Page 19 of Oracle's Reign
Peroen reassigned the title of his most hated person in the palace. His father was beyond terrible, but he still mostly ignored Peroen. Unlike Triese. It didn’t matter how distantly polite he kept his responses to her questions—not that she asked many. He could bluntly state that he hated whatever superficial interest she started gushing about, and she accused him of being coy.Coy.
He doubted there was anything he could do, even if he gave up on subtlety and politeness, to halt her flirting. His best option was to limit his time with her. Which he tried to do. The momentthe meal ended, Peroen stood, looking for Yslie. He might have missed the chance to dine with her, but they could still listen to the performance together.
“Oh, you can’t go. Not now.” Triese leapt to her feet.
Peroen, who had been formulating his excuses but hadn’t yet spoken, paused. “I didn’t say—”
“But you were about to.” Triese leaned in close, but didn’t lower her voice. “I know. Isawit. My visions are very accurate. Unless I act, theyallcome true. Truly, I should have been the last Emperor’s Oracle, for I am even more powerful than Auraelie, but I was still too young when the Emperor took the throne.”
Peroen couldn’t stop his frown. Did she really think he didn’t understand that Auraelie had been sent to his father not for her power, but for the limitations to that power? The oracles had never wanted the imperial family to benefit from their magic, though the treaty had required them to provide one of their number to each emperor.
If he had stopped to think about it, Peroen would have assumed that the women seeking out the position as his wife would still be the least powerful. For even now that a wedding was part of the agreement, he knew the oracles still distrusted sending any of their own to the imperial family.
Not that he believed Triese’s boasts about her own power.
“Of course,” she continued, saving him from needing to find a diplomatic response, “not everyone who came to Kalitalo respected the fact that only a powerful oracle should become empress. Yslie can’t even see the future at all.”
“She’s not an oracle?” Peroen knew that couldn’t be true, but what else could she mean?
Triese’s hand fluttered through the air as if the entire conversation was of little consequence. “Oh, technically she is,but Yslie can only see the past. She came to Kalitalo hoping to hide her deficiencies, but it is only fair that you know the truth.”
Too many objections occurred to Peroen. He didn’t know where to start.
Which gave Triese the opening to continue talking. She reached out, pressing her fingers to his upper arm. “You are absolutely right,dyela,” she said as if he had spoken. “Seeing the past is positively useless. I truly don’t understand why she thought she could ever win over a prince. She really ought to know better by now.”
He didn’t shake his arm free, he simply looked at Triese until her fingers fell away. Then, in a clear voice that wasn’t a shout, but still held a strength Peroen hadn’t known he possessed, he spoke. “Your magic must not be as powerful as you think, for there was no possible future in which I ever would have agreed with you about Yslie. No, there is no future in which I agree with you about anything.”
Peroen didn’t take pleasure in the shock painting itself across Triese’s features. He didn’t care about the gossip he left in his wake. He had only one goal, to find Yslie.
But she was no longer in the dining room, and when he moved on to the room where the performance was to be held, she was not there, either.
