hand, his expression tightening.

Underneath all that self-assured veneer he put on when he sat on his throne, when he stood before gods, when he dealt with his pain-in-the-ass advisors who’d already barged in three separate times this morning, there was something more.

I’d gotten so lost seeing his veil—for that’s what it was as much as any one I wore—that I’d missed the actual person beneath it. And that man was… well, intriguing and so different from how I’d initially assessed him.

I flipped the parchment in my hand over. Blank. I dropped it into the finished pile and grabbed another.

Hyacinth had crept into my thoughts and rooted there. The compassion he felt for his people. How he steeled himself against his advisors but then melted like spring snow around his sister. And then seeing him the previous evening with friends who heckled him, his clothes smeared in dirt, his skin glazed in sweat, added yet another piece to what I was finding to be the complex, surprising puzzle that made him up.

And I wasn’t used to that. Being surprised by people.

People were predictable.

They fell into habits and routines and boxes they created for themselves, and that was that.

But maybe not Hyacinth.

“You seem distracted,” Hyacinth said without raising his face from the document he held.

I startled, the parchment between my fingers rustling. But then I dropped it into a pile. “You know what? I am. What would you say to heading out a bit early today?”